Leaving Home Party

Catherine Ireton left home in Ireland nine years ago, and tihe only marker of the occasion is that the night she disappeared she was watching Lost with her friends. This delicate song cycle finds a celebration of its own in wittily exploring leaving home, coming adrift and letting go of the past.

Ireton anchors these broad themes with well-chosen details. Armed with the bag she calls her “19.9kg,” she’s flying away from Limerick, a city whose name means “barren place.” It’s no joke for Ireton, who needs a fresh start to make it as a singer. Her jazz-tinged, light but versatile voice lingers on remembered phrases—her Dad’s  parting statement that “You can always come home if you don’t like it”—as well as experimenting with portentous reverb on her destination Glasgow. Some songs take on a gutsier tone, too, like the story of her great grandmother’s journey up the Zambezi river.

Ireton’s performance doesn’t sugarcoat her life’s more mundane passages. She criticises her own passivity, which locks her away from home into a two year iPhone contract and a promotion at her call centre job. But she leaves a lot out, too – like the fact that she moved to Glasgow to work with Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian.

Ireton’s great grandmother died within ten miles of her Irish birthplace – she’s admired for having something to come home to. Adrift from her own heritage, Ireton doesn’t quite make sense of her leaving, but she celebrates its ambiguities in a party worth going to.

http://festival14.summerhall.co.uk/event/leaving-home-party/