“I think the music industry is in a much healthier place than it was,” declares Róisín Murphy, speaking in a still-strong Wicklow accent. “It’s much better for artists now than it used to be… so long as you’re smart about it. You have to adapt or die. That’s my thing. Deal with the tools in hand. Be pragmatic.”
Although it’s been a full eight years since the feisty Murphy last released a studio album, the 41-year-old, Arklow-born singer maintains that, despite the digital decimation of physical sales, many things have changed for the better.
Unlike many other “stars” of her generation, she has actually managed to sustain a decent living from her art. “My bread and butter has never been from actual sales of records,” she explains. “The reason why I live well is because I’ve toured a lot and because of my songs being used on advertising, on television, on films. The publishing side has been a good thing for me. So I don’t panic too much about how many records I’m going to sell or how many people are going to download it for free or whatever.
“Obviously, I really super-appreciate it if people buy my record,” she continues. “I mean, that’s a lovely thing, but, for me personally, it’s ten times better than it was because of the whole freedom of who I license records to, and the fact that I’ve got ways of marketing myself now. I’ve got tools that I can use, such as social media. I like the whole atmosphere of taking more responsibility. I actually appreciate it. I think it’s good to be treated like an adult.”
Having first come to prominence as half of successful electro duo Moloko in the mid-’90s, alongside her then-boyfriend Mark Brydon, and subsequently released two acclaimed solo albums in 2005’s Ruby Blue and 2007’s Overpowered, Murphy has been through the record company mill many times over. On reflection, she never particularly enjoyed being cossetted by condescending A&R types.
“In the old days there was a real sort of ‘Culture of Imbecile’,” she sighs. “Of the imbecile musician within the industry. It was like all you could do was make music, that was what they presumed. But actually, you know, nowadays you can say ‘no’. I market myself, I make the videos, I style myself. I am a walking work of art, and there is no art without commerce. You’ve got to get your head round it.Young people coming into it have to be more responsible, and I think that’s good. You have to be a bit more aware, and not so silly as we were in the ’90s.”
Murphy’s lengthy absence from the music scene can largely be attributed to the births of her daughter and son in, respectively, 2009 and 2012. While she might not have released very much in recent times, she was always writing fresh material throughout both pregnancies and young motherhood. “Well, of course I was writing songs,” she says. “I did quite a few featured vocals on other records, and I did a few of my own smaller releases, and so on. So writing, yes, that’s what my children think I do. My daughter, who’s old enough, thinks I write songs and have a lot of clothes. That’s what she thinks I do! So I was writing songs, but going deep and wide… as they say.”
She stealthily re-emerged last year with Mi Senti, a low-key EP of Italian cover versions which she recorded in collaboration with her partner Sebastiano Properzi and long-time musical collaborator Eddie Stevens. Does she actually speak Italian?
“No, I don’t,” she admits. “I speak a little bit. I mean, I have to say I’m surrounded by Italians, and I understand a lot of Italian. I certainly can sing in it, but talking I’d be very nervous. So in a short answer, no.”
Murphy has just released her provocatively titled third solo album, Hairless Toys. Inventively produced by Stevens, it features just eight songs – one for every year of her absence – but still proves itself to be well worth the wait. Musically, its 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. Ultimately, though, 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, the singer 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.
Even so, she now rejects the notion that it’s a concept album. “I tried to impose concepts, but I kind of couldn’t really stick to them,” she says. “So no, in the end, it didn’t become a concept album. There was a second there where I thought when I wrote [album opener] ‘Gone Fishing’ that perhaps I could write a whole sort of musical to Paris Is Burning. I had that in my mind a little bit to begin with, but then couldn’t stick to it. I didn’t have the discipline!”
She wrote the album over five weeks late last year, holed up in Eddie Stevens’ studio in a time of hyper-productivity. “We actually wrote 35 songs in a short time, in a few weeks last winter, and then there’s only eight songs on the record. But I feel like we’ll find other ways of releasing a lot of those songs. We wrote two songs a day for a few weeks, so it was a good laugh.”
Her collaborative relationship with Stevens is obviously strong and fruitful. “He’s one of the all-time great people to work with ever,” she enthuses. “On anything, really. He’s just sort of simultaneously extremely creative and ultradisciplined and yet… well, he’s very funny. He’s a very, very funny man too. So there’s a lot of focus, a great deal of focus, but there’s a lot of laughter as well. That’s kind of how he works.”
The Hairless Toys title came about when the producer misheard a lyric. “Yeah, it’s a misunderstanding,” she explains. “It’s something that Eddie thought I sang on one of the songs. And I hadn’t named the song. I left the studio and he had to name it, so he thought I was saying ‘hairless toys’. I was actually singing ‘careless talk’. And he called it ‘Hairless Toys’ and that just hung around for a while and I just thought, ‘What the hell kind of a mind thinks I was singing hairless toys?’ (laughs)
“And then when I came to do the sequence of the record – decide what tracks are on, which order they came in– it happened very quickly, much more than other records. And I did it in Ireland actually, around Christmas time in Ireland. Late at night, got up, and made my decision about what tracks went where. I looked down at the eight songs and there was ‘Hairless Toys’ and I just thought, ‘That’s it, you don’t have to worry anymore about the title of the record. That’s the title!’”
Murphy laughs, and poignantly pauses, when Hot Press informs her that the album title seems to suggest freshly plucked twinks and transvestites in that underground NYC club scene evoked in Paris Is Burning.
“Well…” she observes. “That’s your problem!”