Why Roisin Murphy Is Now More Grown Up Than "Bangin' House"

Roisin Murphy figures she has two kinds of fans. "There are people who just want me to do bangin' house all the time," says the 43-year-old Irish singer, those drawn to her ongoing Boris Dlugosch collaborations and the ultra-glossy dance-pop she paraded on 2007's Overpowered. Then there are the others, up for following Murphy no matter where her oddball whims take her — those who loved late period Moloko and her solo debut, 2005's Ruby Blue. It's the latter who'll be delighted by her fourth solo LP, Take Her Up To Monto, whose mercurial songs amount to Murphy's most experimental effort yet.

"We weren't sure when we were making this record whether it was the right thing to do for our fanbase," Murphy says, "but I didn't want to make bangin' house this time, or make something as straight pop as Overpowered. I wanted to make this more complex, grown up, experimental thing. And you have to make the music that's natural for you to make; there's no point kicking against stuff, because then you just end up with something that sounds watered down."

"Years ago, we started a band called Eggs Rated, and it was just absolute filth.We buried that a long time ago; hopefully no one'll ever find it and realise what perverts we are."

Take Her Up To Monto was recorded at the same time as last year's Hairless Toys, which marked Murphy's comeback after a long stint spent raising kids and "just living life". After recording 2014's Italian-language EP Mi Senti with her boyfriend Sebastiano Properzi, she threw herself back into music making. Murphy got together with former Moloko collaborator Eddie Stevens, whom she's worked with for 20 years in various guises. "Years ago, we started a band called Eggs Rated, and it was just absolute filth," Murphy remembers. "We buried that a long time ago; hopefully no one'll ever find it and realise what perverts we are."

Once the pair got together to write songs they came so thick and fast "we were just spurting them out", Murphy says — they knew they'd be making two albums at once. "We conceived them from the start of recording as sibling records. Hairless Toys is more the nice sister, whereas Take Her Up To Monto is the more extreme, complicated one. The arrangements are quite complicated — there's many, many twists and turns, big epics. There's emotional extremities in the lyrics, which are a bit more personal. It was just a bit more pointy in all directions."

Making these two LPs has meant that Murphy's comeback has been hectic, the last two years non-stop creative work. She's made all of the music videos, the artwork, does much of the social media, and her live shows have become a parade of costume changes. "Everything around the music making situation is much more do it yourself, these days," Murphy says. "Being a pop video director for other people is really hard: no money, loads of treatments, not getting jobs, and it can be very uncreative if you don't have complete carte blanche. But, doing videos for myself, I can do what I want no matter how weird the idea. My house is full of stuff. I'm constantly unpacking, repacking, unpacking, repacking. Editing, editing, editing. Editing imagery, editing clothes, editing props. It's just a constant stream of different kinds of creativity. The more you do, the more you get out of it. The more you feed the monster, the bigger it grows."