Mr Billy Fitzgerald has “A Grand Romantic Gesture” for you with debut solo album

Talks journey so far, plight of musicians in increasingly-expensive Dublin, Ireland

Mr Billy Fitzgerald in a Niamh Barry photo for “A Grand Romantic Gesture.”

About two weeks ago, “A Grand Romantic Gesture” went out from Dublin, Ireland to all the world’s musical platforms. If you listen to or purchase Mr Billy’s Fitzgerald album on any of them (particularly the most equitable Bandcamp) … if via Bandcamp you get to hold the record cover with an image of Fitzgerald in a suit worthy of a Barry White (or a Prince or a Beck), then you get to experience an exploration of love’s up and downs that’s almost never down on its crooner. On a soulful rock album full of gems like "Give Me A Chance," "Work For It," "You Had Your Chance" and "Six II Midnight," Fitzgerald navigates yearning, love and heartbreak in toe-tapping fashion.

“I think the theme of the album emerged as I wrote the songs,” Fitzgerald tells Chilltown Blues. “Or later, when I started to think about the whole rather than the individual songs. I didn’t really set out with a concept or have a specific idea about overall themes or subject matter.”

“When I write songs, I do it from more of an unconscious place. I don’t really know what I’m going to write about or where the song is going to go. I just get an idea and follow it. It’s usually only when I look back weeks, months or years later that I realize that I was writing about something specific. So it’s very normal for me not to think about what it’s going to be about.

Fitzgerald’s main thing is that it feels true, he said. “I have an internal bullshit-detector that means I may not know exactly what I’m writing about, but I know if it feels true or if I’m wandering away from that. But usually the song is about something fairly personal.

“I wrote almost all of the songs for this album in a two-year period where I was happily living with my girlfriend – we’re now married – and I was about as far from heartbreak as you can get,” Fitzgerald continues. “But I feel a lot of guilt over old relationships; I hold onto a lot of hurt and regret. And I found myself exploring those feelings, bringing them to the surface through the songs.”

Fitzgerald wears some of his influences on his pastel-purple sleeves. You can’t really go wrong with creating music that evokes Motown, as he does here. When done well, it sounds perennially fresh (If you haven’t listened to Motown, check out some of it and ask yourself where a group like Jungle would be without it). What makes Fitzgerald’s music about love feel particularly distinct in the contemporary landscape, especially considering what underlies it, as he will explain, is this steadfast lack of disregarding himself. There’s a self-empowering angle to them.

“I agree that there is self-empowerment in these songs,” Fitzgerald says. “I think it comes through being able to look back at those things, knowing that I’m a better person now, that I know myself better and I like myself a lot more. So when I find myself wallowing in those old remembered feelings, I feel like I’m putting my arm around my younger self and trying to help him see that things will be better. He was so confused and frustrated and angry, and I think he needed more of that.

“I naturally write more upbeat music; I generally don’t like sad-sounding songs about sad subjects. I think it’s a little lazy. Smokey Robinson’s ‘The Tears Of a Clown’ is a great example of what I like: here’s this desperately sad guy trying to hold his shit together in public but the song sounds like a party rather than how sad he’s feeling. And for some reason, I think that hits deeper. The music is accessible and you can listen to it no matter how you’re feeling. And I think that allows the lyrics get to go deeper. I think that’s what I subscribe to,” Fitzgerald says.

Fitzgerald is a fan of musicians that take on serious subjects with a humorous touch.

“Eels do that brilliantly,” he says, “and it’s something people often miss about Nick Cave or Leonard Cohen. I really like laughing at the notion of this self-pitying guy so playing that up in the lyrics and the music.”

This approach make his album cover’s own tongue-in-cheek artwork a natural one.

Will Dublin’s changing status quo sound familiar to anyone in the Chilltown/NYC-area? Read on to find out …