It’s easy to think that it was young Andrew Hozier-Byrne who first put Wicklow on the musical map, but actually Arklow-born Roisin Murphy had done it long before him. Back in the late ‘90s, Moloko’s upbeat ‘Sing It Back’ was one of the most ubiquitous international party anthems going.
After they called it a day, there were two well received Murphy solo albums in 2005’s Ruby Blue and 2007’s Overpowered. Although she released a low-key EP of Italian cover versions called Mi Senti last year, the world hasn’t heard much from the feisty singer in the meantime (presumably the birth of her two children had something to do with that).
So the rather alarmingly titled Hairless Toys – inventively produced by her long time musical collaborator Eddie Stevens – is her first long- player in eight years. It features just eight songs, one for every year of her absence. Musically, these diverse, multi-layered and glittering tracks tip their hat to the dark disco of European house, Casablanca Records and Grace Jones, while seamlessly taking in the freedom and organic spirit of jazz, country and gospel. However, it’s Murphy’s unmistakable voice – still instantly recognisable after all this time – that gloriously glues it all together.
Almost as much of a style icon as a musical one, she has stated that the entire album was inspired by Jennie Livingston’s film Paris Is Burning – a cult 1990 documentary which explored the underground drag ball scene in New York City and the flamboyant LGBTQ subculture surrounding it. So it’s a concept album of sorts; thematically, most of these songs relate to the idea of a group of outsiders and sexual deviants coming together to openly celebrate their wonderful weirdness.
Nowhere is this more evident than on the slow-burning album opener, and first cut, ‘Gone Fishing’ – a song she has described as an anthem from the “Broadway musical” version of the drag ball. “Each step taken away from a place of hopelessness,” she sings, “takes me closer to building another kind of family nest.”
The entry into the drag ball, ‘Evil Eyes’, sees Murphy channelling her inner Grace Jones over punky basslines and infectious disco beats as the song’s narrator descends – or ascends – into a new realm (“Can’t describe adequately this ethereal dream”).
Needless to say, every underground scene has its sharks, and the art versus commerce dilemma is addressed on the jazzy ‘Exploitation’ as she breathily warns “never underestimate creative people and the depths that they will go,” and ultimately poses the question, “Who’s exploiting who?”
The dramatically bluesy ‘Exile’ deals with outsiders and outcasts, as does the trippy ‘Uninvited Guest’, while ‘House of Glass’ sounds more than slightly autobiographical. A joyous celebration of difference, the title track ‘Hairless Toys (Gotta Hurt)’ is actually more delicate than you’d expect – less the highpoint of the party than its moment of epiphany. Album closer ‘Unputdownable’ is a defiantly heartfelt ballad that poses the question: what’s life without guilt anyway?
Weird, wonderful and at times unbearably poignant, Hairless Toys might be about a drag ball, but it never drags and is always a ball. A fine return to surreal form that fully reconfirms Roisin Murphy’s status as Ireland’s queen of alt-pop. Welcome back, your majesty. Things just weren’t the same without you.
KEY TRACK: 'Gone Fishing'