Lucy Foley

Lucy Foley's first album, recorded in New York and Co Clare and inspired by the time she spent in Denmark, is a good record to return with, after my long absence. Lucy Foley is offbeat, edgy and refreshing.

There's a lot to like about Lucy Foley. She doesn't seem to fit neatly into any genre, the whole album seems interwoven into a tapestry, and she manages to maintain her rhotic Irish accent. Her laid-back style reminds me of Susie Wilkins, a London-based artist whose music I lived on for a few weeks after I saw her supporting Joe Jackson.

It seems to me that this is one album that is best enjoyed as a whole, but especially notable within it are “It's a Tangle”, a catchy and surprisingly frank opening, and “Mister Bogeyman”, the sixth of seven tracks, a dark but urgent jazz-folk cross. - Cluas.com

Lucy Foley’s debut album, Copenhagen conjures uncanny worlds from which spring poetry, magic realism and dreams that won’t leave the room with “a purity and heartfelt clarity”
Chicago Sun-Times

The songs on Copenhagen have a dark fairy tale mood. I wrote these songs while living in Copenhagen a few years ago, they were born in the cold. Cycling past the grave of Hans Christian Andersen every day inspired me to write an album in which people sit on dungheaps and gaze, yearn and fall apart. It’s also really poppy.

I recorded the album in Brooklyn over the last couple of years, travelling over and back from Ireland, working intensely with Ross Bonadonna at Wombat Recording Company. I’ll be playing my first gig with my new band in New York in January, and I’m really looking forward to that.

My music is electro-acoustic pop with a gypsy flavour: hints of bossa nova, klezmer, electronica, with elaborate, layered vocals in some songs, soaring howls in others. The instrumentation on this record includes classical and electric guitars, piano, Rhodes, synths, bass, saxophones, clarinets, glockenspiel, drums, percussion, bells, pots and pans.

I love using unlikely images of nature in unusual contexts, this album’s imagery is sometimes savage, set in a sensuous, melodic musical environment. I like contrasts. A lot of the songs on Copenhagen are on the theme of desire and people who seem to keep dancing around each other but can’t figure out how to get closer.

Sometimes it’s a question of getting a glimpse of an intimate moment in a life, when no one else is looking.

Copenhagen has been played on BBC Radio (Across the Line), WFMU (New York) and WCEV (Chicago).

“… wonderful… Her singing has a purity and heartfelt clarity”
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

“Stunning. We love her Irish poetic songwriting style and her gorgeous voice…”
Bitches on a Budget

You can listen to Copenhagen streaming on music.lucyfoley.com. It is also available on iTunes.

Lucy Foley performs with her band in Pianos, on New York City’s Lower East Side on January 21st, 2011

Check out the player on the sidebar for the single ‘Kiss You Free’ - The Mutation Culture Magazine

Recently we heard Lucy Foley sing for the first time. It was stunning. We love her Irish poetic songwriting style. Her gorgeous voice evokes the Sirens from Ulysses or stories kept secret long ago and never told. We reached out to her to ask questions about what it was like to take big risks, to have fear and to struggle in pursuit of her passions. Truth be told, we knew we liked her music, but when she wrote back quoting Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen the deal was sealed.

On being an artist:

“I've always been a writer. I apparently wrote my ?rst story some time after the age of three, and I have a distinct memory of writing it. The story was called Fluffy Toes, and it's still buried in a box in my parents' attic somewhere. My father is a musician and composer.

The beauty of writing songs is the irrationality of it. It's an uncanny process. I get a hint of something, a melody fragment or a lyric, and I'm chasing a rabbit down a hole as fast as I can go. These melodies seem to come from a sense of fun, a deeply curious sense of play. And I think you can hear that in my songs, this slightly wild sense of play in the melodies of my songs, while the lyrics are often ?lled with yearning and reckoning.”

