With the release of their sophomore effort Stir coinciding with lockdown, Limerick trio Bleeding Heart Pigeons unintentionally create a soundscape so fitting for the impending emotions of social isolation as well as overarching uncertainty. With glimmering synths and buoyant guitars paired with morose themes and a tense ambiance – nihilism hasn’t sounded this assured in Irish music for a long time. I spoke to frontman Mícheál Keating about creation in isolation, the underestimated Limerick scene, and the best of eighties synth pop. 

 

Congratulations on the album! I found that Stir was a particularly heartfelt and haunting effort and one of my favourite Irish releases this year – what was the writing process like? 

 

Thank you very much! Often the three of us will jam together, or else we individually bring ideas to the table. Then I’ll put the ideas into a song, and we work out the arrangements together. We started writing material in the second half of 2016, and we started recording in January 2017 with a few songs and ideas under our belt. We recorded it at home in our own studio, and were writing and arranging songs during the recording process – and it was finished around the end of 2017. Since we were writing and recording at the same time, instead of doing demo versions of many of the songs, we could capture some of the creative excitement of new ideas in the final recordings. It was a difficult and frustrating time for us as a band – we had worked towards the major label release of our debut album Is for years, and when it came out, the gigging/promotional cycle ended much too soon. Financially struggling and living with our parents, diving headlong into the new music helped us to cope – for me the claustrophobic and disillusioned mood of that time comes through in the music.

 

Did it differ from previous music you’ve made?

 

I think it’s a bit more concise and direct than our previous stuff. At the time we were really interested in honing our craft: the songwriting, arrangement and production. From when we started playing together as young teenagers, we were always quite an isolated band, being out in the countryside in West Limerick. When we were making Stir, we were feeling that strong desire to connect with people and to be heard more than ever. I think this contributed to us taking a more concise and direct approach, integrating our more experimental side with pop forms.

 

Thematically, the emphasis on loss in terms of the environment feels like an omen or warning of sorts – was this intentional or something with greater significance to you?

 

Yes! That theme lurks underneath parts of the album, and I feel strongly about it. The song ‘Dig a Hole and Then, Fill it in Again’ is quite explicitly dealing with this idea: ‘man crawls out of the ocean / man crawls back in again’. It’s also in ‘Good Dogs Never Die’, in a more roundabout way. Often I can’t help but feel skeptical towards the idea of human ‘progress’ these days, and there’s an anxiety around it that I think a lot of people (young especially) are dealing with. Around the time of making the album, Brexit and Trump happened, so the future wasn’t looking so peachy.

 

Releasing music during lockdown is something that proved contentious for a lot of artists recently, do you believe it has its detriments?

 

Definitely – not being able to gig is a total disaster. After all, it’s the main way musicians can make a living. We pressed a bunch of vinyl copies of Stir with the intention that we would be able to sell them at gigs! It’s a very tough situation for artists and arts workers, and a very tough road ahead. On the upside, I think a lot of people realised the value of art in their lives as they were cooped up in their homes. It has been a good time for people to engage with recorded music, to spend time with albums and to check out/support local artists through Bandcamp etc. We had the release of Stir planned before lockdown, and we decided to keep to our schedule. As a listener, new music being released has helped me to cope during lockdown and I hope that our album is bringing something good to people in a tough time.

 

What are your thoughts on the rise of creation in isolation? Is it a positive or negative force for artists?

 

I think it’s positive, and sharing things helps maintain a sense of community, but it’s important not to feel obliged to be creative. I know a lot of immensely talented folks who just have not been feeling it during lockdown, and that’s okay too! I think it’s also a good time to take a critical look at the awful neoliberal work culture we’re all indoctrinated with, where one must feel productive as much as humanly possible. Taking care of ourselves and one another is the most important thing right now (perhaps it always was come to think of it?).

 

As a proud part of the burgeoning Limerick scene, do you feel that the city is under-represented or ignored in the grand scheme of Dublin-centric Irish music journalism?

 

Yes, Limerick is an underdog. It’s grossly under-represented, but more people are getting wise to it! At the moment, Denise Chaila is getting deserved attention which is great to see. Nialler9 and District often cover PX music and rightly so. The mainstream channels (radio and TV included) do a weak job of representing the broad and colourful tapestry of Irish music. I would recommend anyone to go actively digging for underground Irish music themselves, the quality of stuff to be heard is incredible. The Thin Air is the best publication for covering underrated music from all over the country.

 

What Limerick artists would you like to see gain traction?

 

Post Punk Podge, Casavettes, Hey Rusty, His Father’s Voice, Anna’s Anchor, Kayleigh O’Brien, King Pallas, Young Smith, Tooms, Powpig, Citrus Fresh, Strange Boy, Gavin DaVinci, Hazey Haze, Aswell, Murli, I’m forgetting some – the list goes on!

 

The band are subjected to frequent Radiohead comparisons – is it daunting to be standing in the shadows of giants, or just inaccurate? Are all post-punk bands painted with the same journalistic brush?

 

I think we’re okay with it. We were massively influenced by Radiohead in our teenage years, but a ton of other inspirations make up our music too. I don’t think we sound much like Radiohead, but it’s probably not totally inaccurate either. When I was a curious teenager, Radiohead provided a gateway into a wider world of sound, not only through their own music but through the influences that came through in it (from Autechre to Mingus to Messiaen). Creating these kinds of gateways of possibility is something I aspire to; I’d like to enable someone the way Radiohead enabled me then. The term post-punk seems a very vague and regressive term these days – I don’t think either Radiohead or us fit under that heading.

 

You’ve cited Talk Talk as an inspiration for the band – seeing other synth pop-tinged artists I enjoy citing them is pretty nice to see! How have they influenced your work? 

 

Talk Talk are one of our favourites! They are often lumped in with other 80s synth-pop artists, but there is a philosophical and spiritual quality to their music that sets them apart. Mark Hollis was an amazing guy with an amazing voice. Some bits of Stir were definitely inspired by some of their earlier synthy bangers like ‘It’s My Life’, but their later material is closest to my heart. The creative trajectory of their brief career is endlessly inspiring. Laughing Stock is maybe my favourite ever album, it’s so spiritually and conceptually pure, it’s so beautiful and haunting as their final album. It’s always somewhere in my mind when I make music.

 

Bleeding Heart Pigeons latest album Stir is available to listen to now across all streaming platforms.