• Video Premiere: New Pope – Not Forgotten

    July 5, 2019 - By 

    Over the last while, musician, TTA favourite and Galway institution David Boland aka New Pope has drip-fed a series of sublime videos to accompany tracks from his recently-released (and downright exceptional) 2015 album, Youth. Including the one for the masterfully wistful ‘Not Forgotten’ – which we’re very pleased to premiere below – four of them the handiwork of Ray Ingram, a septuagenarian whose homespun movies from 1964 bound from the past to sync majestically with Boland’s imagined worlds. Revisit Youth in full here.

  • New Pope shares surprise EP, Mångata

    January 4, 2019 - By 

    TTA favourite and Galway institution, New Pope AKA David Boland has dropped a spontaneous EP to mark the new year. Titled Mångata, the seven-track release is, for now, a YouTube exclusive and is the first new music to come from the Citóg Records founder in over a year. Since we last spoke to Boland around the release of his 2016 debut LP Love, he’s shared a reworked edition of tracks from his former band The Depravations and continued to be a regular live fixture in Galway’s venues. Strangely though, 2018 also saw him removing all of his previous releases from Bandcamp, including Love and its preceding EP, Youth.  With the…

  • Watch: New Pope – Love

    November 13, 2017 - By 

    Back in January, TTA’s Cathal McBride hailed Love, the second album from Galway’s David Boland AKA New Pope. The latest single to be taken from the release, the album’s title track – which McBride said “set out Boland’s stall immediately” – is a pure distillation of what sets Boland apart from many of his tale-wielding peers. Now, comprised of footage from the 1961 anti-drug educational film Seduction of the Innocent, the track comes accompanied by visuals that mirror the trials and tribulations of the L word that Boland tussles with throughout the album. Have a peek below. Photo by Gary McCafferty

  • A Labour of Love: An Interview With New Pope

    February 15, 2017 - By 

    You mightn’t immediately peg David Boland AKA New Pope, as a “degenerate romantic”, but when delving into his expanding back catalogue, there’s enough substance of the sort to confirm that the Galway-based musician has had dealings with nostalgia far more cogent than his youth might suggest. His is a craft indebted to memory; the bittersweet, the humorous, and the kind that inherently shapes one’s outlook – for better and, at times, for worse. To hear it on record is to acknowledge the confessional nature of Boland’s songwriting; we become willingly and unapologetically complicit in his experiences – an increasingly rewarding transaction…

  • New Pope – Love

    January 31, 2017 - By 

    Galway’s New Pope AKA David Boland, hasn’t been around long, but he doesn’t waste any time. Released with little fanfare on New Year’s Eve – evidently caring not for making his way into any album of the year lists – his second album Love comes along just a year after his debut Youth. Much like the debut – an album steeped in childhood nostalgia – the single word title again serves as a theme for the album’s lyrical content, the word ‘love’ appearing in the titles of three of the seven tracks alone, and being at the heart of all the…

  • Album Stream: New Pope – LOVE

    January 9, 2017 - By 

    Back in October, we premiered ‘The Claddagh’, a highlight from Galway musician David Boland AKA New Pope’s brand new album, LOVE. Having said “via wonderfully wearied reflections and crushing guitar shapes, Boland sieves gold from the quite literal stoney shore in subtle, masterfully soul-lifting fashion” our verdict of the single could also double up as a summation of LOVE as a whole. Recorded at College Road in Galway, the seven tracks that comprise the release – featuring Colm Bohan, Stephen Connolly, G Tobin and Mosey Byrne here and there – coalesce to re-affirm, once again, that Boland is not merely one of…

  • The Thin Air Tracks of the Week: J Mascis, Solar Bears, Thee Oh Sees, Enemies etc.

    October 6, 2016 - By 

    You know, we got thinking: three years in, it’s really about time that we started herding up our very favourite tracks – Irish and international – and putting them in one place, each and every week. That very obvious thought developed into a very simple plan (ten or so positively must-hear tracks every Thursday) and here we are. This is it. You are here. Dig below. Enemies – ‘itsallwaves’ RIP Enemies. Don’t miss their farewell show at Vicar Street in December. J Mascis – ‘Waltz 2’ (Elliott Smith cover) It probably shouldn’t work but it does. Go here, man. Crystal…

  • Premiere: New Pope – The Claddagh

    October 3, 2016 - By 

    Almost like a victim of self-sabotage in the vein of Dostoyevsky or Sartre, Galway’s David Boland AKA New Pope confronts the sheer nausea of the dreaded next day in the Gavin Martyn-directed video for his new single ‘The Claddagh’. But despite the track’s shroud of heartbreak via wonderfully wearied reflections and crushing guitar shapes, Boland sieves gold from the quite literal stoney shore in subtle, masterfully soul-lifting fashion. Boland said: “The Claddagh, meaning “stoney shore”, was once an old fishing village in the heart of Galway city. It is still a little area with a lot of character and a confusing layout. The song is about falling for someone…