It’s not going to be okay. We’ve all entertained that thought. It might be because of an event in the wider world, one that affects all of us: climate catastrophe, conflict, political upheaval, or any of the many societal ills that seem to be on the rise right now. All of these things have the potential to lead to collective grief. Writing about any kind of grief is hard, but perhaps collective grief is slightly less hard than the personal kind because it involves a whole swathe of society: it can be offset, at least partially, by a sense of camaraderie.
Personal grief is different. Should we even be writing about it? ‘Death is real, someone’s there and then they’re not, and it’s not for singing about, it’s not for making into art,’ sang Mount Eerie’s Phil Elverum on Real Death, one of a whole, heartbreaking album of songs recorded in the wake of his partner’s death from cancer. Personal grief is by its nature individual. We can never know exactly what someone else is feeling, even when they express themselves with eloquence or with complete rawness. But that doesn’t mean we can’t gain something from the experience. Elverum made art – eloquent and raw – whether he wanted to or not, and the same could be said for Joshua Burnside, who wrote and recorded It’s Not Going to Be Okay after and about the death of his best friend, the musician Dean Jendoubi.
Burnside is explicit about the role of grief on It’s Not Going to Be Okay, but also about the presence of love and hope. His songs have a caressing softness, even as they weep. Lead single Moon High, with its gentle fiddle and fluid strumming, is all about the role memories play in acceptance. It is also searingly honest about the psychology of grief: the way it seeks to stall its own progression by numbing the mind, and how difficult it is to push through that numb stage. Similarly, on Good Times Are Comin’, with its ironically upbeat shuffle and deadbeat chorus of ‘Hey! Hey! Hey!’ he chronicles the vicious cycle of loss and memory and how tempting it can be to wallow in the past.
Recent Burnside albums have seen him combine folk with subtle electronics and intricate layers of sound. He developed a knack for being simultaneously rootsy and progressive, writing songs that were charming, passionate and clever. Last year’s excellent Teeth of Time saw him take on many of those subjects that have the potential to spill over into the realm of collective grief: war, sectarian violence, climate change. Thorny topics that called for a comparatively elaborate sound. Here, in tune with the simpler and more personal subject matter, many of those layers are stripped away, and the result is Burnside’s most intimate statement yet. Opening trackYou and Me sets the scene with a lo-fi acoustic strum and a simple melody, which would almost qualify as jaunty were it not for Burnside’s tender, cracked singing. There is, from the off, a quiet tension between the ebullience of hope and the deadening effects of loss, and while the latter seems to be in the ascendancy, there is always just a glimmer of the former.
That glimmer of hope is carried in part by Burnside’s gift as a songwriter, his knack for a melody. It’s as if he knows that, even in the darkest moments, his art can provide a small light. ‘I hear the sound of a drum as the tears drop,’ he sings on With You, a song that paints a vivid picture of a friendship but also speaks of the bonds that can be formed through music. And he has a natural, easy turn of phrase that elevates songs like Nicer Part of Town into the realm of finely-drawn kitchen-sink portraits, full of domestic details loaded with colour and meaning. It’s matched by the easy grace of his guitar playing, something that shines through more than ever on these songs. There are occasional moments of discordance – Moon High begins with an amelodic scrape before settling into its melancholy flow, and Good Times Are Comin’ ends with a flurry of Celtic-sounding instrumentation over a drone – but these only serve to frame the stark beauty that lies in between.
These songs can disarm you or take your breath away from their very first lines. ‘Oh, the last armchair you ever sat on/Before you overdosed/Is the one I sit in every morning/To eat my egg and toast,’ he sings at the start of The Last Armchair, as a sinewy electric guitar slinks around in the background. Any sense that the objects he sings about are imbued with some kind of supernatural magic is offset by the reality in which he grounds his songs, a reality of IKEA and baby scans. It’s this balance, rather than any overt melodrama, that really knocks you for six. Even the song that deals most explicitly with the unknown, Something Else, does so in the most human way, with its references to The X-Files. Here, Burnside uses the supernatural as a way of examining his own doubt. On Nighttime Person, inanimate objects become almost human: a fridge weeps, the page of a book whispers, but we are always aware that these phenomena are grounded in human experience.
Burnside is the most consistently human and also the most surprising of songwriters. Details spring out at you like spiders from the cracks between floorboards. Meteors and energy-efficient light bulbs, blackbirds and bears, spaceships and Peugeots. The profound and the quotidian occupy the same arena, which is perhaps what makes the world interesting, and what makes life worth carrying on with. The album’s final song, Remake, describes the hours directly after Jendoubi’s funeral. It is discursive, almost rambling, nearly abandoning the idea of melody. As Burnside walks home through Belfast, and we go with him, we realise that if his friend is still there in any way, he’s there in these songs, and that alone makes them worth writing and worth hearing. The meaning of this album may change over time for Burnside: as he moves away from grief, it may move with him. But it will remain a stunning, haunting evocation of personal loss to anyone who hears it.
It’s Not Going to be Okay (March 20th, 2026) Nettwerk
It’s Not Going to be Okay Tour Dates
Mar 21 – Manchester – Hallé St Peter’s
May 1 – Cork – Cyprus Avenue
May 2 – Dublin – Button Factory
May 6 – Glasgow – Oran Mor
May 7 – Leeds – Brudenell Social Club
May 9 – Stroud – Prince Albert (2 shows 14:00 & 21:00)
May 10 – London – EartH Theatre
May 11 – Bristol – Beacon
June 17 – Falmouth – Cornish Bank
June 18 – Totnes – Barrel House
June 19 – Frome – The Tree House
June 20 – Milton Keynes – Craufurd Arms
June 21 – Beverley – Beverley Folk Festival
August 15 – Belfast – Custom House Square (Foy Vance show)