THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Following the universal acclaim for their two first records, The Murder Capital are back with Blindness, their vividly realised, clear-sightedly ambitious new album. A record that’s momentous and charged with momentum, it’s full of geography — of the mind, and of a Dublin-formed band whose members are now scattered around Ireland, London and Europe — yet bristles with an intense energy.
There’s a wider, richer perspective animating The Murder Capital’s new set of songs, brought on from the diverse insights the five members were bringing to the creative process, differing worldviews arising from their literal new positions in the world. Drummer Diarmuid Brennan was living in Berlin, bass player Gabriel “G” Paschal Blake was in Letterkenny, guitarist Cathal “Pump“ Roper was in Donegal, and guitarist Damien “Irv” Tuit and McGovern were in London. The album prioritizes urgency, energy, freshness — all baked into the songs from their earliest incarnations, recorded in L.A. with the help of Grammy-winning producer John Congleton.
“There’s what’s in front of us, in our immediate field of vision,” explains McGovern. “There are the things we can touch, the love we can feel. Then there’s everything else. Blindness is the warped belief. The behind us. The secluded. Love at a distance. Faith in denial. Distorted patriotism. The fading face of moments in the rear view. Blindness brings it all into focus.”
Blindness was finely wrought in three weeks in the studio. The tracks came together quickly, in intense and fast paced sessions that prioritized urgency, energy and freshness. “He wanted us not to start demo-ing or layering any tracks, just phone-record everything. That way, by the time we got to the studio, no song was suffocated by what it needed to be, it was about what the song could become.” says McGovern.
With the track Words Lost Meaning, The Murder Capital are revealing their most anthemic track to date. “Words Lost Meaning is where love goes to die,” says McGovern. “When the words ‘I love you’ are used without thought, without feeling, even as a way to close a conversation, they become stale and diffused. No words mean more than those three combined.”
