Renowned Irish singer-songwriter Gemma Hayes has shared details of her long-awaited sixth album Blind Faith, set for release on 27th September through Townsend Music via Absolute Label Services on LP, CD and digital formats. The Tipperary musician’s first new album since 2014’s Bones + Longing is accompanied by a UK and Ireland headline tour.
Produced by Hayes with Karl Odlum, David Odlum & Brian Casey, Blind Faith features Lisa Hannigan on backing vocals on ‘Eye For An Eye’ and ‘Feed The Flames’, which she also co-wrote, while Paul Noonan duets with Gemma on ‘Another Love’.
Having taken the time and space she needed to figure out what she wants to tell the world, Hayes has plenty to say, with Blind Faith diving into themes of longing, empowerment, freedom and repression. While Hayes’ songwriting is as personal as ever, its abstract nature allows the listener to sink into each song, immersed by tender guitar picking, eerie synths and swooning cello. It’s made all the more remarkable given this is Hayes’ first album in a decade.
“I stopped writing for a long time, for many reasons, one of which was simply that I lost the urge to write,” she explains. Raising two young children, her energy was going elsewhere. “I found the first few years of motherhood really hard, so the idea that I could just get up on stage deserted me for a while. I lost my confidence, and I found myself not having a connection to music in any way. I went from talking about music every day, living and breathing music, to… I could go a month without music.”
BLIND FAITH
Track listing
01 Eye For An Eye
02 Central Hotel
03 Another Love (feat. Paul Noonan)
04 Hardwired
05 Feed The Flames
06 High and Low
07 The Break Didn’t Heal Right
08 Can’t Kill A Hunger (feat. Ann Scott)
09 Return Of The Daughters
Then came the events of 2020, and a sudden relocation from London to West Cork. “We were living in a ground floor flat in Battersea, with just a patio and a brick wall, and then Covid hit, so we came back to Ireland. We literally upped-sticks and headed to Baltimore, West Cork, where my husband’s family had a little holiday house on the coast. And when we got there, I discovered it had a music room with a piano. So all of a sudden I found myself in this house, in the music room.”
“Songs began to murmur, distil and rise up in my mind,” continues Gemma. “I would lock myself in the room, usually late at night when the world was asleep. I knew I needed to capture them before they left me. Some are about a weird restless longing that’s very hard to describe in words, some are about grief not just of loved ones but of places and moments past. Some are simply for the joy of playing and singing.”
This is precisely what Hayes expresses on Blind Faith, those moments of pure exhilaration, despair, heartache or joy. She loses herself in the music, turns everything inside out, or else offers up moments of quiet and reflection. It is an extraordinary, career-defining work from one of Ireland’s most gifted and unique artists.
“The longer I’m on this planet, the more I feel as though death, birth and living mean things get pared down to what really matters,” concludes Gemma. “Some people figure that out years earlier, but it’s taken me this journey to get here. To realise what’s important.”
GEMMA HAYES ‘BLIND FAITH’ UK & IRELAND TOUR
Tickets available from gemmahayes.com
Fri 13 Sept KERRY Gleneagle INEC Arena
Wed 25 Sept LIVERPOOL Philharmonic Music Room
Thu 26 Sept BRISTOL Strange Brew
Sat 28 Sept LONDON Union Chapel
Sun 29 Sept LEEDS Old Woollen
+ More Dates TBA