GLASGOW-based, Irish singer-songwriter Claire McKay, better known to acoustic pop aficionados as Martha Ffion and whose 2018 LP Sunday Best was packed to the rafters with sparkling and confessional songwriting, all draped in her clear, sweet tones, has announced a new album – her first for the label that gave her first single release, Lost Map.
The album is entitled Nights To Forget, and will be out in the racks on Friday week, August 14th, on digital and vinyl formats.
And she’s celebrating her homecoming to Lost Map – the label based on the Scottish island of Eigg and run by Johnny Lynch, aka The Pictish Trail (exact co-ordinates are happily furnished: 56°54’N, 06°10’W, cartography fans) – by unveiling the title track from this, her second LP, which you can watch below.
In the video we see our unnamed protagonist applying the lippy, ready for the big night out; then’s she’s on the floor, swirling, moving. But alone. The coda of the song gives the darker undertow to that bright guitar pop: “Won’t owe you, won’t owe you, won’t owe you anything,” Claire sings.
“The song is a reflection on my own negative experience of objectification as a woman, beginning from quite a young age, while also thinking about the wider movements happening,” she explained.
“This was the one that first got me experimenting with [music composition software] Garageband and playing around with a more contemporary pop sound.”
The album promises a departure from her quieter, confessional first into an embrace of finely honed pop, the better to pierce our hearts with tales of loss, letting go, looking forward and the futility of nostalgia; pondering everything from politics, feminism and depression to David Attenborough, while also tipping a musical hat to the glamorous intelligence of St Vincent and Roisin Murphy.
Martha Ffion’s Nights To Forget will be released by Lost Map Records on August 14th, and includes a rather-yummy looking pale blue vinyl edition in a limited pressing as well as a CD issue with obi strip. Order yours at the Lost Map shop, here.
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