“I’ve always thought that music can send messages that can’t be sent any other way.”
How do you make a record about relationships? Relationships of all kinds? Romantic, familial, and the relationship one has to the self? It all has to start with honesty. Strip everything away – every expectation, semblance of pressure, any concept of the end result. This is the self-titled debut album by MayKay released on GrainStore Records. It’s a record that has sat in its own liminal gestation, completed four years ago, and only now urging its way towards being shared, the time has come for others to hear it. And hear it they will. Preceded by her debut solo single Busted, this nine-track record is a charm bracelet of genres, crossing country, pop, new wave, and more. Writing quietly in what was her father’s grain store of his farm in Kildare, and still processing the grief of his death, and unpicking complications of other relationships in her life, the songs flowed quickly, a rapid expression of the travails of relationships building, falling apart, and maintaining. Unburdened by expectations, and free to upturn them, a new musical integrity emerged.
To celebrate the launch of the album MayKay will be performing instore in Dublin, Limerick and Cork this October, with a live show in Whelans in Dublin on 18th December.
MayKay burst onto the Irish and international music scene with her landmark band Fight Light Apes and subsequently brought her ferocious presence and voice to Le Galaxie. A renowned collaborator, working with Jerry Fish, Kormac, Elaine Mai, Jack O’Rourke, Ailbhe Reddy and more, this latest chapter in her creative life will surprise and enrapture listeners. Utterly unexpected, tender, deeply personal, and grounded in the pursuit of honesty, this is as much a new beginning as it is the culmination of all that has gone before. Now, as a solo artist, MayKay has cracked open a new chapter in her creative progression. How wonderful for the listener, that they get to see, hear, and feel these revelations.