One of our ones to watch for 2025, Ireland’s best new band Cliffords have shared details of a fantastic new single entitled ‘Bittersweet’, their first through newly formed label, Soil To The Sun.
In Ioana Lunch, they possess a outstanding vocalist on ‘Bitterweet’ she displays storytelling with raw emotive power, juxtaposed against the band’s cinematic backdrops of seasawing percussion and brooding guitars in the verse. Before she delivers the devastating gut punch of swooping notes in an awe-inspiring chorus! It’s ripe with nostalgia for home and all the mixed emotions of growing up and finding their feet as a band. It also encapsulates all the melodrama of heartbreaks that seem devastating at the time, but you can laugh a bit about in retrospect; it’s also laced with Lunch’s understated wit, fierce determination ambitionn and a glint in the eye. This is another cracking single from this exciting emerging band!
Vocalist Iona Lynch: “Bittersweet is a more abstract look at nostalgia and our last few years of living in Cork. The first few lines of the song “the city begged look up” comes from something my grandad always said to me, “look up or you’ll miss half the beauty of the city.”
“Bittersweet reflects the mixed emotions of us as a band finding our way in music and in ourselves as young adults. The lyrics poke fun at heartbreaks and how dramatic and potent those feelings felt at the time.”
The young Cork band self-financed and self-released a debut EP last year, but Bittersweet marks their first steps working alongside a producer in Richie Kennedy at Battery Studios in London, aiming their sights far beyond the confines of their home city.
Cliffords deal in a melody-rich, guitar-heavy merging of both shoegaze and grunge, all widescreen and cinematic in their scale and approach. Iona’s vocals, unrestrained and almost feral, arrowed above and beyond the sweatbox venues Cliffords are sure to be filling over the next twelve months. As an opening gambit to the world at large, Bittersweet is a bold and ambitious statement of intent..
In Iona Lynch the band have a magnetic frontperson, smart, literate and wholly lost in her own music – an artist who has the potential to single-handedly influence a new generation inside of Cork and far out of it too. But for now we have ‘Bittersweet,’ Cliffords’ emphatic first calling card.
The band are set for live performances throughout the Spring and into the Summer.
Cliffords Live:
16th March – Misneach Festival, Sydney
17th March – The Lansdowne, Sydney
19th March – The Gasometer, Melbourne
12th April – Heartbreakers, Southampton
13th April – The Louisiana, Bristol
15th April – Dublin Castle, London
16th April – The Bodega, Nottingham
17th April – The Deaf Institute, Manchester
3rd May – Sound City, Liverpool
10th May – The Road to the Great Escape @ King Tut’s, Glasgow
15th May – The Great Escape, Brighton
16th May – The Great Escape, Brighton
17th May – London Calling, Amsterdam
24th May – Live at Leeds
25th May – Neighbourhood Festival, Warrington
27th May – Supersonic, Paris
14th June – Best Kept Secret, Hilvarenbeek
21st June – Bludfest, Milton Keynes Bowl
6th July – Rock Werchter, Werchter
25th July – Latitude Festival, Suffolk
26th July – Truck Festival, Oxfordshire
27th July – Tramlines, Sheffield
3rd August – Y Not Festival, Derbyshire
23rd August – Victorious Festival, Portsmouth
