The Dublin singer David Balfe, who creates under the name For Those I love, has returned after a four year break from releasing music with an emotional and poetic new track ‘Of The Sorrows’. The song was released alongside a self directed music video produced by Dave McCabe, frontman of the Liverpool alt-indie band The Zutons. The new single is a uniquely personal reflection on one’s place and environment. He says in an Instagram announcement for its release, “At its heart Of The Sorrows is about a city rapidly boxing you out, and the choices you make in order to stay.”
‘Of The Sorrows’ shows a complexity to the concept of home through an artistic electronic track sung in spoken word. The music video begins with a fact – “Shrouds have been used to bury the dead for centuries.” The audience then follows the video through the streets of Ireland with a cloth draped over its buildings and flowing through roads.
Balfe discusses the increasingly unliveable conditions of living in Ireland against the sense of belonging in one’s home town with lines such as “bankrupt yourself just to stay where you belong”. Then in a chilling and heart-breaking refrain he repeats, “Stay here in Ireland.”
The song reaches an emotional crescendo as he battles with himself screaming, “I’ll never leave, I have to leave.” with a traditional Irish jig haunting his vocals.
‘Of The Sorrows’ comes four years after his self-titled 2021 album, a deeply personal album on grief. The project was never intended for release, originally kept on BandCamp for friends and family to hear, however they encouraged him to release it after being approached by Ash Houghton at September Records. The album won the RTÉ Choice Music Prize for Album of the Year upon its release.
‘For Those I Love’ gives an intimate experience of grief, as the singer wrote the album for his friend Paul Curran who he lost to suicide. He spoke with The Rolling Stones about the album, sharing “I didn’t know who I was any more without him when the person I was lay in tandem with him for so many years, day in and day out.”
His sound is a distinctive and hypnotic synth expression of heartbreak, particularly in his most listened to track on Spotify ‘I Have A Love (Overmono Remix)’, which currently has over 3m listens.
Many were sceptical about how the singer would follow on from such an emotionally raw album, though it seems fans and Irish-born listeners were struck by the new single and only want more.
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The artist is keeping quiet about his next moves, though fans are excited for new music to come. Stay tuned on his website.
