GALWAY based American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Peter Broderick surprised his fans with an unannounced digital release of his new album ‘Blackberry’.
Peter Broderick is best known as a member of Danish indie group Efterklang, for his work with the musical archives of Arthur Russell and for his performances with Tim Burgess of Charlatans. Peter has released over 20 solo projects.
His most recent compositions featured at The Richard Harris International Film Festival in the multi-award winning animated film Two Balloons.
The new album is a collection of home recordings described by Peter as “experimental, bedroom folk pop.”
The album features his wife, singer Brigid Mae Power, and his stepson, Seán Power. Now based in Galway, the album is centered around the subject matter of family and friends.
“We’ve moved a lot in the last few years,” Peter told Limerick Post.
“To where both my wife and I are kind of feeling like we’d like to just stay here for a little while.”
“And also just as I get a bit older, you know, like when we’re young you get to be a teenager and you kind of want to get away from your family and establish yourself on your own.”
“I think just getting a bit older and feeling you know that there’s really not much more that’s more important to me than family.”
The album opens with the lines “You can only be as happy as the world that you live in…” delivered in child-like wonder with a melody that could be a nursery rhyme.
“You know, when something like that comes out and then you’re playing it at home and you find the boys enjoying it as well it just feels right. It’s probably not something that would have come about had I not got into a family life and been around young kids again, it’s been great for me as well to reconnect with my own inner child a bit you know.”
The album titled Blackberry is released in an era of our struggle with climate change, with a global pandemic and its resulting lockdown, with all the uncertainty about the future that all this brings.
The album attempts to provide the listener with a lifeline and a way of looking at the world that is hopeful and full of wonder.
“I feel like there’s a bit of a renaissance now, of rediscovering some ancestral life practices, things that people did before agriculture and industrialisation. Maybe some interesting knowledge about how to live in harmony with nature. As I got interested in foraging I kind of got obsessed with the blackberry.
“I just really came to appreciate the blackberry as this kind of character holding on to us from our wild past. We’re more inclined nowadays to buy something from the small farm down the road, you know, and that’s just something that I just feel is so important right now.”
Peter Broderick’s new album ‘Blackberry’ is out now as a digital download via Erased Tapes. Vinyl version available from October 30.
