10 saturday review 1GR Saturday November 14 2020 | the times

particularly relatable line in one song,

Kingdom of Ends.

That track is also, she says, a tribute to

Mark Fisher, the writer who committed

suicide in 2017. She had bought a book of

Fisher’s collected blogs without knowing

that it included a review of Moloko. “He

got me just right. He’s really into all the

things I’m into — JG Ballard, David

Cronenberg, glam rock — all the things

that feed into what I think is cool. I felt un-

derstood. He described me as quite sexy,

but for my own sake. Ha ha. He compared

me to other pop stars — said sometimes

these girls had been prodded out on to the

stage and they’re not really enjoying it.

Whereas he recognised that I’m totally in

control of my own performance. Well, not

in control, but it’s my performance.”

The mistakes, indeed, are part of the ap-

peal. In one of the home videos she posted

on Instagram during lockdown she danced

around her coffee table, fell over extrava-

gantly and sprang back up, yelling: “I’m all

right!” She laughs. “There’ll be a fair bit of

that on Saturday. I’m trying to do an awful

lot of f***ing things at once. It’s like I’m

juggling something on my foot, two hands

and balancing something on my head.”

Murphy is a wonderful combination of

glamorous and strange, Donna Summer

meets Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter.

“I had a very rambunctious, expressive

childhood around very interesting but

dramatic adults,” she says. Her parents did

everything from laying roads to dealing

antiques, and brought her up in Ireland in

a “massive Georgian house with no central

heating”. She was bullied at school and her

bedroom was her sanctuary. “I’d be up

there for hours on end, making things,

dressing up, drawing, changing the room

around, building houses for my dolls. I’d

get into bed and my feet would be like two

blocks of ice.”

Another tag that has followed her

through her career is “underrated”. Does

she agree? “I could do with a hit! Ha ha. But

in the end the whole catalogue, it says

something. I’m proud of it. Very proud of

it.” I wonder if she has improved with age.

“No, because if I compare Do You Like My

Tight Sweater? [her 1995 debut album with

Moloko] with Róisín Machine I wouldn’t

say I prefer Róisín Machine.”

The early record borrowed its title from

Murphy’s chat-up line on meeting Mark

Brydon, who became her partner in Molo-

ko and her boyfriend. “Tight Sweater is a

manifestation of a deep, deep love affair,”

she says. “That’s very unusual, to have that

captured on a record.”

Murphy once talked about working in a

male-dominated environment, how “men

don’t relate to unsexy women”. Has that

changed since Me Too? “Did I say that?

Jesus, I’m gonna get cancelled,” she says. “I

never for one second had any issue with

anyone. A film crew is like a music crew —

they’re gruff fellas. You turn up and you’re

a middle-aged woman in a sexy outfit and

you’re the singer and the director. They’re

already distancing themselves from the

project because they don’t believe I can

pull it off. They don’t understand that I’ve

done it a hundred times before. And I will

do it again.”

Róisín Murphy Live will be broadcast

today at 10am and 9pm, and at 3am

tomorrow. Tickets from mixcloud.com

interview

Empress of

the distanced

dancef loor

Back with a new album, Róisín Murphy is

throwing a lockdown rave, says Ed Potton

‘It was the

hardest day’s

work of my

entire life. I

felt like I’d

been running

around with

zombies

behind me’

R

óisín Murphy has asked

me to call her at 9am on

a Monday. This doesn’t

feel right. She doesn’t

feel like a 9am-on-a-

Monday kind of person.

More like 3am on a

Saturday, ruling the dancefloor in a

multicoloured tutu. The Irish singer-

songwriter’s show in March at the Round-

house in London, one of the last gigs I went

to this year, was a ripsnorting Mardi Gras

before the Lent of lockdown. She gave us

demented dancing, epic outfits and life-

affirming tunes: Nineties floor-fillers such

as Sing It Back from Murphy’s time with

Moloko alongside the imperious yet play-

ful arthouse disco that she makes today.

Opportunities are limited for that kind

of behaviour at the moment. The pan-

demic has turned even nightclub empress-

es into the kind of people who are up first

thing on a Monday. Murphy, 47, has two

children, which doesn’t help on that front

either. Yet she has been doing her best to

evoke the euphoria of a dark, sweaty club

with her new album, the splendidly titled

Róisín Machine, a wonderfully bittersweet

concoction of swooning vocals and envel-

oping beats. Dance music has always run

through her work, she says. “It’s not like we

were sat around a boardroom table at the

record company and they said [adopts

music exec growl], ‘We got this pretty girl

and disco’s hot right now.’ ”

Even so, the album has some of the most

danceable songs of her career, from We

Got Together to Simulation. “You can walk

into it,” Murphy says of the latter. “It’s like

a simulation of a club.”

In the absence of a tour to promote the

record she is throwing a warehouse party

today, albeit a streamed one without any

punters. Shot in London the day before our

interview, it will be an extravaganza in

three parts — a dramatic entrance, a stage

set with full light show and giant screens

and an acoustic finale in which she sings

while moving through the space with her

“very own Bez”, the dancer Lindy Nsingo.

It sounds fun, but it was also “the hardest

day’s work of my entire life”, Murphy says,

her Co Wicklow vowels intact despite

moving to Manchester when she was 12. “I

felt like I’d been running around all day

with zombies behind me. I started at nine

in the morning in the warehouse and I fin-

ished at 12 o’clock at night. It was a big job

for me because I was directing it as well.”

She has directed all her videos since Hair-

less Toys, her Mercury-nominated album

of 2015. This show has lots of costume

changes, she says. You surprise me, I reply.

She was itching to perform after spend-

ing the previous few months at home in

London with her partner, Sebastiano

Properzi, an Italian music producer, their

son, Tadhg, eight, and her daughter, Clod-

agh, ten, from a relationship with the artist

Simon Henwood. She will never marry,

she says. “God no! Not if he was dipped in

gold, as my mother would say.” Lockdown

has certainly coloured the album — this is

raving shot through with Covid ennui.

“Keep waking up every morning thinking,

‘What the hell am I doing?’ ” goes a

murphy’s law Róisín

Murphy and, below, on

stage in London in 2015

ADRIAN SAMSON; BRIAN RASIC/GETTY IMAGES