éist by Cullen Vance & Madelyn Monaghan

Purchase of album comes with an exclusive Album Liner! 25 pages of notes, song translations, original photos, and behind the scenes glimpses into the history of the songs and our creative process. Only on Bandcamp!

a little bit about éist

éist – verb: listen, pay attention to sound

Nine is a significant number in Irish mythology and culture. It features again and again in the ancient folklore: Niall and the Nine Hostages, the nine magical hazel trees that hang over the Well of Wisdom, and the nine maidens that guard St. Brigid’s sacred eternal flame to name a few. More contemporary Irish literature acknowledges the power of nine too. In J.M. Synge’s revered play Riders to the Sea set on the Aran Islands, the mother Maurya keens and mourns nine full days for her sons taken by the sea. Nine was thought for centuries to be the most complete number. So myself and Cullen, two Irish Americans steeped in the traditions, music, and folklore of the Motherland, were delighted when we ended up with nine tracks for our album, which took nine months to conceptualize and make.


This album was created entirely remotely, made in what Cullen called his ‘tree-house’ of a home in the Pacific Northwest, and my childhood bedroom in my family’s old bungalow on the Jersey Shore where one can smell the sea air and hear seagulls overhead as well as the train from New York City that wails into the station on the hour (not ideal for recording!). This is the room where I first started to sing and fall in love with these songs as a child—I never imagined then that I’d one day be recording them for an album in the same space. This summer, Cullen and his family moved to the west of Ireland, adding a third coast to our credits. The cover art for our album was taken by Cullen on the shores of Galway, which is where some of my people are from! I want to credit these various places because location has played such a role in the creation of this album and our finding its themes. Not only is it an album literally made from a distance and amidst pandemic isolation, but musically, it draws inspiration from Irish, Scottish and American folk traditions. You’ll hear Sean-nós (old-style) singing, a Scottish waulking/call and response song, elements of Bluegrass and Appalachian music, and Cullen’s genre-defying, cinematic sound design which I think illuminates these stories and brings them into this century.


Maybe it’s no surprise, given our times, that the songs we gravitated towards are songs of distance and longing (and soothing lullabies and transition tracks as a balm). These are also themes that Cullen and I have always been drawn to as artists and as Irish-Americans. And as much as this album is an album of place, it’s also an album of the absence of place. Of being between places, a feeling which immigrants and emigrants and their descendants know well. Of being between realms, which artists often feel when creating. There is real comfort in knowing that our ancestors experienced everything we do now, and that they captured it in such beautiful art, asking only that we listen.

For more info and music check out:

CullenVanceCreative.com

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