PHOTO ABOVE: Time Bend and Break The Bower Artwork

“An extraordinary debut record” - Clash 8/10
“noir-punk poetry with a dancey edge” - NME 4*
“commanding a new space of her own” - The Line Of Best Fit 8/10
“a varied, brilliant collection of ideas, thoughts and theories that pushes beyond the thickly drawn boundaries of genre or form” - Dork 4*
“An experience worth immersing yourself in” - DIY 4*
"a singular and visceral talent" - Sunday Times Culture
“hugely exciting” - The Quietus

Today Irish artist Sinead O’Brien releases her debut album ‘Time Bend and Break The Bower’ via Chess Club Records. Sinead recently performed on Later… with Jools Holland and will be embarking on an instore tour this week. O’Brien will also play a string of festivals including Glastonbury ahead of her massive autumn UK, Ireland and European tours including London’s Lafayette – the full list of live dates is below.

LISTEN TO ‘TIME BEND AND BREAK THE BOWER’ BELOW

“The story of the album is built up in layers; one song giving context to the next” explains Sinead; “I thought about becoming undressed; testing my ideas, my voice. Working myself out across themes of identity, curiosity, creative process. Experimenting with the form and shape of language, using tone and delivery to get to the immediate centre of what I am saying. The record opens and closes with poems, these tracks have a really clear direction - a form which is set apart from the ‘songs’. I hold stops in different places, moving emphatically through the lyrics, changing the meaning. No punctuation - only the voice mapping out the way.”

“The album title “Time Bend and Break The Bower”, from the song ‘Multitudes’, came into my head and made its demands, an idea that pressed on me throughout the record. It has a very active role. The clock symbol is enlarged, it looms like a moon over my activity watching, counting me down to zero. Dripping with self-sabotage and the feeling of being chased; it pulls and pushes against the verses which talk of ’Multitudes’; the things that faithfully come back - the images, the words, creativity. It is creativity itself.”

Communing at the triangulation of words, music and image, O’Brien has always conjured powerful worlds: but none more powerful, or as immersive, than on her debut record. In the space that exists between her delivery – at once wry, silky, vicious, and self-assured – and the music – a dynamic, dancing call-and-response from her collaborators, guitarist Julian Hanson and drummer Oscar Robertson – lies a productive tension. Using a method of creating on-instinct, in constant communication with multisensory cues, O’Brien is carving out a space as a musical oracle for an ever-shifting era. The 11-track album was produced by super-producer Dan Carey (Fontaines DC, Wet Leg, Squid, Black Midi, Foals, Kae Tempest) and recorded in his south London studio Mr Dan’s, with an all-female team creating the album’s visuals (Chloe Le Drezen, Saskia Dixie and Sarah Piantadosi).

“The story of the album is built up in layers; one song giving context to the next” explains Sinead; “I thought about becoming undressed; testing my ideas, my voice. Working myself out across themes of identity, curiosity, creative process. Experimenting with the form and shape of language, using tone and delivery to get to the immediate centre of what I am saying. The record opens and closes with poems, these tracks have a really clear direction - a form which is set apart from the ‘songs’. I hold stops in different places, moving emphatically through the lyrics, changing the meaning. No punctuation - only the voice mapping out the way.”

Since 2020, O’Brien has garnered international critical acclaim from titles like Rolling Stone, DIY, Dazed, Dork, Loud & Quiet, NME, Paste, Stereogum, The FADER, The Guardian, The Quietus, and AnOther Magazine, among others. O’Brien has also been consistently supported on national radio: she counts Jack Saunders at BBC Radio 1, and Steve Lamacq and Amy Lamé at BBC Radio 6 Music as champions of her music, with the latter station giving two tracks a spot on their B List. And O’Brien is building on her US support from the likes of Seattle’s KEXP alongside appearances at SXSW – in virtual form in 2021, and with a much lauded live run with her band in Texas earlier this spring.

With a background on the design teams for John Galliano and, later, Vivienne Westwood, it’s no surprise that raven-haired O’Brien’s cultural touchstones also span a rich history of art, photography, film, dance and movement: from Helmut Newton femme fatales and Henri Cartier-Bresson’s bleak landscapes, to modern performance by Michael Clark, to the writings of Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett. Recently also tapped by Gucci to perform, it’s clear that O’Brien’s esoteric instincts will continue to inspire those beyond the industry as well as within it.