Today sees the release of Piece-dye, the new avant-pop album from Dublin based American artist Cal Folger Day. A brilliant chanteuse and talented multi-instrumentalist, Day wrote the album after meeting Irene Nally, a distant aunt and Irish immigrant whose experience of arriving in New York City in the post-war boom inspired her. All the lyrics in Piece-dye are verbatim quotes from the interviews Day conducted with Nally. Day recalls:

“several visits later we sat down at her kitchen table and recorded an hour-long conversation on my phone, in which she reflected on her life and career. The first thing she told me was, ‘You’re trying to do this project… you’ll have to do a whole lot of embellishing… it’s your own creation’ — which turned out to be both true and false. Irene passed away after an aggressive form of ovarian cancer last year. In many ways we had polar opposite characters, but we were clearly on some mutual quest to see ourselves clearer through our friendship.”

Quirky, fascinating and compelling, Piece-dye is an album that deserves your time and attention. For a marvellous taster, here’s ‘Act 2’ and its accompanying video shot by Blob Galahad.

Piece-dye is out now through Dead Lady Records