THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Australian artist, actor, writer, provocateur and musician Kirin J Callinan’s new LP If I Could Sing arrives after a long and winding rollout of singles dating back to 2022, with portions of the work-in-progress album leaked to fans over the course of the last two years.
Callinan first came to prominence as the flamboyant, wiry and wildly original guitarist in the internationally hyped Sydney band Mercy Arms. As a solo artist, Kirin is known largely for his live performances — highly charged, physically daring and every bit as vulnerable and heartfelt as they are hysterical.
As a guitarist and writer, has collaborated with the best of them, from Connan Mockasin to Weyes Blood, Mac Demarco to Mark Ronson, contributing guitar to the latter’s Grammy-winning album Uptown Special (alongside Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker and David Bowie guitarist Carlos Alomar), and most recently working with American pop-sensation Caroline Polachek on her latest album Desire, I Want To Turn Into You.
Kirin is one of only two features (the other being Korn’s Jonathan Davis) on goth metal new guard Kim Dracula’s debut hyper genre-mash-monstrosity A Gradual Decline In Morale; and also co-wrote and performs the majority of songs, along with the only lyrical feature, on Ghanaian-Australian artist Genesis Owusu’s award-winning debut Smiling With No Teeth and this year’s No. 1 album The Struggler.
Kirin has released three uniquely singular studio solo albums to date: The post punk / sophisti-pop, cult Australian classic Embracism (2013), the bombastic and defiantly genre-avoidant, arguably proto-hyperpop, post-pastiche opus Bravado (2017) and the covert concept covers collection Return To Center (2019), which was as much a personal, musical and sentimental statement, a return to his romantic roots. The single Big Enough, a duet with Alex Cameron featuring Australian working-class icon Jimmy Barnes and champion whistler Molly Lewis, went viral in 2017. The video has been viewed over 70 million times and the song has been heard over 1 billion times.
However, playing the fool can come at a cost, especially for an artist as blatantly talented but wildly unpredictable, irreverent and often impenetrable, confusing and sometimes controversial as Kirin. Since 2020, after MCing and performing with Julian Casablancas and The Strokes for their Barclay Center NYC NYE extravaganza, Kirin has since released a string of singles. The poetic balladry of You Are Going To Miss Me (When I Am Gone) (2020) was the beginning of this new, more introspective chapter, followed by the open hearted and reflective jangle pop gem Dumb Enough (2021), the cynical, 10cc-esque power pop of New Music Friday (2021), the dense, tragic and singular …In Absolutes (2022), the impossibly catchy ‘meth-pop’ madness of Young Drunk Driver and the physically stirring Anæmic Adonis (2023) — all surely standing amongst Kirin’s finest, most realised compositions to date.”
