JOHN GRANT, the American singer-songwriter, whose albums Queen Of Denmark and Pale Green Ghosts have won him admiration and acclaim, is coming to Galway.
Grant will make his second visit to the city to play what will be his second show at the Róisín Dubh on Wednesday March 5 at 8pm and there a re only a haandful of tickets left.
2014 has got off to a great start for the Michigan born, Colorado raised, musician, with Pale Green Ghosts, which mixes his seventies styled, classic pop-rock, with electronic elements, making the Best of 2013 lists in The Guardian, Q, Uncut, Mojo, and The Sunday Times, culminating in the Brit Awards International Male Solo Artist nomination.
The Guardian has called his music “self-obsessed but completely compelling, profoundly discomforting but beautiful, lost in its own fathomless personal misery, but warm, funny and wise”; while The Sunday Telegraph said his songwriting is “erudite, bittersweet and catchy”.
Grant has recently released the video for ‘Glacier’, Pale Green Ghosts’ magnificent closing track, on YouTube. It features footage, clips, and images , to give an idiosyncratic history of the gay rights struggle.
Grant is HIV positive and went public by announcing it in front of a live audience at London’s Meltdown festival in June 2012. The song ‘Ernest Borgnine’ also contains this admission of the artist’s health.
“It’s what I wrote the song about so I thought I should talk about it there and then,” Grant has explained. “I thought I shouldn’t be afraid to talk about it, as there are lots of people in my situation,who feel like outcasts in society, who had addiction problems, who feel ashamed and unlovable because of it. I want these people to know they have someone on a stage who is dealing with this too.”
Grant is now based in Icelandic capital of Reykjavik, but it is a move he feels empowered by.
“Moving to Reykjavik, at the age of 43, was incredibly risky and scary,” he says. “I didn’t know anyone here, but I’ve built up a life here, and recorded an album I’m really proud of, that distils what I’m about down to its most essential components...and this was during the middle of health issues. It means I’m trying to take the bull by the horns, and to live.”
Tickets are available at www.roisindubh.net, the Ticket Desk at OMG Zhivago, Shop Street, and The Róisín Dubh.
