New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Belfast-Bristol visionary post-popsters Otherish are to release a fearless, sparkling, tender, philosophical first album Otherish. Drawn from a gifted, Radiohead-influencing collective of songwriters and multi-instrumentalists, Otherish introduce the music-listening world to their songs of Life, Death, Humanity, Beauty, and Glorious Fallibility. Vulnerability and audacity are hallmarks and signatures of these songs. Big songs, but ever with a light touch, with signature Otherish subtlety: chiming guitars, rippling drums, voices in sweet harmony. A choir of top English choristers appear on most songs, along with the voices of O'Cathain, O'Brollochain, Claridge and O'Neill.
About the lead single: The limpid Atlantic lightscapes of Donegal are homaged in Pyramids of Tir Chonaill. Two and half minutes in a blissful, magical place. Mountains that look like pyramids can be found all over the British Isles; O'Cathain grew up with the awe-inspiring, majestic grandeur of Errigal in the northwest of Ireland.
Pyramids of Tir Chonaill, is the lead single to Otherish's psycholigocial masterpiece, a track that has a creative blend from 60's Pink Floyd, The Beatles' eerie Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, to most recently 'JARV IS'. A track that isn't afraid to be adventurous, and a rebellious twist on the predictable.
About the album:
The epic "For Everyone'' yearns for childhood innocence "before mobile phones and a world of slaves". "Uladh's Dying", a soaring choral elegy, a metaphor, a lament, some terrifying hallucination made beautiful. "
Ghosts" tunes into the mystic and tells a story of 'in the dark one night as I walked alone'. The frankly uncategorisable "Your Tunnel" interviews the dying soul, in the moments of its passing.
Tenderness, dreamtime, searching, on sweet tunes like "The Morning Sun", "Dreamers, and Dawn, What Planet?" The glorious harmony call-and-answer pop of "Catch a Grip" bursts with vulnerable energy. "Bollards, Oh Well" bubbles out some absurdly catchy language-loving serious fun.
The groovy agnostic croon-prayer of "Who Knows?" Then comes "Penguins" with its funny-wicked chorus of "human beings being human being penguins". The album ends with "Irish Blessings" in under two minutes, Otherish manage a universe of musical and cultural influence to say farewell for now, and good luck
About Otherish:
Otherish has a core of four, an ancient quorum. Three of the group, brothers Mark and Paul Bradley, and neighbour Francis Kane, were born in the same house in Belfast. Winchester-raised song sorcerer
George Claridge completes the quorum. 2021 marks over 30 years of partnership, on and off, between these 4 wilful and gentle people. Belfast and Winchester bred, but made in Bristol. Otherish first appeared in public as the session musicians and producers of 'Superheroes', the now-classic Banksy-supported lockdown single by The New Space Finders. On the group's debut album, the core is augmented by other musical seers from Belfast and Bristol.
The huge backstory of Otherish's musical hinterland was a good 10-to-20 years ahead of its time (in 1997 me was cited by
Radiohead as a key artistic influence: a typically posthumous accolade even then). Perhaps now, in the third decade of the 21st century, Otherish's musical mind may be received by audiences that are ready for it, as many were self-evidently not when the hook-laden, deceptively complex-yet-simple songs of me were sent out in the early '90s.
Otherish's sound is a new intercultural axis. Experience, yes: whisper it, age gifts powers to artists, and 2021 must be the least awkward year in pop music history for "mature" artists to gestate and publish their hard-won truths. The mission: no sanctimony, but a shard of truth, and unflinching eyes, on this passing show. Album available to purchase on Bandcamp:
https://otherish1.bandcamp.com/music
