NEW ROOTS presents… LOUIS BRENNAN
‘A master storyteller with a voice like rolling thunder’ – GQ Magazine
‘His ability to twist and turn a simple phrase can render the most innocent line into something utterly heartbreaking’ – Clash Magazine
London-based Dubliner Louis Brennan is singer-songwriter in the folk tradition. His folk however aren’t the field hands and travelling minstrels of yore but the repressed middle managers and ennui-ridden urbanites of late-stage capitalism. They populate tales of bad sex, half-drunk commutes and interpersonal claustrophobia delivered in Brennan’s cracked baritone, peppered with pitch-black humour.
His 2018 debut album ‘Dead Capital’ garnered favourable comparisons to Kris Kristofferson, Guy Clark and Leonard Cohen, and was awarded 9/10 by Americana Uk who called it ‘an outstanding album- deep, dark and demanding of attention’.
A handful of standalone singles have received radio support from Ralph McLean, Bob Harris, Lonesome Highway and other stalwarts of the UK alt-country and Americana scene, including the duet ‘A Full House’ with AMAUK award winning Michele Stodart of The Magic Numbers, described by Holler as ‘another jaw dropper from the singer that gave us the beautiful ‘Black Limousine’ earlier this year.

His sophomore album ‘Love Island’ was recorded mid-pandemic at the legendary Rockfield Studios in Wales and mixed at Abbey Road. Released in October 2022, it has been called “an essential album for our times” by Lonesome Highway, with Brennan’s sharp tongue delving further into his dystopian vision of society.

Brennan has performed at The Ramblin Roots Revue, Red Rooster Festival, Folk In The Park, and played an official showcase this year’s Americanafest UK. He’s also forging a reputation on the roots music circuit as part of a loose collective of some of London’s finest
songwriters and musicians, selling out the iconic Wilton’s music hall as part of a songwriter’s circle and appearing at two sold out shows at London’s Jazz Cafe in tribute to the late great John Prine. He plays tonight with his full band.

‘Someone capable of turning the bleak into beautiful and relatable’  – Gigwise

‘His wry tales manage to make that which is moribund sound full of life’ – R2
“There are moments in life when a song just stops you. From the very first second to the second it ends, all you can do is listen, caught under its spell. When it feels like the song fills the air around you, and all you can do is breathe it in” – HOLLER