LIMELIGHT BELFAST PRESENTS
FIONN REGAN
FRIDAY 5TH MARCH 2027
LIMELIGHT 1, BELFAST
TICKETS ON SALE WEDNESDAY OCT 7TH AT 10AM VIA TICKETMASTER.IE
“I had a craving for something minimal,” says Irish singer/songwriter Fionn Regan of the
road to his eighth album. Arriving swiftly after 2024’s acclaimed O Avalanche, new album
Berlin, Berlin – so good he named it twice – is Fionn’s answer to that urge. Stark yet
resonant, poetic and pure, the record is a work of intuitive intimacies and radical self-
containment: untouched by time, trend or premeditation, it’s a distilled expression of what
happens when a natural talent lets his instincts lead the way.
In some respects, that instinct takes the form of a response to roads previously travelled. The
album arrives both as a partner-piece to its predecessor and its polar opposite; a darker and
perhaps more elusive twin that shares the earlier work’s feel for environment and emotion.
Where O Avalanche was inspired by time spent in Mallorca, Berlin, Berlin evokes a city-
centric mindset from its title to its portraits of characters seemingly adrift, lost in hallways
and mazes. And while O Avalanche evoked sun-dappled daytime vistas, Berlin, Berlin
summons a different kind of seasonal and nocturnal spirit in its references to “winter light”
and star-lit skies.
Illuminated by Regan’s innate sense of poetry, drama and impressionistic storytelling, it is,
however, all the better for not being over-thought. As he explains, “One of the things with the
album is I made it fast – super-fast. Five days, maybe six days. I wanted the songs to feel like
maybe the record is something that’s come straight out of the ground. It’s like the ‘first
thought, best thought’ kind of approach. That kind of slightly [Jack] Kerouac-y idea of just
doing something, not thinking about it, and then making it.”
Hence opener “Hurricane Bruise” arrives without preamble, an open doorway leading to
spectral images of figures lost, trying to find a way out “to the light”. Holding its secrets
close, it acts as a kind of threshold to the record’s mysteries. Regan suggests the “rich tones
and black-and-whites” of classic Italian cinema as one reference point, and the album indeed
plays like a half-remembered movie – once viewed in the small hours and recollected in
snapshots that suggest a bigger whole without requiring over-explication. “Don’t Forget Your
Friends” evokes the low thrum of McCabe and Mrs Miller-era Leonard Cohen. “Black Silk
Dress” hints at a tale of mourning or another non-specified trauma, while “Berlin” seems to
unspool as a tale of the city at night, rippling with missed assignations and close-guarded
memories.
Although the record doesn’t follow pre-planned routes, it testifies to the precision of Regan’s
instincts in its feel for shape, mood and contrast. The mood brightens by increments as it
progresses, from the dappled arrangement of “Your Love Is Like Wine” to the dream-state
gleam of “Michibiki No Hoshi”. “The Streets Are Wet with Rain” and “Fox Kiss” brim with
romantic imagery, the reference to “Ghosts of the morning” suggesting a sort of dawning,
before “Love Blood” closes the record as a kind of declaration of devotion, constant and
warm.Written and recorded in record time in East London, the result feels like a lost vinyl cult
favourite, something stumbled across in record racks, unheralded yet cherished all the deeper
for it. That sense of happenstance seems to be ingrained in the record, both in its methods and
results. “In some ways the songs landed together very easily,” says Fionn. “There was no
solid idea about it, it was more like writing stuff on a piece of hotel paper or a beermat. It’s
like a notebook, which brings together things that have a resonance but are also in that realm
of the unexplained. Like a cosmic collection of notes that’s collaged together somehow.”
Regan has been following where his songs lead since the acoustic poetry of his debut album,
2006’s Mercury-shortlisted The End of History. Since then, he has travelled between band-
based detours and the gleaming likes of 2011’s 100 Acres of Sycamore, whose worry-worn
beauty “Dogwood Blossom” drew new audiences when it found kindred spirits in two TV
shows, romantic lockdown hit Normal People and Shane Meadows’s This Is England 86.
Oscar-winning actor Cillian Murphy featured in the video for 2017’s “The Meetings of the
Waters”, while elsewhere Regan has been nominated for Choice, Meteor Ireland and Shortlist
awards, sampled by Bon Iver, photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair and made an
honorary memory of the Trinity College Literary Society.
O Avalanche steered Regan’s off-the-main-drag feel for climate and landscape towards
another creative peak, forging a record to lose yourself in. Berlin, Berlin continues and
enriches that trajectory and calling; it’s a record made for full immersion from an artist who
seems equally immersed in his writing, listening closely to where it wants to lead him. “The
songs kind of tell you what way they want to go, you know,” says Fionn. “They let you know
where the energetic strength is within them and what they’re asking for. It’s quite a pure
record, in a sense. I think it’s quite rare to hear something like that.” In its quietly radical
way, Berlin, Berlin transports you.