Saturday 11 November 8pm (Doors 7:45) - Tickets €15
For more information contact Sirius Arts Centre at information listed left
Formed in Newry in the late 1980s by brothers Brendan, Declan and Paul Murphy, The 4 Of Us appeared out of nowhere with the huge radio hit Mary taken from their debut album Songs For the Tempted in 1989, which helped them sweep the boards at the following year’s Hot Press awards. The slick commercial gloss of Mary belied the fact that it was a grim little snapshot of a deeply flawed relationship. The gimlet-eyed observations of Brendan Murphy’s lyrics demonstrated that this was a band who were always going to do it their own way.
Wary of the transient nature of pop, the band’s follow-up Man Alive in 1992 was a more rock driven album, featuring She Hits Me, a top 30 hit in the UK. The RTE Guide enthused ‘It's brash, fast, catchy, dangerous and covered in sin, lust and anything else The 4 Of Us can get their hands on’, and it was nominated in Q magazine’s Top 50 Albums of that year.
The band then retreated into the studio where they spent three years working on their next record, only to do what most bands would consider unthinkable. Perfectionists to the core, they looked at the results and decided it just wasn’t good enough, tore up the blueprints and started over again.
At this point The 4 Of Us effectively became Brendan and Declan, as brother Paul left to pursue a more normal existence. Knuckling down to the task at hand, the band saw their perfectionist streak pay off when they emerged with 1999’s Classified Personal, a masterful record peopled by characters who went on blind dates, made a final stab at patching things up, promised not to mess up again and ultimately held it together. It was a record that saw the band emerge from the studio fitter, older and wiser and it raised the bar even higher for them.
In 2003’s Heaven & Earth the focus becomes more universal, with songs that hint at the turmoil that was to accompany 9/11. Sitting alongside the euphoria of U Make Me Feel and the unsteady nerviness of Breakdown or No Guarantees, the massive radio hit Sunlight reminded everyone that the Murphys can write world-class songs.
Again unwilling to simply repeat a formula, the band set to work on the album that would eventually become Fingerprints. Having spent a good deal of the previous three years co-writing with a very varied set of collaborators, Brendan knew that there would never be a better opportunity to deliver a great record, and from the chiming bouzoukis of What’s To Come to the shimmering strings of Flesh and Bone, this album combines the band’s strongest ever material with its most assured performances.
For band news and information check out:
http://www.the4ofus.com/ and
www.myspace.com/thefourofus
