Aoife Nessa Frances

About

" Poetry of the soul rooted in Irish soil "

Aoife Nessa Frances (it’s pronounced, ee-fa) started her public musical life as half of acclaimed Dublin shoegaze band ‘Princess’, way back in 2013, with the band tagged locally as having the potential to go huge. By 2015 it was all over for the moody twosome, though, and the vocalist re-emerged a few years later in a very different guise.

Her solo unveiling saw the singer blend the contemporary and ancient roots, as she drew on folk elements and a kind of vague 60s psychedelic nostalgia, as well as exploring her own experience in deeply personal lyrics. On Pitchfork-approved 2020 debut album ‘Land Of No Junction’ – a wordplay on the misheard name of Welsh town Llandudno Junction – you’ll find ‘Geranium’, a track loaded with double meaning. In the chorus, Aoife sings “Glass flower in an empty drawer, why throw the things you’ve picked?”, an image that evokes layers of despair. The blend of poetry and carefully concealed meaning, delivered with beautifully varied texture, is typical of the singer’s style, which serves up a gut punch on Ireland’s 2018 abortion-referendum in ‘Blow Up’ on which she sings “Tired of Being Human, Lesser Than A Man”.

On follow up ‘Protector’, Aoife Nessa Frances gets close to nature, even offering the option to grab the vinyl record with accompanying incense to inhale while she delivers odes to Ireland’s famously rugged and beautiful Atlantic coast. Once again the record drew international attention, as the subtle performer, newly signed to Partisan (Fontaines DC, Laura Marling, IDLES), drops her more personal-meets-political side and instead evokes more of a mood, combining a plodding beauty with a kind of semi-mythical search for meaning in solitude.

On ‘This Still Life’, for example, she sings about being embedded in the harsh calm of the rural west, and the way it speaks to her quest to find her own place, as she sings “I took a boat to Mayo, swam out off the island, and waited for the sun to set and bathe my answers.”

In the most simplistic of ways, Aoife Nessa Frances draws on varied instrumentation, a vivid imagination and a heady sense of poetry to paint a picture that’s uniquely her own. More broadly, she’s firmly embedded in the Irish storytelling tradition, and exceptional at uncovering the gorgeous parallels of person and place that express who she is. Gentle and transformative, Aoife can also deliver a cutting line, the metaphorical kiss with a fist.