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Hibsen is a collaboration between Irish folk artists Gráinne Hunt and Jim Murphy. They will be releasing an album of 15 original songs based on the book of short stories 'Dubliners' by James Joyce on 26th May 2023.
On Friday 26 th May, Irish folk act Hibsen will release a third single The Dead, which is inspired by the short story of the same name from Dubliners by James Joyce. The album, which is called The Stern Task of Living, and which is also inspired by Dubliners will be available from 26 th May on all major streaming platforms and in selected music stores around Ireland.
About The Dead:
The Dead is based on and named after James Joyce’s most famous short story from his book Dubliners. The song captures the last scene of the story, when two of the main protagonists Gabriel and Gretta have returned to their hotel bedroom at the Gresham Hotel. Gabriel is in euphoric mood having successfully presided over his aunts’ annual Little Christmas dinner, while Gretta is withdrawn and pensive.
When Gabriel asks her what is wrong, Gretta bursts into tears and says “O, I am thinking about that song, The Lass of Aughrim”, which a guest had sung as they were leaving Gabriel’s aunts’ house. The song reminded Gretta of a young boy called Michael Furey, whom she knew when she was growing up in Galway. Michael died at the age of seventeen and Gretta blames herself for his premature death as he had left his sick bed, in terrible weather conditions, to implore Gretta to stay in Galway the night before she was due to move to Dublin. When asked “what did he die of so young”, Gretta replied “I think he died for me”.
About The Stern Task of Living: On 26 th May Hibsen will also release their debut album The Stern Task of Living. The album contains 15 songs, one for each short story from Joyce’s Dubliners. Each song is named after the short story on which it is based and the track listing on the album follows the same order as the stories appear in Dubliners.
The seeds of The Stern Task of Living were sown in November 2020 when Irish folk artists Jim Murphy and Gráinne Hunt were paired together at an online song-writing workshop to write a song based on the short story Araby from James Joyce’s Dubliners. Despite the challenges of co-writing remotely, the song came together quickly and Gráinne and Jim were delighted with the outcome. Inspired by the experience of writing Araby together, their random pairing soon became a much bigger collaboration and they decided to write an album of songs based on all 15 short stories from Dubliners.
Over the next year or so, they worked on writing the album, sharing ideas over Zoom and email. In November 2021, almost a year to the day since they were first paired up, they completed the writing process. Speaking about how they approached each song, Jim Murphy said:
“Our goal was to capture the essence of each story in the lyrics of the songs and to reflect each story’s sentiment in the music that we wrote for it. As a result, some of the songs are quite tender in character from a musical perspective, while others are more
up-tempo folk ballads.”
When the songs were written, Gráinne and Jim began planning the recording phase of the project. They teamed up with Alex Borwick, who produced and engineered the album at Black Mountain Recording Studios and they assembled a group of musicians to perform with them on the album. In addition to Gráinne (vocals) and Jim (guitar), the recording features Laura Ryder (piano), Shay Sweeney (drums), Alex Borwick (bass), the string quartet Musici (which was founded by Beth McNinch) and Alan Doherty (whistle). Strings were arranged by Cormac Curran. Speaking about the recording process, Gráinne Hunt remarked:
“We really enjoyed working with Alex Borwick and the very talented musicians who performed on The Stern Task of Living. We recorded the album in 7 days, much more quickly than we had expected, which is a testament to the standard of musicianship and production on the album.”
The Stern Task of Living was recorded with thanks to the Arts Council of Ireland for their financial support.
Tracklist:
1. The Sisters
2. An Encounter
3. Araby
4. Eveline
5. After The Race
6. Two Gallants
7. The Boarding House
8. A Little Cloud
9. Counterparts
10. Clay
11. A Painful Case
12. Ivy Day In The Committee Room
13. A Mother
14. Grace
15. The Dead