The Murder Capital’s 3rd Album: Blindness

Thomas Taylor Shenton on 27 February 2025

The Dublin boys from The Murder Capital are back with their third studio album, Blindness, released
on February 21st.

Lead singer James McCovern said back in September, “Blindness is the warped belief. The behind
us… The fading face of moments in the rear view. Blindness brings it all into focus”. It’s clear that the
band wanted to portray an aspect of self-reflection and introspection in this record, and they do this
brilliantly in a collection of tunes full of momentum and intense energy, concocted into a blizzarding
storm of an album.

The album opens with a song you can simply drop your needle into, blasting noise through your
speakers instantly. Moonshot has you hooked and bouncing before you can even put your headphones
on. It is aggressive but fresh and introduces intently that anxious notion that the album holds as a
whole. The band’s second single release, Words Lost Meaning comes next, opposingly slower-paced than its
predecessor Moonshot, but certainly doesn’t lack that heavy grit and grunge, matched by McGovern’s
raspy vocals. The single seems to portray an argument of sorts brewing, and that raw grainy sound in
the instrumentals represents that. Following this is the album’s first single, Can’t Pretend to Know. A
song I’ve so gladly reviewed in the past and one I never get tired of listening to. Its pulsing drums
fighting with the insistent whining guitar make up for an intense mix but a welcome one. James
McGovern himself even superbly described the single as a “whip of a tune”.

Along with the familiar sounding post-punk songs in the album, the band introduce some more
laid-back tunes to help us calm ourselves down after getting caught in the storm, such as A Distant
Life, Swallow and Trailing A Wing. To me it’s as if the clouds part and the sun shines through upon
first listen of these songs, which gives the record as a whole a nice range of sound; stretching from
such shown in the bands’ debut album When I Have Fears (2019), to splashes of folk twang, evident
in Swallow. The political piece, Love of Country, focuses on the dark side of patriotism and the damage it can
cause. The band touch on the genocide of the Palestinian people both in their songwriting here and
frequently in interviews and on social media, and have decided to release a limited 7” record of the
song and all profits made from its sale will be donated to the Medical Aid for Palestinians Charity.

My personal favourite tune on the record has to be That Feeling. Its intro holds a haunting, almost
dystopian impression, and slowly crawls into an anxious array of sound, before building up a hopeful
release of relief, with an excellent punch of guitar being met with a crash of drums to cap off a
wonderfully complete song; one I believe is some of The Murder Capital’s best work to date. It’s a
song you can bounce to, dance to, laugh to or cry to; all I know is I’ll be blasting it on full volume for
a long time to come. The album comes to a close with a beautiful piece in Trailing A Wing, a song that will definitely have fans swaying their arms with their phone torches shining bright.

Overall I believe Blindness is such a well-refined album that has clearly been worked very hard on in
the studio, and it’s certainly paid off. The mixture of emotions that can be felt upon listening to this
record are nothing short of a rollercoaster, and I have no doubt the boys will have been successful in
their mission to inspire introspection within themselves and in listeners. The Murder Capital are one of the best live bands on the scene right now, and their work on this album will be sure to add so much to their already must-see shows. I know I can’t wait to see them on their upcoming UK & Ireland tour, where they will be performing at Brudenell Social Club on April 21st 2025, as well as a collection of intimate in-store performances and signings.

In Conversation with The Murder Capital: No words have lost meaning here for upcoming album Blindness

Millie Cain on 18 February 2025

Millie Cain chats to The Murder Capital’s Cathal Roper discussing their forthcoming 3rd album, their tour with Nick Cave, and independent record stores.

Blindness, The Murder Capital’s stormy 3rd album opens with an older track, ‘Moonshot’, that Cathal described as a “wall of sound, it wasn’t a song we had worked on really. James already had played it on acoustic – we wanted to open the record with a drop on the needle. Gigi [2nd Album, Gigi’s Recovery (2023)] is very cinematic, with a lot of world building in that. A lot of our fave records you press play and it just starts right – and ‘Moonshot’ really does that.”

Ahead of Blindness’ 21st February release, they’ve released 3 singles, most standout being ‘Words Lost Meaning’. “Gabe had the bassline, he was having an argument with his girlfriend at the time and came out with that and it just so happened that when James put lyrics down that it was in the same vein – weird coincidence. We wrote that in Dublin, and it didn’t change much except the 3^rd verse, with building guitars. It felt like a single straight away, the others weren’t as clear. ‘Words Lost Meaning’ felt like it was going to do what a single has to do.”

