Blindness by The Murder Capital | Album Review

The third album from the Irish post-punk quintet embraces fast-past songwriting with (mostly) rocking results.

Ireland has proved a valuable incubator for post-punk bands. Names like Fontaines D.C. and Sprints have proliferated globally since the late 2010s, and brought new attention to the music scene of the Emerald Isle.

Among these rising stars are a Dublin quintet called The Murder Capital, whose sophomore album Gigi’s Recovery I reviewed in 2023. It was a record I found excellently composed, if challenging from a songwriting perspective. I found it hard to penetrate the dense walls of inscrutable lyrics, and there weren’t many catchy, commercial moments to break through that cerebrality.

They would be the first to admit Gigi’s Recovery was overwritten, as they discuss in interviews tinkering on these tunes for years, laboring over unnecessary fine details. So for their third album Blindness, they took a new approach, writing and recording all eleven songs in almost as many days, trying to capture a primal feeling that was absent from Gigi’s.

The result is Blindness, an LP that combines the hazy, layered guitar sound of their earlier work with a feeling of letting go, of abandoning a perfectionist approach and living in the moment. While it might not always result in a successful product, this new attitude feels like a revitalizing shot in the arm for The Murder Capital.

Opening track “Moonshot” bears out that change in mindset, launching us into the record with a wall of fuzzed out guitar riffs before frontman James McGovern immediately comes in with characteristically blurry lyrics about human relationships:

Separate the thought

You can't be caught without

Moving through the air

You're there within, without

I can hold the tongue

The cat forgot about.

“Can’t Pretend To Know” keeps that hazy energy going, with clattering cymbals and off-beat guitar riffs capturing the anxiety of watching childlike innocence collapse under the weight of adulthood:

The Eiffel Tower leans

In the sunshine and on magazines

Took your car out to Spree

And killed what we had dreamed

I’m just a plastic figurine

So I can't pretend to know.

A standout moment of Blindness comes with “The Fall,” one of the most raucous tracks on the album, and a picture of pure fatalistic anxiety. McGovern sings that “the fall is coming,” and everything built up around him is doomed to fall apart. The guitars squeal and drums roar to match the nervous chaos of the lyrics.

And then there’s “Death Of A Giant,” a heartfelt tribute to Shane McGowan of the legendary Irish punk band The Pogues. I love how inherently Irish this song is, as McGovern describes watching McGowan’s funeral procession travel through Dublin:

Black horse with black feathers on their head

Marked the permanence of death, as the Liffey moved, it wept

Young band marching slowly on their feet

The canvas sings the songs we seek while the Shannon starts to weep.

Despite these highlights, I run into problems with Blindness pretty quickly. Possibly because of the speed at which they wrote and recorded the album, certain songs feel lacking to me.

For instance, the aforementioned “Moonshot” feels like it’s missing a bridge or an extra chorus. Just when it’s getting going, it suddenly stops. The same is true of the jaunty “A Distant Life,” which is a lovely little palette cleanser until its two verses run their course, and it unceremoniously ends.

I also have issues with “Love Of Country,” the longest song on Blindness, and its most inherently political. Lyrically, this is a high point on the album, McGovern’s poetry about how the common misery of lower class life funnels people toward extreme nationalism is incredibly poignant:

Under Canal, I sat with Domino, where we shared our lives in full

Commonalities and our tragedies make for quite the afternoon

Just kids reachin' out to daydreams when our homes have lost their shape

Could you blame us from your pulpit? We had no choice but to escape

The six-year-old inside me sat before my eyes, all new

I've been drenched in my regrets and while you stunted I still grew

Oh, I'm just a kid reachin' out to daydreams from a few pots of this land

Could you blame me for mistakin' your love of country for hate of man?

However, I personally dislike McGovern’s voice over this spotlit acoustic ballad. The tortured melody of this song simply isn’t suited for his distinctive vocal style. It leaves his voice sounding strained, adding a degree of unpleasantness that detracts from what he has to say.

Despite a couple lows, though, The Murder Capital feel more in tune with themselves as musicians than ever before. That cohesion and musicianship can only serve them well going forward, and hopefully bear even more rocking fruit in the near future.

Production: 6/10

Lyrics: 8/10

Songwriting: 7/10

Overall: 7/10

Favorites: Can’t Pretend To Know, The Fall, Death Of A Giant

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Thank you for reading! What did you think of this album? Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts and recommendations.