Before and after the release of their stunning debut album When I Have Fears, The Murder Capital had a great 2019, gaining recognition across the UK and Europe as not only writers of atmospheric, densely layered songs which were hard to forget but also as a visceral live act which had the power and chops to back any hype up.
2020 wasn’t a great year for many artists, but it found the quintet locked down together in rural Ireland, a real test for a band which hadn’t been formed out of a natural group of friends, but instead had come together specifically to make and play music. It could’ve been all sorts of things, but it ended up being the alchemical formula that allowed them to create in Gigi’s Recovery that rarest of things; a second album even better than a highly acclaimed first.
From the outset the only definite idea they needed to agree on was that it wouldn’t sound anything like their debut, or as much as that was possible. For their part this meant guitarists Damien Tuit and Cathal Roper invested in synths and a range of FX pedals,whilst singer James McGovern learnt to expand his vocal range both up and down the scales. Over lockdown and beyond, the songs were gradually teased from their cocoons; a final six months spent in London provided the opportunity to give them life.
Gigi’s Recovery is a rarity, where ambition meets a refusal to surrender to the wayward digressions of the creative process. Shifting from mood to mood, the finesse of A Thousand Lives rubs shoulders with the haunting melancholy of The Lie Becomes The Self and We Had To Disappear. The most impressive feat it manages however is to make it’s most accessible moments – the Microdisney-esque Only Good Things and Ethel’s comedown romance dreams – into something so tactile; if this was a book it would be almost impossible to put down. In 2019 The Murder Capital had a great year. It seems 2023 shouldn’t be too bad either.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 
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