On her journey:

“When I was living in Copenhagen I performed on the pedestrianised streets and sometimes at festivals, singing, playing guitar and telling stories. I translated Elvis Presley's Hound Dog into Danish mostly for my own amusement, and also to see if I could get any humour out of the sombre, rush hour Danes. It was an education, mostly in getting over myself. You really can't be precious about yourself when you're standing and singing to waves of indifferent people, especially when there's a huge crowd down the street staring at the guy with a boombox and a keen juggling ability. I was digging into a kind of dry truth-telling in my performances, beneath any attempt at crowd pleasing, digging into my own heart for what I had to say from there. I never got a huge crowd but I always got somebody interested. And when they were interested they were really interested.

Kids were always interested. Kids can be the toughest crowd, they're so intense. I'm looking forward to going out on tour, taking a band out on the road, getting out of the studio and away from my laptop for a while. I've been working all year on making this album and now, promoting it. I really want to sing again for people. I'm hungry for that again. I'm excited about performing in New York before the end of the year.”

How she survived:

“I've earned a living in lots of different ways. I've worked in a huge variety of jobs: everything from book reviewer, theatre stage manager, I bathed old Danish ladies when I lived in Copenhagen, I taught poetry, sang for people who paid me to sing. Throughout all of it I've been writing and singing and taking photographs.

The kind of life I've lived has given me a huge freedom in exploring my art and life in informal ways, which I have subsequently drawn back into my work. I would not say that I am fearless. Of course I worry, like everybody does. You do need a kind of faith, though. I don't mean a religious faith. I mean the kind of faith Lou Reed is talking about when he said, ?you need a busload of faith to get by'. It's hard, working in obscurity. You don't always have the faith you need to get by, and so you need courage, and you don't always have that either. And I think most people are trying to learn about that.”

What would she do again:

“What would I do again? Always pack some good quality teabags. Not do again? Not wait for an hour on that sweaty hot August subway platform for the A train while ?ve C trains went past (going the same direction). In other words, try to take advantage of what life offers you in whatever moment you're in, don't hold out for your ideal situation. Like the Leonard Cohen song, “Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering. There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in”. I love that poem, it has such power, such kindness.”

On her music:

“My music is electro-acoustic pop with a gypsy ?avour: hints of bossa nova, klezmer, dark fairytales, lush, layered vocals in some songs, soaring howls in others. A lot of the songs on Copenhagen are on the theme of desire and people who seem to keep dancing around each other but can't ?gure out how to get closer.

I wrote Kiss You Free (the ?rst single from the album) beginning with the image of ?a fresh bunch of longings on your table'. I loved that idea, a bunch of longings sitting in a bowl like a bunch of grapes, and being offered them by the object of my desire, and taking them home with me, until I called to his house again. I ?nd that hilarious in a quiet, dark sort of way. Often an image will be at the heart of a song, and then as I write the song, the story elaborates, and becomes almost cinematic, very pictorial.

It's A Tangle is a lot like that too, these images of people playing with each other and running into a tangle of emotions, feeling the danger of going further, of getting burned. I love using unlikely images of nature in unusual contexts. My songs and my photographs are populated by the same people, people who look like they are living in old fairytales but they are real, complicated, alive… Sometimes it's a question of getting a glimpse of anintimate moment in somebody else's life, when no one else is looking.

Mister Bogeyman and Garden of Second Guesses are about trying to summon up the energy to shake off lethargy or whatever it is that keeps you from moving toward a place where you can thrive in your life. I was really inspired by Clarissa Pinkola Estes' book, Women Who Run With The Wolves a couple of years ago. It's a great blend of earthy common sense with the mythical, the archetypal realms.”

Listen to Lucy’s new album Copenhagen and let us know what you think. - Bitches on a Budget

Do you know the wonderful Lucy Foley?

A friend, Larry Kolb, sent me this photograph, and it haunted me. I really, really wanted to know what it was about. Now I know. See below.

[ Photograph taken by Lucy Foley ]

It is a photograph by a singer and photographer named Lucy Foley, from Dublin and New York. It accompanies her new album, "Copenhagen," released this month. A friend of hers saw it when I posted it on Facebook, and Lucy wrote me.

I visited her web site, and was able to listen to her singing, which has a purity and heartfelt clarity. Seven of her songs are posted there.

I also found these two videos online, which give you a sense of her special sensibility:

[ Embedded videos by Lucy Foley ] - Chicago Sun-Times