THE FOUR of Us return with a brand new album, Sugar Island, and a series of live dates scheduled in their increasingly busy diary. The band, who play Belfast's Lyric Theatre on November 6, are in fine form musically and creatively, with the new record representing the latest impressive chapter in their illustrious career. Sugar Island is very much an autobiographical tale of the Murphy brothers' formative years in Newry and how the surroundings affected their lives and their songwriting. Frontman Brendan tells me that this collection of songs has been steadily brewing for decades. “The album is mostly about about our lives and experiences growing up – from family life to romances and all the the things we saw and learned along the way. I suppose it's best to write about what you know and everyone, whether they're a songwriter or not, carries so many memories that make them the person they are, so these songs and themes have always been in my head. It was just a matter of getting them out and turning them into songs.” Thematically the material touches on everything from first loves to family holidays, the latter beautifully illustrated by one of the album's stand-out tracks, Going South, where Brendan sings of crossing through the border checkpoint with the whole family crammed into the Murphy clan's saloon and how the songs on the radio or his father's 8 Track stereo system filled him with excitement.
