Indie-folk artist Hugh Sheehan's new single is an ode to the LGBTQ+ community

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Debut album Shapes That Are Different 
is out on June 2nd via Hybrid Forms

“Sheehan offers a poetic ode to queer iconoclasm, examining the daring power inherent in queer existence”  Under The Radar

Shapes That Are Different, the genre-bending debut album from Hugh Sheehan, will not be confined to any one box. The album, a sincere and open-hearted debut, is a deep dive into the experience of growing up as a queer person in 90’s Birmingham. Today, Sheehan has shared the album's title track, an ode to the wider LGBTQ+ community. 

Of his new single, which premiered on Under The Radar, Sheehan says: 
"This song crystallises the underlying sentiment of the record. It speaks of the ties to the queer people who have come before us, and to the conflicts and contradictions, expectation and presumptions that are inherent to queerness. Above all it is a mantra to myself to always strive to live life on my terms.”

Recorded partly at his family home in Birmingham, as well as in Helsinki, London, and The Isle of Lismore; Shapes That Are Different is a confluence of Irish folk songwriting, indie-adjacent production, and electronic sound design. 

“I’m totally obsessed with shame,” says Sheehan. “I just want to put it on a table and stare at it and inspect all of its facets. Perhaps that speaks to how deep its tendrils have stretched into my psyche. Shame is so universal—ubiquitous—but also so individual and isolating; and so this album is me figuring out what it means to me,” he continues. 

In addition to closely examining shame, Shapes That Are Different sees Sheehan calling into question many of the conflicts inherent to queerness - ruminating on topics such as the quandary of assimilation vs radicalism, the codification of desire through language and semiotics, curriculums, and even dating and hookup apps.

Sheehan grew up in Birmingham in an Irish family surrounded by music. He began playing the diatonic button accordion at the age of 5 and his love of music would lead him down many paths over the subsequent years, including playing at traditional folk festivals around the UK and Ireland, stints in various indie bands in his teenage years, before eventually studying Composition and Music Technology. It was during this time that Hugh discovered his love for American minimalism, as well as experimental electronic music. After completing his undergrad, he moved to Helsinki, where all of the strands of his musical life, until now somewhat disparate, began to entangle.

At the start of the pandemic, Sheehan moved from Helsinki back to his mum’s house in Birmingham for a few months. Whilst he was there, Sheehan found an old nylon string guitar which became the perfect distraction during an otherwise fairly distressing time. “I found it a very freeing way of making music - I wasn’t bound by the theory or orthodox technicalities that went with the instrument, and that I sometimes get bogged down in when writing music at the piano or conventionally scoring things. It was the most excited I’d been about making music in some time,” he says. Many of the songs on Shapes That Are Different stem from that time. 

When listening to Shapes That Are Different, one gets the impression that this isn’t just an album of arrestingly intricate songs, but that this is also a peek into the psyche of someone who is still figuring things out. “The process would have been worth it even if the album wasn’t to see the light of day—I wouldn’t do anything differently,” says Sheehan. “I used the album as a vehicle to just really try and figure out what it means to be queer, to think about the shame and baggage that is a result of growing up queer in the time and age that I did. It’s very much a journal or documentation of these things. And so I think that probably means it’s worth putting out into the world.”

Tracklist

Shapes That Are Different
Lessons
James
Exhale 
He
Beyond What You Know
Where Do We Go 
Nothing
Ascend
I Am Good
The Right Kind Of Tears
Cinema

Pre-order the album here

About Hugh Sheehan

Hugh Sheehan is a musician—multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer— from Birmingham. He plays with and writes for several projects, including his own ensemble with whom he premiered the evening-length composition Act of Discovery in Finland's national music centre in 2017, and for whom he is currently writing an interdisciplinary chamber opera. In 2019 he was commissioned by BBC Arts and Arts Council England to make an audio work for their New Creatives series. The work, Lost Time, explores the time lost and experiences gained by LGBTQ+ people in getting to truly be themselves. He was recently commissioned by The Sunday Boys and Melo'Men through Institut Français’s fund for contemporary music to write a new work for low-voice choir and accordion. Sheehan holds a BMus (Hons) from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and an MMus from the Sibelius Academy.

Hugh also works as a composer and sound designer for theatre, with recent productions at Park Theatre, Finborough Theatre, Vault Festival, and the Gate Theatre (London), the Richard Burton Theatre (Cardiff), Vapaan Taiteen Tila (Helsinki), and The Old Rep (Birmingham) working alongside directors such as Gabriella Bird, Ned Bennett, Christa Harris, Josh Roche, and Charlotte Westenra. 

In addition to his artistic practice, Hugh is co-founder, co-director and chairperson of The Trip to Birmingham TradFest, an Irish traditional music festival in the UK’s second city, and Helsinki concert series/record label Hybrid Forms.