Warsaw Radio hit right note with debut album

Warsaw Radio celebrate the launch of their debut album Midnight Broadcast with a show in Róisín Dubh next Wednesday, March 28. The Brighton-based band are led by Limerick Brían McNamara, whose songs bring Springsteen and The Waterboys to mind.

Warsaw Radio’s latest single is Ms Monroe, a song that imagines Marilyn Monroe giving relationship advice following the break-up of her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller.

“About two years I went to see a play about Marilyn Monroe at the Brighton Fringe Festival,” Brían says. “I didn’t know anything about her, other than she was a movie star. I came home that night and started writing that song. A few days later it was finished.

“At the time we were recording our album and I was exploring this way of writing where you try to get other people’s perspective.”

The single and the rest of the album was produced by Jag Jago, a UK based producer who originally hails from Singapore.

“He’s worked with the likes of Florence & The Machine and The Maccabees,” Brían says. “I approached him, we demoed and worked on a couple of singles initially. We got some airplay from RTÉ and BBC 6 and that really spurred us on to keep going with the album.”

Brían’s bandmates are Laurence Bridge (bass), Paul Lennox (drums), Nicola Bates (violin) and Chris Webber on guitar.  The quality of these musicians meant that making the Warsaw Radio debut was a pleasant experience.

“It’s all about the people you work with, and I’ve been very lucky with the band,” Brían says. “Everyone’s very honest. There were songs we wrote in the studio, and that urgency really put the flame under us to be creative, and to get it done. It was good to have a deadline. We were burning the midnight oil and putting the work in.”

There are some lush string arrangements on Midnight Broadcast, and Brían is keen to credit to Nicola Bates with this.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.