Junior Brother – unveils new single ‘A Lot of Love’

Following the acclaimed releases of Take Guilt, Small Violence, and Welcome to My Mountain, Junior Brother returns with his fourth single, A Lot of Love – a striking glimpse into his forthcoming album The End. Thismarks the final single ahead of the albums arrival on September 5th via Strap Originals, the label forged with love by Pete Doherty of The Libertines.

Channeling the ancient and eerie through a modern lens, Junior Brother crafts a brand of Irish folk that is idiosyncratic, challenging, and richly lyrical. A Lot of Love carries the hallmarks of Junior Brother’s distinctive style – blending elements of Irish traditional music with raw, expressive songwriting. The track feels like a gallop through light and shadow – a testament to the album’s overarching themes of madness, mythology, and meaning.

“‘A Lot Of Love’ is a response to life’s tight spots, when fighting hate with love gets you into a dark corner,” says Junior Brother. “Some of us keep fighting with love anyway, because, if nothing else, it feels good to spread, and sometimes, it wins.”

He continues: “Bursting up out of hatred, speeding toward love and joy, is a feeling there for anyone who hops up and runs at it. However, we must also accept in this pursuit that hate’s hand still paws from time-to-time at our windows. The to-and-fro of this balance is a friction which hopefully is reflected in the song’s exuberance and fractured melodic coda.”

The official video, directed by longtime collaborator Ellius Grace brings this racing journey to life through a single continuous take. “The whole video was done in one take. We got it all, amazingly, on the first run” says Junior Brother. “We however, for safety’s sake, stretched to take four, and kept this last go as our winner.”

Set in a dark restaurant, the video follows a main character determined to meet what comes at him with pure love. He is confronted by a ceaseless cavalcade of characters, each one representing an element of life which can be tough to fall in love with – “an awkward first date; a critical voice from home; the lens of public exposure; the daunting gaze of the Irish Trad Community; too much food; too much wine.”

The End is a deeply instinctive yet carefully considered response to the chaos of modern life, with Junior Brother weaving the recent years of upheaval into the eerie folklore of Fairy Forts. These ring-shaped earth mounds, scattered across the Irish countryside, are known to possess an energy that can bewilder, curse, or even lead the unwary astray. Stepping into one is to risk losing yourself—both physically and spiritually. To Junior Brother, this ancient folklore mirrors the disorienting reality of today’s world.

“The sound of the album is supposed to take the organic instruments of Irish traditional music and lift them somewhere else,” Junior Brother explains, “like the otherworldly Irish music sometimes heard from Fairy Forts at twilight on country roads, impossible to recreate upon hearing.”The End captures this essence, blending the raw textures of traditional Irish music with spectral, unearthly elements.

Much of the album’s inspiration was drawn from UCD’s Folklore Collection on duchas.ie, “I delved into the manuscripts—endless eyewitness accounts of Fairy Forts being stepped into and the land altering, the familiar mutating,” Junior Brother shares. “Farmers, teachers, the sober, the smart—all losing their way home one way or the other.” In these uncanny tales of displacement and confusion, he found striking parallels to the instability and distortion of contemporary life.

Thematically, The End explores forces that work against nature (New Road, Welcome to My Mountain), the rise of the far-right (Small Violence, Today My Uncle Told Me), and confrontations with mortality (Old Bell, Start Digging). Through the lens of rural Irish folklore, the album reflects the bewildering madness of the present moment.

“The title The End represents the moment after being led astray, when the grip of madness releases you and you suddenly see your way home,” says Junior Brother. “It may reflect the doom of a world gone mad, but it also represents the end of darkness, and the start of a new road.”

Album pre-order: https://orcd.co/jbtheend