"Something that you feel will find its own form"

Size2Shoes

Celtic Tiger Ireland was beset by many social epidemics – fake tan, the upturned rugby collar, the wretched Ugg boot – but one of its most insidious creatures was the earnest singer-songwriter. Concert-goers were invited to step away from all the Bacchanalian commotion and drunken optimism rattling up and down the country and follow the unshaven, guitar-clutching troubadour down the slightly-whiffy corridors of his dark nights, mornings, mid-mornings, afternoons and evenings of the soul. We flocked to open mic nights as if they were confessionals, believing at some level that a regular dose of heartbreak, loneliness and misery would sate our Catholic desires for absolution from the raucousness of moneyed living. At a time of unprecedented plenty, we found ourselves unable to resist the allures of these new, sad, plaintive voices. The excitement of those halcyon years triggered some subconscious impulse sending us scattering for its opposite: the soundtrack of the boom was to be one of doom, gloom and the melancholic tune.