Derry “radical alt-pop” duo BEAUTY SLEEP announce their signing to Alcopop! Records with dynamic new single ‘Radical Happiness’, taken from their upcoming highly-anticipated second album, The Whole Damn Cake.
For those yet to be introduced to Beauty Sleep’s particular larger-than-life brand, the Derry duo serve up a maximalist blend of bewitching synth-pop and guitar-driven indie rock that’s sure to set your heart racing. Their lavish soundscapes and dizzying songwriting have drawn comparisons to New Order, St Vincent and Japanese Breakfast, so far achieving over a million streams and performing at festivals including SXSW, Electric Picnic and Other Voices.
To celebrate the news of their second album, the pair, comprising producer/songwriters Cheylene Murphy and Ryan McGroarty, are sharing lead single ‘Radical Happiness’, the intended theme song of the album, whose title was cemented before the band had even written any of the songs for the record. Murphy painted the words ‘Radical Happiness’ on a canvas at the start of 2020, and the couple decided it would be the guiding mantra for everything in their lives that followed.
“We wanted to embrace Radical Happiness for our own lives, but we were so far away from that feeling,” says McGroarty, “Our mental health was so low and we were such people pleasers to a fault that prioritising our emotions and desires felt radical. So we embarked on figuring out how to find Radical Happiness by living it—we did all the things we thought we weren’t good enough for, things we thought we would do ‘when we were successful,’ or ‘when we had more money,’ or when the perfect conditions were just so…”
Cue a lot of therapy, finally learning how to cook, moving their bodies more, and finding strength in the gym, routines, and journaling; learning about themselves and the way their brains and bodies worked. They bought tickets to see their favourite artists like St. Vincent, HAIM, and Villagers. They went to Primavera Festival with their friends and danced under the stars. They went to vocal lessons, and trad sessions, and up-skilled in production and engineering and songwriting: “We spent time with friends, celebrated them, and adventured with them,” explains McGroarty. “We went on holidays, which we never let ourselves do before. We did a Malin to Mizen road trip (top of Ireland to the bottom of Ireland) and went to New York for 10 days and went to a show every night. We made a home together, and we got married.”
“We worked and saved up to do all of these things over time. And we wrote about it as we went—that is this album. It totally transformed our lives, it was an insane journey. We realised as we did it that radical happiness for us meant fighting for your voice and the life you want. Standing up for yourself and embracing all parts of yourself.”
The two partners in crime released their mighty debut album Be Kind in 2019, deservedly shortlisted for Best Album at the Northern Irish Music Prize, with standalone 2024 singles ‘BIG + BAD’ and ‘Big Sky’ since igniting a surge of new fandom for the band, as excitement for the new album builds to fever pitch.
Recorded in their own custom-built studio during the daytime with coffees, focus, energy and time—”rather than trying to record 3 songs between 8pm and 5am when we could access the studio for free, which is what we did with the first album”— The Whole Damn Cake is a triumph of maximalism in every which way. As official editorial playlist support from Spotify’s Discover Weekly, New Music Friday, Pop Hits, and more continues to build with each release, the next 12 months are sure to see Beauty Sleep continue on their skyrocketing trajectory.
Further live dates and details of the album will be announced over the coming months.
Live Dates:
20th November – Belfast – The Empire
Cover Art by Alice Cinnamond