WEXFORD ARTS Centre will be rocking to the sounds of iconic Irish hits when Newry band ‘The 4 of Us’ come to town this Saturday.
Brothers Brendan and Declan Murphy have been entertaining audiences for over twenty five years, yet their latest release, autobiographical album Sugar Island, presents a band at the peak of their musical mastery.
Their Arts Centre date comes hot on the heels of a sold-out night at the Spiegeltent last month, when they relived glory days of emerging Irish music and played alongside the Tom Dunne-fronted Something Happens.
“That was some craic,” Brendan told this newspaper with delight, while describing how “I have never enjoyed touring as much as I do at the moment.”
Revelling in the intimate atmospheres of theatres and venues across the country on the band’s current nationwide tour, The 4 of Us are perfoming a sumptuous platter of classic hits and new pieces with room on the set list for requests and a good dose of fun along the way.
Unlike some other groups who tire of performing their trademark anthem, the Murphy brothers are delighted to play ‘Mary’ and bring nostalgia to fans everywhere as soon as they strum the hit’s unmistakeable opening chords.
Brendan wrote the song, he said, in a bid to woo the attention of a girl a few years his senior who lived across the road from him when he was young.
“She had a boyfriend and didn’t know I was interested in her,” he said.
Sugar Island, the band’s latest offering, provides fans with a unique insight into the Murphy’s life growing up together in Newry through some of the worst days of the Troubles.
Contrary to the scenes of violence which would have been beamed into the homes of Wexford families on a regular basis by television reports in the 1970s and 1980s, Brendan highlights how the Murphys were fun-loving children whose parents ensured they enjoyed as normal a lifestyle as possible.
Memories of holidays and being held up at checkpoints en route are just some of those vignettes presented in the new songs.
Fittingly so, though perhaps unusually enough, the album cover portrays the back seat of their parents’ car.
The band play Wexford Arts Centre this Saturday night, November 19th, at 8:30pm.
Read more in the Wexford Echo.