Hello Whenyoungens,

I'm writing to you to let you know that we’re releasing a new song called Rubik’s Cube on Thursday. It’s from our album 'Paragon Songs' which is out on April 7th and can be pre ordered here (limited run of vinyl).

This song defines a breakthrough in my understanding of the cycle of my anxiety. The Rubik's Cube represents my mind and its rumination process. As one side of the Rubik's Cube or one issue in my mind is solved some other thought form appears and asks to be deliberated on.

In April we’re touring the U.K. & Ireland. You can get your tickets here. After 10 years of living in the U.K. we are moving back to Ireland in March. It’s something we’ve contemplated doing for a long time and although we're very sad to leave behind places we love and more importantly, people we love so very dearly, we are excited for a new adventure in Ireland.

Lots of love

Aoife x

Hope 2023 is treating you well!

Tomorrow we’re releasing our new song Shame Train.

We wrote this song in 2020. I was deep in songwriting and self development, trying to overcome anxieties and complexes when I began to understand about shame as a traumatic emotion which affects everyone. Whether we’re aware of it or not, we’re made to fit into a mould and if we don’t, we’re shamed. There’s shame of aging, socio-economic status, religion, sex, image, the list is endless. This is the first song we recorded for the album and the theme of self love and respect, evident throughout the tracks, really evolved from this song. 

The video is directed by Luke Ogden with help from many friends. It was filmed in the empty hull of the Arts Barge in Ramsgate Harbour. We got in there just before the ship was to be refurbished as a community arts space. The exposed walls and beams were reminiscent of a freight train on the tracks and the feel of the space really married with the song. We made an energetic performance piece within the dark, rusty space while bobbing to and fro on the tide.

We hope you love it as much as we do.

Don't forget tour tickets are on sale now and only 12 days left to pre-order your vinyl.

Aoife & Andrew

November swooped in with its rainclouds and lamplit afternoons. There’s pleasure to be sought in the darker months; the extra cups of tea, hot water bottles, soups, cosy pub pints, walks outdoors in the crisp air and more indoor living which means more time to watch films and listen to music. Lucky for you, we’re releasing our new single, Unchained, at midnight tonight. It’ll be out on all streaming platforms ready to be added to your winter playlist.

But we’ve also been thinking about the warmer months. We’ve been planning logistics for our UK and Ireland tour in April next year. Tickets are on sale Wednesday 30 November at 10am! AND we’ve also been organising something very special…the release of our second album Paragon Songs on 7th April next year.

With the announcement of our album we’re launching a vinyl pre order campaign with Diggers. This requires a minimum commitment of orders and we are only pressing the amount that has been pre-ordered to reduce waste. So, you have to be in it to win it. This will be live from midday Wednesday, 29 November.

Let's gooooooo,

Andrew & Aoife
xx

Burnt sienna, yellow ochre, orange oxide, burnt umber, indian yellow, cadmium orange, azo yellow green. A painters palette dabbled along the motorway verges. Motorways, a musicians corridor, watching the seasons change as we travel from venue, to studio, to equipment lock up. At this time of year they’re a spectacle of dogwood, hornbeam, hawthorn, beech, ash, birch all turning warm shades before they shed for winter. I’ve just had a Gregg’s vegan sausage roll and coffee, the musicians fuel. Healthy road food of M&S salads is hard to maintain when you want something hot. So Gregg’s it is, with hopes of it having just come from the oven. We’re travelling to London to co-write for an artist, we’ve been doing that a lot lately. It’s very rewarding to get out of the lane that you write in and realise the constraints that you can set for yourself within your own work. Constraints are something that triggered a new way of writing for the music that we have been releasing. I’m sure you’ve noticed it’s a new sound and we hope you like it but you’re not obliged to. Rock and roll, indie, punk, folk are our origins, our obsessions but putting the sounds that we naturally and traditionally created aside and delving into another world of sound was inspiring, motivating and liberating. We have what you could call, 'second album syndrome' and we have it very bad. Contemporary pop was something we'd previously steered clear of but we embraced it for this album, while of course keeping elements of our rock and punk selves; artists like Suicide and Tuxedo Moon inspired us. We explored further experimental sound too, with artists like Klein and Leila Samir inspiring our hybrid drum sounds and rhythms. But for you traditionalists there are still moments of the old Whenyoung you know well. In fact, we think you will recognise your old friends in the song which we will release later this month. Release is such a great word as physically it is SUCH a release to be getting our new music out to you after the roadblock of Covid-influenced music industry business nightmares. Today is a round trip motorway adventure to London for our songwriting work but next week we make the trip again for a secret show. It’s sold out but we have a very special guest list competition for lucky winners. And plenty more announcements to follow this month. Stay tuned.
Aoife.

(Image: From The Motorway by Gail Brodholt)

We very much wanted this to be a conceptual song using the visual imagery of a washer woman cleaning stains out of her clothes as a metaphor for washing ones own pain away. Cleaning is something I find very therapeutic as a process. When I’m anxious or don’t want to overthink, I clean the house. When I was twenty and on a J1 Student Visa in Boston, my friend Suzy and I worked as cleaners at a very swanky hotel. The work was extremely demanding and fast paced but the satisfaction of a clean room and the camaraderie between all of us cleaning women was moving, even life affirming. In more recent times, my friend Sinead gave me a book by Lucia Berlin called 'A Manuel for Cleaning Women' which became my favourite book for its stories of imperfect women, hardworking women, strength and vulnerability. Cleaning stains and blemishes from clothes reflects my desire to clean up my brain's anxiety, rumination and self-criticism. The Magdalene Laundries also come to mind, the treacherous workhouses that unmarried, pregnant women were sent to in Ireland to clean tirelessly for their “sins”. And so, maybe my method of cleaning for relaxation is rooted in misogyny and religion but that’s something I’ll explore another day.

Love,

Aoife.

(Image: The Laundress by Jean-Baptiste Greuze)

Something dies and in a final fleeting moment emits it's last spark of life, the end of the tether.

In the same way, something is born and in the first fleeting moment, somewhere within the nanoseconds of time, is that intial spark of life. It is a linear process, in that nothing ever really ends but gives itself to life anew, becomes reborn.

Even within a life there are infinite metamorphoses. Nothing remains the same, nor can it with all the will in the world. So, we offer you Whenyoung anew, Whenyoung reborn, Whenyoung in perpetuity and Whenyoung as it always was.

Slán go fóill,

Andrew.