Skip to main content

Home Music Music News

Sinead O’Brien releases new song ‘There Are Good Times Coming’

The single is the third release from her forthcoming debut album arriving in June

By Hollie Geraghty

Sinead O'Brien stands in between two men against a pink and blue backdrop
Sinead O'Brien (Picture: Chloe le Drezen/ Press).

Irish singer-songwriter Sinead O’Brien has released her razor-sharp new single, ‘There Are Good Times Coming’.

It’s the third cut from the punk poet’s debut album, ‘Time Bend And Break The Bower’, out June 10, following singles ‘Girlkind’ and ‘Holy Country’.

For love or for money there are good times coming,” she sings on the dizzying track, complete with a disorientating, neon-lined music video.

Speaking about the song, O’Brien said: “It’s a hyper real, close-up look at the surroundings of this place, and a glance to the horizon. Mundane observations weave in and around concepts of RITUALS, MANIFESTATIONS, INTENTIONS. A mantra anchors me as I spin and fall in an alternate space. Watch the ripple effect of things play out; life, ideas, episodes. A subtle movement makes the biggest tremors.

“There are moments where the music is sparse and the lyrics hang around a while. It’s a strange space, warmth and coolness in the air. Full moon, dogs barking in the distance and an empty railway station. ‘There Are Good Times Coming’ is not a dream, it’s a restless night.”

O’Brien also earlier offered some insight on what to expect from her debut album: “The story of the album is built up in layers; one song giving context to the next.

“I thought about becoming undressed; testing my ideas, my voice. Working myself out across themes of identity, curiosity, creative process. Experimenting with the form and shape of language, using tone and delivery to get to the immediate centre of what I am saying. The record opens and closes with poems, these tracks have a really clear direction – a form which is set apart from the ‘songs’. I hold stops in different places, moving emphatically through the lyrics, changing the meaning. No punctuation – only the voice mapping out the way.”

She added that the album title is from her song ‘Multitudes’ which “made its demands, an idea that pressed on me throughout the record”.

She continued: “It has a very active role. The clock symbol is enlarged, it looms like a moon over my activity watching, counting me down to zero. Dripping with self-sabotage and the feeling of being chased; it pulls and pushes against the verses which talk of ’Multitudes’; the things that faithfully come back – the images, the words, creativity. It is creativity itself.”

Find the full ‘Time Bend and Break The Bower’ tracklisting below.

1. ‘Pain Is The Fashion Of The Spirit’
2. ‘Salt’
3. ‘Girlkind’

4. ‘End Of Days’
5. ‘Like Culture’
6. ‘The Rarest Kind’
7. ‘Holy Country’
8. ‘Spare For My Size, Me’
9. ‘There Are Good Times Coming’
10. ‘Multitudes’
11. ‘Go Again’