ireland

My Cover of 'Your Loving Arms'

I wanted to do a little version of ‘Your Loving Arms’ by Billie Ray Martin. Always found the vocal melody and lyrics haunting and lush but wanted to take the production in a different direction. Have a listen and let me know what you think..

Songwhip - listen to Your Loving Arms on your platform of choice (CLICK TEXT).

https://songwhip.com/pearse-mcgloughlin/your-loving-arms

Caretaker (Requiem)

A few weeks back on my social media I shared the last song on my album ‘The Rest’, called ‘Caretaker (Requiem)’ and I just wanted to record it here, on my website as well. The song was a tribute to a friend of mine, Mícheál Gormley who I worked with. Mícheál came to lots of our gigs at Sligo Live, we played lots of music together and had great, (extensive!) music chats. He also played the bass and for this reason I have a little bassline running through the song. Although I put the album out in October 2020, I didn’t get to deliver the record to his family until recently and that was quite a touching moment.

The song was a tribute to Mícheál but also seemed fitting as I had some other loss in my family leading up to the release of the album and of course the pandemic brought its own existential weight to bear on everything. The title for the album ‘The Rest’ comes from Hamlet’s last words ‘the rest is silence’ and I managed to fit those beautiful words into the song too.

Kudos are due to Enda Reilly who I asked for a second opinion on the song, as I wanted to do it justice and sometimes you need someone objective.

Listen to Caretaker (Requiem) on Spotify. Pearse McGloughlin · Song · 2020.

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‘the ocean takes back its islands’

Focus

Hi friend, I wanted to pass on this new song. I wrote it after Electric Picnic a few years ago, in what seems like another world. But it's not another world. It's the same world. Awful things are happening but alongside them beautiful things are happening too. My daughter is learning to cycle with a determined  little heart. My students are showing up for class online and trying to make sense of huge change. And I want to make new music.

The song's called 'Focus' and comes from an album called 'The Rest'. I had some shows lined up to support its release which won't go ahead just now, of course, but I will share new work over the next while which I look forward to.

Focus

Song by Pearse McGloughlin. Music by Pearse, Billy and Enda.

Production by Darragh Nolan. 

Beautiful artwork by my uncle Eoin MacLochlainn 

FOCUS

Strange summer evening

Autumn wind blowing

Lurching from coast to coast

Blowing hot, blowing cold

And you drew everything 

You knew everything

You gave focus

Red eyed morning

New light dawning

Coasting from pole to pole

Bowing low

For your glowing soul

 

 

And you drew everything

You knew everything

You drew focus

 

Where do your horses run?

When the seasons over

Do you tell them to gallop on

By bullets by boulders 

 

All horses fall up on 

The thorns of winter

May all horses overcome

Their bruises and splinters

 

 

And you swing with the tides and the moon

Fear can take over

When you’re burned and you’re spurned and you’re shunned

But your spirit’s stronger

 

So you speak with a seeing tongue

Though you shake

Though you shiver

All that  blossoms is not born in the black of winter.

HUMANS { new live video }

Last week there was an open call for the Other Voices IMRO Other Room. I thought it would be fun to turn our rehearsal into a live recording of a new song as a submission. So, my brothers Kevin and Eoin came up from Sligo to shoot us in Billy's place. We set up quickly and did a couple of takes. One mic, two cameras. I'm very happy with it as we don't have many live recordings of Nocturnes and there was a lovely natural energy and momentum in the evening. 

Big thanks to Billy, Niamh and Séamus for allowing us to turn their house into a makeshift studio and to Kevin and Eoin for doing the visuals so well.

We will release the studio recording of the song before the year is out. 

In the meantime, our next stop is Nighthawks at Cobalt Café on October 7th.

Be sure to see the flowers,

Pearse