music

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’

Livestream for Irish Cancer Society (Enda Sheehy's Fundraiser)

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My good friend Enda Sheehy is doing a marathon in aid of Irish Cancer Society this Saturday in Monread Park from 7:30am.

I’ll be joining him for half of it god help him! And me too, in fairness.

So, for this week’s Sunday Stream I will contribute any tips received from the show to Enda’s fundraiser.

We will stream from Billy’s place and the set will consist of covers and requests.

Hopefully we will be able to play it as a distanced three piece with Enda Roche joining on percussion and Billy Donohue on keys.

If you can, please make a contribution to www.paypal.me/UrchinMusic, putting ‘Irish Cancer Society’ as the note.
If you don’t use Paypal you can contribute directly to Enda’s page here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/fk3rtr-irish-cancer-society


If you’re not in a position to do that, that’s totally cool of course, maybe you can share the page or invite friends. 🙏🙏


We will stream on FB Live, YT and Twitch.

Thank you.


Pearse and Nocturnes

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.

Green Sleeves | In Movement

Recently I was at an exhibition of Irish records in The National Print Museum as the sleeve for In Movement was being exhibited there alongside lots of  albums ranging from the 1950s up to the present day. It's safe to say there've been many dodgy album covers. Also, there've been lots of quite strange looking people on album covers. I was honoured to be included. 

In Movement is an album design I'm proud of and kudos must be given to Stephen Kiernan (a talented drummer and graphic designer) for bringing it to life. We did a creative shoot for the cover with Kieran O'Donoghue, whom I'd met via the Life's No Picnic On the Streets project I had worked on with Depaul Ireland. Kieran also allowed us to use some of his very fine photography from an exhibition he had based around Chernobyl and the vacated areas there. Truly powerful work.

As we wandered around the exhibition I felt the whispering of Yeatsian ghosts; 'What then.?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?' I know how much labour and effort can go into a record. And here was but a small portion of releases. Phantoms of yesterday. Forgotten, mostly. 'Look upon my works ye mighty and despair'. Bit of that. But how could it be any other way? 

I often get people asking about this cover. There's a trick there. Can you work it out?