Celebrated Irish artist Fionn Regan returns with a new single ‘Islands’, the first taste of an upcoming album due out later this year via label group Nettwerk. Written in Mallorca and rippling like the sea, ‘Islands’ uses images of the sun and moonlit dances on Spanish sand to set the psychedelic scene. Buoyant and urgent, the song introduces his upcoming record’s world with cascading immediacy, as if the space it evokes is eternal.
Speaking of the single, Regan said, “When I wrote the song it was like there was something cosmic about it, because it doesn’t sound like my other songs. I felt like it was almost a gift from The Beatles or whatever wellspring they drew on. I remember being in Mallorca and thinking, ‘Were The Beatles ever here?’ Not that I’m saying it’s on their level but it has some sort of cosmic flow to it.”
‘Islands’ is Fionn Regan’s first new material since his sixth album Cala which was released to universal acclaim in late 2019. Additionally, Regan has announced the Before The Avalanche Tour” with six live dates in Ireland plus an intimate London show at St Pancras Old Church in November. All dates are listed below.
Fionn Regan has fine-tuned a sensibility of his own since the acoustic poetry of his debut album, 2006’s Mercury-shortlisted The End of History. Since then, he has travelled between band-based detours and the gleaming likes of 2011’s 100 Acres of Sycamore, whose worry-worn beauty ‘Dogwood Blossom‘ drew new audiences when it found kindred spirits in two TV shows, romantic lockdown hit Normal People and Shane Meadows’s This Is England 86. Oscar-winning actor Cillian Murphy featured in the video for 2017’s ‘The Meeting Of The Waters‘ while elsewhere Regan has been nominated for Choice, Meteor Ireland and Shortlist awards, sampled by Bon Iver, photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair and made an honorary member of the Trinity College Literary Society. “I feel really lucky in the sense that the music I make has its own climate or landscape,” says Regan.
Before The Avalanche Tour:
NOVEMBER
9th: The Black Gate, Galway, Ireland
14th: Cleere’s Bar & Theatre Kilkenny, Ireland
15th: Unitarian Church, Dublin, Ireland
16th: Phil Grimes Pub. Waterford. Ireland
22nd: Levis Corner House Ballydehob, Ireland
23rd: Connolly’s Leap, Ireland
29th: St Pancras Old Church, London, UK
(Photo credit: Autumn de Wilde)