Huge anticipation awaits their forthcoming tour, starting with record shops up and down the UK, then a headline April tour. This is off the back of The Murder Capital’s coveted support slot touring with Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds at the end of last year. “Nick Cave – it was lovely, we got to have dinner with him one night, very nice and honest man, pretty funny. He’s an incredible performer, and we got to perform songs from Blindness that we hadn’t played.”

In terms of Blindness as an album, The Murder Capital have taken a step away from the concentrated structure of Gigi’s Recovery (2023). ”Gigi’s was heavily demoed, and Blindess was less so, honestly it was done on purpose. Gigi didn’t really grow much in the studio from what we already had, getting together with John [Congleton] we wanted to go to the studio and all the songs to change and grow. Things were so rigid with Gigi – we wanted that growth.”

“It honestly feels like funnily enough a merge of the first 2 records, there was such a reaction to the first one that we didn’t want to do anything to the first one, we were almost insecure about it representing all of us. And Gigi’s was so cinematic and world building that we missed the urgency of the first record, but we missed the texture. Blindness is more confident, self assured, in ourselves and our sound and makes the first record make a bit more sense too.”

“We had rehearsals last week for these instores, we played ‘Moonshot’ together for the first time. We had all recorded it separately on the last day of recording and it was all mixed together by John, so it was really good to see it come together.”

Alongside the Record Store Tour, The Murder Capital are hitting tons of independent venues in April, including the Brudenell on the 21 and 22^nd. In terms of focusing on these venues, Cathal relayed how they chose the stops for their tour with “a conversation between us and our agent, I love the Brudenell. Nathan who runs it always really looks after us too so we’re so excited to play there again.”

A favourite on the album for Cathal is ‘Train On The Wing’. “I’m excited for people to hear it, it’s a more laid back song and more of the sort of stuff I’ve been playing since I was 16, and ‘Swallow’ as well. The guitar work there is an Irish traditional approach I went for – yeah I’m just really happy with how it turned out.”

Blindness itself was a theme of the record “it feels like a good word for all the topics that are discussed on the records. How do we encompass these? It’s generally about introspection, looking inside yourself, what makes the decisions and reactions you have and how that manifests itself out in the world. It’s a focus on your peripheral vision, the abstract of the everyday and blindness felt like the perfect word for that.”

For album 3, The Murder Capital leant into their influences of The Cure and The Velvet Underground. “James was really into a phase of Suicide (1977), for myself I was listening to a lot of Big Thief. I love Adrianne Lenker and everything she does. And this great record by Cameron Winter called Heavy Metal – that record he did is incredible, it has me in tears a lot of the time. That song ‘Drinking Age’ is probably one of the best songs – I really hope that record blows up more.” As do we, as Heavy Metal was certainly a standout 2024 album, if not a generational one.

The Murder Capital’s 3rd Album Blindness will be available on Friday 21st February 2025, and will be on tour at Brudenell 21st & 22nd April 2025.

Written by Millie Cain

Can’t Pretend To Know: What’s Next For The Murder Capital?

Thomas Taylor Shenton on 26 October 2024

Thomas Taylor-Shenton explores The Murder Capital’s future, as well as reflecting on their most recent single.

Irish five-piece, The Murder Capital, had fans bursting with excitement at the prospect of a third album after the release of their new single, Can’t Pretend To Know, on 23rd September. With the notable change in sound and style in their second album, Gigi’s Recovery, in comparison to their debut, When I have Fears, there’s a real anticipation building within fans as it’s only natural to expect the band to get better with their growing experience. Having recently supported rock and roll legends Pearl Jam on their tour of the UK and Ireland, the band will certainly have made an excellent impression on avid rock and post-punk fans who were lucky enough to attend the gigs.

In terms of the track itself, it’s an excellent first single with pulsing drums (leaving the snare beaten into your brain), enchanting sax and of course James Mcgovern’s raw vocals, all coming to a cocophony of energy and intensity. It’s a track not all-new sounding but who can complain with TMC’s previous records?

There is yet to be confirmation of an album release but the band bless Brudenell Social Club on April 21st, where hundreds of Doc Martens will be sure to be stomping to the beat of the latest Murder Capital track, as fans all over Can’t Pretend To not be excited about this brilliant band.

Words by Thomas Taylor-Shenton.