Ciaran Lavery - ‘Releasing a new album is a bit of an out-of-body experience’

AGHAGALLON-born musician Ciaran Lavery is gearing up for the release of his fifth album, Light Entertainment, this week with a special audio-visual live show at this year’s Belfast Festival.

Thursday evening’s performance at the Lyric theatre promises “an immersive live music experience” with what’s billed as a “unique theatrical experiment”, which Lavery will also be taking on the road to London and Amsterdam following the release of the new record this Friday.

The arrival of Light Entertainment marks the end of a long campaign of buzz-building single releases, with five of its best tracks having already been offered up to the public thus far.

Anyone who has heard these singles - from the slinky, soulful late-night synthpop of Honeybun and the urgent ‘don’t give up hope’ anthem of The World Will Put Its Arms Around You, to moody album-opening moment Oh My God (No, Your God), soothing, groovy beats ’n’ woodwind break-up number Ctrl+Alt+Del and the uber-catchy ‘can’t cope, won’t cope’ vibes of current release Everything Considered - will be dying to hear the rest of this hip-hop production informed album, which carries Lavery yet further away from the ‘sad man with guitar’ singer-songwriter stereotype he successfully kicked hard against with his previous album ,Plz Stay, bb, in 2020.

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“Yeah, the campaign’s been quite long, which then kind of leads me to this point where there’s relief that’s also tangled up in excitement,” says east Belfast-based Lavery of how he’s feeling about finally getting Light Entertainment out into the world.

“There’s probably some nerves in there in terms of how people are going to respond to it, but generally, I can’t control that, and so I just try to remind myself to enjoy the process.

“It’s nice having having the likes of the show at the Lyric and the London and Amsterdam shows to sort of celebrate it, as it were. I’m really terrible at marking occasions: I used to hide from my birthdays, and I would have hid from all my previous releases.

“I find it all really terrible. Maybe it’s just a thing from being from here where we find it very difficult to take any sort of plaudits.

“What I try to do is enjoy the moment when [my songs] are released and and if people engage with them, then that’s incredible. And again, if it’s not their cup of tea, that’s also great as well.”

Along with the good reviews that will surely be piling up from Friday onwards, Lavery will once again get to enjoy the excitement of seeing one of his own creations nestled in the racks of all good record shops.

If people engage with my music, then that’s incredible. And again, if it’s not their cup of tea, that’s also great as well

—  Ciaran Lavery

“It’s fairly surreal in terms of being able to see the actual physical product there, sitting among other artists that I would look up to and also would sort of found as really early references in my career,” explains the Co Antrim man.

“It can be quite an odd experience. It almost feels almost out-of-body at times, because it’s this presentation of a piece of work that exists In so many forms in my mind.

“When I look back on certain songs or even look at the whole collection, I get drawn back to little tidbits of being in the studio or even sitting somewhere, writing the initial ideas and things like that. It’s made up of so many different memories and little points of contact.”

Lavery has described Light Entertainment as his “apocalypse record”, reflecting the external anxiety of the uncertain times in which we are living as much as his own inner turmoils - along with the constant ‘conversation’ that exists between media-driven/fuelled fear and more existential concerns.

As mentioned, on Thursday night, the audience at the Lyric will be invited to become part of a unique show that the ‘don’t call him a singer-songwriter’ conceived as part of a broader Light Entertainment ‘experience’, along with a surreal short movie created with the help of directors Shaun Doogan and Ciarán McCann which features his fellow Irish crooner, Daniel O’Donnell (no, really).

“I wanted to be quite ambitious with the album in terms of how it was going to be presented,” Lavery tells me.

“There was the short film, and I wanted the live show then to be another kind of facet of that, where I looked at it more like almost musical theatre presentation rather than it just being a gang of musicians up there playing the whole thing out live.

“I had taken these steps from the beginning to try to create something that, I guess, felt like an advancement from the last record. As part of that process, it felt like I needed to push a boundary in terms of live and push a boundary in terms of the content created around it.”

But will wee Daniel make a cameo at the Lyric? You’ll have to tune-in and turn up in person to find out.

Ciaran Lavery: Light Entertainment, Thursday November 14, Lyric theatre, Belfast. Tickets and full Belfast Festival programme available via belfastinternationalfestival.com. Light Entertainment is released on November 15 via Nettwerk.