Paul Noonan and Brian Crosby – musicians whose creative paths first intertwined during their school days – have reunited under a new name: Pilgrims. Following their single Bright & Bold, the duo now share a new track, ‘Who’s Kissing Who’, ahead of the release of their debut album Wintering on 30 January 2026.
The album release coincides with a national tour of 15 intimate venues with pianos, where Pilgrims will perform songs from Wintering alongside selected material from the early Bell X1 catalogue.
Speaking about the new single, Paul Noonan says: “This was the first of the instrumentals that Brian played when we were showing-and-telling and follows a harmonic journey that I’d never come up with. So as with many of the tunes, it was a new and exciting kind of rich landscape to work the singing into. I came across a moving and tender photograph of a couple in 1970’s Dublin, and the song is an imagining of their story – a once fierce and visceral love that has soured in old age.”
Noonan and Crosby first formed Juniper (with Damien Rice) before becoming founding members of Irish indie band Bell X1. In the years since, both have developed singular careers: Noonan through Bell X1 and other projects Printer Clips and HousePlants (with electronic producer Daithí), and Crosby via acclaimed film and television scores and his solo piano and ambient work. Pilgrims marks their first creative collaboration in 16 years.
Reflecting on coming full circle, Noonan adds:
“Since reconnecting on My Bones a Scaffold last year, we’ve been working on a bunch of songs that sprung from new instrumental pieces by Brian, or songs that I had sketches for. Colouring them in together. Coming from a more classical or cinematic well, Brian takes the kinds of harmonic journeys that I just don’t, and the songs are all the richer for it.
We did some shows together last April and played some of these new things. It was there that Pilgrims was formed, in its purist form just piano and vocal. Not torch songs as such, but somewhat similar in their yearning, theatrical sentimentality.
In those small beautiful rooms, it took actually playing the songs for people, feeling that connection and inhabiting the characters for it to feel like it had its own heart and lungs.
The recordings are a little more embellished, though often we would add things and take them away – feeling that we knew what this thing isn’t, happy to be a little fuzzy on what it is.”
TOUR DATES:
Jan 23rd Courthouse Arts Centre, Tinahely, Wicklow
Jan 29th Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire
Jan 30: Ballincollig Winter Music Festival, Cork
Feb 1: All We Have Are Days, Limerick
Feb 5th Riverbank Arts Centre, Kildare
Feb 6th Whale Theatre, Greystones, Wicklow
Feb 7th The Social, Gaoth Dobhair, Co. Donegal
Feb 8th Hawk’s Well Theatre, Sligo
Feb 12th Spirit Store, Dundalk
Feb 14th Solstice Arts Centre, Navan
Feb 15th Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny
Feb 19th Connolly’s of Leap, West Cork
Feb 20th Live at St. Luke’s, Cork
Feb 21st Green Acres, Wexford
Mar 1st Róisín Dubh, Galway
Tickets www.pilgrims.music
DEBUT ALBUM ‘WINTERING’ COMING 30 JANUARY 2026
Pre-order on Bandcamp: https://pilgrimsireland.bandcamp.com/album/wintering
Photo credit: Rich Gilligan