Cursed Murphy Versus the Resistance release their new single ‘This Is Not Your Love Song’ to mark Saint Valentine’s Day on February 14. The tune, co-written and produced with Cillian and Lorcan Byrne from Basciville, mixed by Resistance member Johnny Fox, is an industrial/dance banger that pays homage to the great practitioners of the backhanded love song: Leonard Cohen, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Serge Gainsbourg, Jacques Brel, Nina Simone, Chavela Vargas and Mahalia Jackson. Certain listeners will also note a nod to Public Image Limited in the title.
The single’s macabre cover image is from a painting by band member Tamara Gangnus. The track’s release will be accompanied by a video conceived in collaboration with the Creative Youth Lab, the youth-based think-tank that operates out of Wexford Arts Centre, headed up by Cursed Murphy (writer and performer Peter Murphy) and artist Jeni Roddy. The group, which comprises fledgling Irish and international artists, hatched the video’s concept, mapped out storyboards and designed costume and props. The accompanying behind-the-scenes shots were taken by CYL participant Estelle Mareckova.
‘This Is Not Your Love Song’ is the latest single to be released from Cursed Murphy Versus the Resistance’s second album Republic of the Weird, voted spoken-word album of the year by Hot Press magazine. This eight-piece art-rock Brechtian-punk-poetry-performance ensemble, based in Wexford, have been variously compared to the Velvet Underground, Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Gavin Friday, Whipping Boy and Nick Cave.
“Rock ‘n’ roll for a new reality, the piper at the gates of dusk, a soundtrack for those about to slip under, this second Cursed Murphy Versus The Resistance album takes you down into the Republic Of The Weird that is the inside of Peter Murphy’s head. Roll up, roll up.” – Hot Press
“They come out of the traps all guns blazing on the opening triptych: the quiet, menacing Nick Cave-like snarl of Something Wicked This Way Comes, the burbling kookiness of the title track and the clipped, shady rock ‘n’ roll rollick of Hold That Line, which explodes in a fiery outburst of Nine Inch Nails-style guitars. It’s easy to ascertain Murphy’s literary background; most of these songs are exceedingly visual, with the quiet intensity of The Agony of the Leaves vividly recounting the painful unravelling of a complicated love affair ahead of a Morricone-esque climax.” – Irish Times
“A rich tapestry of instrumentation that brings in cinematic post-rock as a bed for Murphy’s urgent storytelling.” – Nialler 9
“You will have to search long and hard to find anything that approaches the accomplishment of this record. It is spoken word, it is ambience, it is enthralling with a poetic lyricism that makes you pause because that last adjective or phrase you just listened to has a significant place in your own cultural psyche and you can't quite put your finger on it. Is it tribal? No. But it possesses sufficient tribalism to touch the racial subconscious. Can it answer questions? Maybe, or perhaps it will prompt you to look deeper into the received perceptions, secular, transcendent, metaphysical. These 10 songs are simply magnificent. You must listen to them.”
– The Daily Earworm
