The culmination of a trilogy of releases starting with 2019’s “Local Boy Ruins Everything” – “Local Boy Climbs The Ladder” sees the prolific Dublin artist closing the page on his locally loved bedroom-pop project with 10 tracks he has carefully crafted over the past year.
Local Boy aims to give listeners a look into his day-to-day life on the album, with each track serving as an honest exploration of the issue he and his generation face. The album’s opener “Tax Haven” is a critique of the hopelessness endemic amongst young people in Ireland faced with a housing market that is hostile to their needs. Track 9 “Panopticon” focuses on Local Boy’s frustrations with the pervasive encroachment of technology and social media into every aspect of modern life.
Local Boy invites two new voices into his world on “Control” and “Stability” with up-and-coming Drogheda indie artist hotgirl on the former and Dublin electronic artist Boyfrens on the latter. “Control” is the first released collaboration of Local Boy and hotgirl who work with each other extensively – Local Boy plays bass in her live band and is working on production for her upcoming debut release.
As with all releases under the Local Boy banner, the album was painstakingly crafted by Dubliner Jake Hurley who handles all writing, production, recording, mixing and mastering duties for the project – a process that he feels makes the music as direct an expression of his daily life and thoughts as possible. This factor he feels is the key to the success of the Local Boy project.
“I just can’t relinquish control on this project to another creative voice in the mixing or mastering stage,” Local Boy says. “My entire mission statement for this project is that it gives as honest a look into the life and struggles of myself and by extension young people as a wider group. I feel every step of the creative process is one where this honesty can be displayed and if not handled correctly, lost”.
“This release feels like closing the page on the book I started back in 2019,” the Dubliner continues. “I really want it to feel like an exciting moment in my discography because it’s the final appearance of Local Boy in his current form. I’m not settled on my next steps in music right now but I know it’s going to be something of a reinvention of the character I’ve built over the past several years”.
“This project has been the centerpiece of my life over the past several years, it’s landed me international gigs, a publishing deal, and got me through a global pandemic. So I really wanted to do the Local Boy character justice and close out the trilogy in a way that builds from the previous two releases.”
‘Local Boy Climbs the Ladder’ is out now:
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