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Founder and former frontman of the influential Irish post-punk band The Virgin Prunes, Gavin Friday, is performing solo at the Bourla.(photo : Photosindarkness at 404)
From 1977 to 1986, Friday, Guggi, and co. broke new ground with an experimental and innovative mix of glam rock, gothic, industrial, avant-garde art, and ambient, along with a unique anti-establishment and anti-patriarchal attitude and critical reflections on the Catholic Church.
After his time with The Virgin Prunes, Friday built a solo career as a singer, composer, visual artist, and actor that showcases his creative versatility. His solo albums, such as Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves (1989) and Shag Tobacco (1995), demonstrate his ability to explore diverse musical styles, from alternative rock to experimental electronica.
Gavin Friday has also collaborated with other artists and filmmakers, including Bono (U2), Laurie Anderson, Sinead O’Connor, The Fall, Quincy Jones, Maurice Seezer, and director Neil Jordan. He contributed to soundtracks for the films In the Name of the Father and The Boxer, and provided the beautiful song Angel for Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet.
In October last year, he released his first solo album in thirteen years, Ecce Homo, recorded with producer Dave Ball of Soft Cell, among others, in memory of his late mother and close collaborator Hal Willner.
Gavin Friday remains an important figure in the Irish and international music scene, with a reputation for his unique voice, poetic lyrics, and groundbreaking artistic vision.
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Friday, now 64, began questioning Catholicism more than half a century ago when he wondered why the teachers at his strict Catholic school, supposed servants of God, beat him and his classmates. This was just before he witnessed the rise of glam and punk, before he saw Joy Division for the first time or secretly crossed the Irish Sea to see David Bowie in London. This was also just before he founded Virgin Prunes, his canonically transgressive post-punk band that turned perceptions of genre and gender upside down. And this was just before the rebellion and exploration that have shaped his unique career as a singer, composer, visual artist, and actor coalesced into an astonishingly creative life. But there are symbols and stories you can’t escape—or, in fact, don’t want to escape. “Maybe I haven’t grown up yet,” he jokes under the sacred heart, winking. “Or maybe I am growing up.”
That interplay and tension animate Ecce Homo, Friday’s first album in 13 years, and form a compelling culmination of the life he has lived and the life he now wants to build for himself. Alternately driven by thunderous electronics reminiscent of the power of The Prunes and beautiful acoustic sounds that reflect the beauty of his most recent solo work and soundtracks, Ecce Homo is an ecstatic and unrestrained expression of anger and independence, of breaking free from stereotypes about how you’re supposed to be, while at the same time acknowledging that our most difficult struggles are often collective ones. There are love songs and battle hymns, reflections on loss and musings on nostalgia, anthems for solidarity and fierce critiques of the powerful. Friday considers it the most honest album he has ever made; it is also his most compelling.
