Dubliner Barry McCormack releases his seventh studio album ‘Mean Time’ on November 22nd on Hags Head Records.

The former Jubilee Allstars man is famed for his witty and cutting observational lyrics which tackle serious issues such as homelessness, global warming, mental health and the rise of the far-right. However, he does this from a whimsical – and often absurdist –  viewpoint, through the filter of the gentrification and desolation of Dublin.

Speaking about the themes of desolation that run through ‘Mean Time’ like tributaries leading to a central point of social consciousness – and despair at the lack of it – Barry says: “I’m an observer rather than an activist. I feel passionate about the abandonment and dereliction that is everywhere. Are we going to end up in the same situation as San Francisco, where it’s three grand for a bedsit and around the corner everyone is homeless and it’s a really nasty, violent atmosphere? The ‘Costafication’ of Dublin is a blandification of public spheres. I was in Berlin recently and they have all these amazing spaces like The Bernard Shaw; alternative spaces. We’re losing that and I get people who are passionate about this.”

The video for lead single ‘Lived Through this Before’ (out Friday 1st November) stars actor Aidan Gillen (Game Of Thrones, The Wire, Peaky Blinders) as a conspiracy theorist vlogger mouthing the lyrics of the song while a trio of bemused onlookers find themselves caught up in his strange charisma: ‘They are serving killer salad on the shores of the Baltic,’ goes the opening line, ‘any moment now they’ll impose martial law.’

Barry McCormack launches ‘Mean Time’ in The Workman’s Club, Dublin (Main Room) on  Saturday, 30th November 2019. Tickets €10.00 on sale now.