[Cover photo credit to Martyna Bannister]
Irish Indie Rock band Pillow Queens have announced their third studio album Name Your Sorrow, due out April 19, 2024. Alongside the news, the band have shared the track “Gone” and announced a string of live dates throughout the UK this June. The band’s biggest show to date is set for July 13 at Dublin, Ireland’s Iveagh Gardens.
Name Your Sorrow explores themes of “queerness, insecurity, desire and heartbreak as well as the positivity and strength that can grow from pain.” Produced by Collin Pastore (Lucy Dacus, boygenius) at Analogue Catalogue in Northern Ireland.
Lead guitarist and vocalist Cathy McGuinness calls the album one of “intensity, loneliness and love”:
It is about stages of love, loss and grief and how they can all exist alongside one another–intertwined, messy, beautiful–how both love and loss can coexist.
Pillow Queens credit Irish poet Eavan Bolan, English poet John Keats, and British writer C.S. Lewis among their literary inspirations during the writing process, and musically, influences range from Vampire Weekend to Barbara Streisand to Frank Ocean, Tool and Lana Del Rey.
The song “Gone” tells a tale of “exiting a collapsing relationship.”
The band says:
‘Gone’ is a song that looks into the vapid nature of brief romantic encounters and the hyperbole that can become so monotonous, it makes you jaded.
The track came about at the end of a jam session during a songwriting retreat in The Burren on the West Coast of Ireland.
Lead vocalist, guitarist and bassist Pamela Connolly adds:
Lines like, ‘I was in your top five things to do’ convey a lack of self-worth that’s tackled throughout the album. It’s a song that showcases a vulnerability that allows for no silver linings–it’s the reality of how someone is feeling in the moment.
Pillow Queens Live
UK & Ireland
Summer 2024
Jun. 5 – Leeds, UK – Wardrobe
Jun. 6 – Bristol, UK – The Fleece
Jun. 7 – London, UK – Brixton Electric
Jun. 8 – Manchester, UK – YES Pink Room
Jun. 10 – Newcastle, UK – Cluny
Jun. 11 – Glasgow, UK – Saint Lukes
Jul. 13 – Dublin, IR – Iveagh Gardens
