Olan Monk - Songs For Nothing Olan Monk

Songs for Nothing was written upon Olan Monk’s return to the west coast of Ireland. The album is imbued with the influence of sean-nós singing, Irish language songs in the “old style” that often proclaim tales of love, loss and landscape; and also heavily indebted to the late Sinéad O’Connor’s confessional songwriting.

Reconstructing these influences through their unique perspective has resulted in a fragmentary album veering between co laged pop, machinic rock and slow airs, “dedicated to Conamara and all who have called it home”.

The western, Atlantic-facing edge of Ireland has a particular feeling and energy, one that permeates the release: the granite pulsates, the ocean and sky reflect intensities, seaweed rots on shingle shores, plants bloom, ancient trees come up for air from the drowned forest in Galway Bay, the sun splinters through the low clouds. The album’s title suggests a one-way transaction, an offering to the listener expecting nothing in return, but also a devotion to nothingness; and the realm of infinite possibility that springs from its we l: singing out into a sparse landscape, which once was home to long-lost forests and communities.

A departure from Olan Monk’s previous, more electronic work, the instrumental arrangements of Songs for Nothing delve deeper into the "descriptor (coined by Irish writer Eoin Murray, Anois Ós Ard), with elements of shoegaze, witch house, cloud rap and Irish traditional music bleeding through the wals of the studio. 

Songs for Nothing, in melding influences old and new feels at times absurd, but never ironic; it is from the heart, and its respect for song traditions and dedication to process are felt in two arrangements of older songs embracing this new trajectory: “Fate (Reprise)” is an earlier recording reimagined as a doomer ballad with Maria Somerville singing in a duet, and “Amhrán Mhaínse” is a Conamara anthem slowed down as a duo of accordion performed by Peadar Tom Mercier accompanied by heavy guitar drones.

Folding in other Irish neo-traditional expressionists and experimentalists, the record also features Michael Speers, Dylan Kerr, Aindriú De Buitléir, Risteárd O'hAodha and Róisín Berkeley. The addition of the tin whistle across the album, fu l of intention, captures the uncomfortable relationship between our love as a people for our traditions with a long-standing alienation from our own language and culture. Songs For Nothing rejects today’s disconnect with this heritage; they ca l for us to collectively work our way back out of this void.