By Iminza Keboge
Published March 25, 2021
A new world music album born out of feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt, anxiety, loss and letting go of the past shall be released to the world on May 28, 2021.
The album, titled Weightless / Still, is by a Dublin (Ireland)-based group called Elgin and tackles themes of defeats, epiphanies, minor victories, smaller blessings and daily awkwardness, such as the idea of impostor syndrome in the lead single ‘Cherry Picked’, with its perfectly weighted line “You wanted a falcon, I gave you a finch”.
‘Oh Love’ (released officially as a single on April 9, 2021) opens the beautiful atmospheric indie-folk record, which incorporates a wide range of instrumentation with lush guitars, synths, keys, brass and more, all enveloped in decadent vocal harmonies creating a vast, expansive sound.
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Anthony Furey and Paul Butler, who make up Elgin, are reported to have travelled the breadth of the globe under the name The Young Folk that they have now renamed Elgin. and through which they hope to continue their musical journey.
“Elgin is a natural progression and represents a new direction for the band,” ARC Music Productions International under whose Pixie Pace Records label the album is being released, say in a statement to the media. “Whilst still centred around the key contributing members of The Young Folk, Elgin gives them the freedom to play different instruments, to untangle themselves from the steady rotation of band members and get back to the simplicity of a duo, just like it was in the beginning.”
“You can be any age with it,” says Anthony Furey. “And you can play in any style you like and write lyrics about any subject under the sun.”
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Anthony Furey and Paul Butler wrote almost all the songs for The Young Folk, the former often drawing inspiration from writers and poets – George Orwell, Seamus Heaney, Charles Bukowski and Colum McCann. But it just so happens that most of the material on Weightless / Still is the latter’s, ARC Music says.
“I was in the right frame of mind,” Butler says. “Well… actually in the wrong frame of mind, but the right one to come up with all these ideas.”
When his uncle, the filmmaker Brendan Bourke, died suddenly a few years ago, Butler says the loss hit him hard as he found himself deprived of the comfort that religion afforded other members of the family.
“I was quite envious that they could say ‘he’s in a better place, he’s not in pain’. It’s a great concept, but I don’t believe in it at all. And I was angry at this. Like, what am I supposed to do?”
Those feelings form the lyrical backbone of ‘Oh Love’.
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The album also looks at reaching a low point and remembering the low point before that one, and the low point before that in the song ‘Stone’s Throw’, which Paul Butler says was “A bit of a eureka moment for me”. Or the feeling of not being able to help somebody anymore (‘Bulletproof’), or sitting in the garden and letting the mind wander (‘Apple Tree’), or broken love (‘Fault Lines’), or feeling lost and clueless at the end of a relationship (‘Hopeless Swimmer’, written by Furey).
Then there’s ‘Sloe’, a song inspired by Colum McCann’s short story Fishing the Sloe Black River, which was turned into a film by Butler’s late uncle, Brendan Bourke.
“Everything in that song is about something completely different – trips, love, life, holidays, friends,” Butler says.
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The nine-track album that runs for 31 minutes captures so many feelings and states of mind, all aspiring ultimately perhaps to a feeling we often dream about, the feeling of being weightless and still; “As in out-of-body,” says Butler. “The feeling that we never have.”
