Last month, Niamh Bury signed to Claddagh Records and released her debut single, Beehive. It’s not just her balletic vocals that stay with you after hearing this song but also her tender and deeply poetic lyrics: “…your mind is like a beehive, so complex and so sweet, chaotic and so neat”.
“‘Beehive’ is about the overlapping of myth, folk wisdom and science,” says Niamh of her debut single. “It was inspired by a passage from a book I was reading about a tribe in the Amazon who say that the human brain is like a beehive – at once chaotic and intricately ordered.”
In the original press for this release, Claddagh also related how ‘once chaotic and intricately ordered‘ could well be used to describe Claddagh Records founder Garech Browne’s approach to the iconic Irish label. A cacophony of contradictions, Garech was as renowned for his lavish parties and famous friends as he was for his life’s work: preserving and championing the rich musical heritage of Ireland…the story of which will feature in a new book that we shared details on here.
His wish was that the label could be revived, to become, once more, an active contributor to Ireland’s prodigious artistic output…with the likes of Niamh, ÖXN and Rónán Ó Snodaigh & Myles O’Reilly, that dream certainly seems to be coming to fruition.
For Niamh, that desire to champion the rich musical heritage of Ireland is also a personal one, as she is also one of the chief organisers of the iconic traditional singing session The Night Before Larry Got Stretched, which famously takes place in The Cobblestone Pub on the last Sunday of every month and whose founders include members of Lankum.
Here is Niamh performing Beehive live in Phoenix Park (where Dublin goes to breathe)… it’s also our Song of the Day.
This Friday (25th August), Niamh will release her second single, ‘Who Am I To Tell Him?’; you can pre-save it here.
Videography by Kevin Minogue
Edited by Jason Boland
Styled by Aisling Farinella
DOP – Ellius Grace
Hair & Make-up by Mary Ellen Darby