MUSIC Julie Feeney clocks into the Linenhall

DAZZLING Julie Feeney will perform with the choir from St Joseph’s Secondary School, Castlebar, at the Linenhall Arts Centre on Monday.


Julie clocks into the Linenhall


Ciara Moynihan

Julie Feeney – a true original and one of the most innovative acts to emerge in Ireland over the last decade – returns to the Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar for a very special concert this Monday, December 10.
Feeney has performed sell-out shows across America, Ireland, England, France, Italy, Germany, Canada and Holland with her own ensemble and numerous orchestras. A live performance from her ten-night run in New York City earlier this year received a glowing review in the New York Times from respected music critic Jon Pareles.
Most recently, she played in October in the wonderfully acoustic surrounds of Holy Trinity Church, Westport, as part of the Westport Arts Festival. That night, she sang songs from her new album ‘Clocks’ for the public for the very first time. At the end of the night, the audience were on their feet, giving Feeney an idea of the public acclaim the album – which was  released a month later, on November 16 – was about to garner.  
The Galway-born singer’s style is as singular as the head-pieces that she sports for her live shows. Rooted in classical music, she embraces pop with a dramatic flourish. She first made her mark on the international music scene in 2006 by winning the Choice Music Prize with her debut album ‘13 songs’ – a loose collection of enchanting, non-formulaic tunes.
For her extraordinary second album ‘pages’, released in  2009, she not only sang, composed and produced all the songs, she also conducted the top-flight full orchestra that performs them – all in one epic six-hour recording session at the Irish Chamber Orchestra Studio in Limerick. Among the bewitching ‘chamber pop’ tracks on this album lay the gem ‘Impossibly Beautiful’ – a song that instantly won over the nation and shot Feeney to her rightful place among the stars.
‘Clocks’ sees Feeney take a new road. The mood and sound are more reminiscent of her rockier debut album. And the themes are deeply personal – close family, generations past and the value of personal roots. “I’m not into the notion of a concept album – you’d have to contrive something, which is not really what I’m into – but I knew I wanted to write songs and make a record about some amazing people in my family tree,” she explains.
Nor is Feeney into the notion of playing it safe and sticking to a proven course. “My job as an artist is to create something that is true, to grow and develop – and the music has to reflect that. I could easily make another album like ‘pages’ but, really, what’s the point?”
Before writing the songs on ‘Clocks’, she visited her family in Galway to ask about Feeney and Murphy elders, both present and departed. It was, she says, a profound experience to hear details about the lives of people only roughly sketched in her consciousness. “You think that your own life is busy and complex, but these people that lived before me felt exactly the same emotions – heartbreak and loss don’t change – whilst living in a less hectic time period. History tells us they had a much harder time – more simple, perhaps, but certainly harder. Once that clicked with me, I felt like I was sitting on time in history – a history very much based in Galway.”
The album was written while Feeney was staying at Ballynahinch Castle and Lough Inagh Cottages, and the vocals were recorded over eight freezing nights at the inspirational Kylemore Abbey Gothic Church.
The songs that emerged include Dear John (“that’s about my grandfather and grandmother, and how they would wait for a moonlit night to go cycling on the road”), Julia (“about my grandmother, as if sung by my grandfather, who once said that he had nothing to sing about after his wife passed on”) and Galway Boy (“about tricky men and staunch women”). Musically it’s a captivating blend of cerebral pop and surprising melodies that reference both the traditional and the contemporary; lyrically it’s charming, witty and touching.
On that night in Westport’s Holy Trinity Church in October, Feeney wore a stunning silver dress topped off with a fabulous red and black head piece that twirled skyward. She confessed towards the end of the show that she had left the hat she was meant to wear in Dublin, and that the one she was wearing was a last-minute stand-in generously supplied by Westport milliner Lina Stein.
A bit like hats, it seems, Ms Feeney can try on any style of music, and pull it off with effortless aplomb.

Julie Feeney’s Linenhall Arts Centre performance at 8pm this Monday, December 10, is part of an innovative national project and tour during which she has scored music for and worked with ten different local choirs, each of which part-accompany her at their local performance venue. The choir appearing with Feeney in the Linenhall is St Joseph’s Secondary School, Castlebar. To book, call 094 9023733.