Album Club began as “a book club… only with with albums”. In 2019, composer & musician MJ McCarthy - former member of Zoey Van Goey, as well as occasional accordionist with Aidan Moffat, Trembling Bells, Lord Cut Glass & Alasdair Roberts amongst others - gathered a group of friends from across the worlds of music, theatre & writing at The Laurieston Bar in Glasgow, to choose a record and talk about it track by track, once a month. One year later he started to wonder if this particular group of humans could, as well as talk about albums, make an album? The self-titled LP that followed was released by Last Night From Glasgow in 2022, and spent five weeks in the Scottish Top 100 Albums Chart, peaking at No. 2

Live shows are rare, and the band line-up ever-changing. Core members for the show this July at Glad Café will include MJ, Rhona Dougall, Douglas Maxwell, Adrian Osmond and Adam Scott, with special guest appearances also on the cards.

“An album in thrall to the joy of dissecting music and remaking it from the parts […] a strong sense of classic singer-songwriters of the seventies in the vein of Karen Dalton, grand touches of the cinematic sweep of The Bathers, Husker Dü-esque power pop […] and Durutti Column shimmer. It all dissolves into a delirious coda of layered harmonies and birdsong and sparse, tentative optimism.” Snack Magazine

New York based, Irish born songwriter Niall Connolly returns to Glasgow as part of his 'The Patience of Trees' world tour on Friday July 12th. This will be a double bill with Album Club.

"The Patience Of Trees is remarkable. It is much like Blood On The Tracks or Plastic Ono Band in its honesty and raw emotions. Connolly has come up with his masterpiece."

• AARON BADGELY, THE SPILL MAGAZINE 9/10

"There are not enough words for love in English; Niall Connolly has found a way around our pretty language’s greatest deficit. With the songs of The Patience of Trees, Connolly has written a collection that explores all the sides of what it means to feel deeply: about a lover, about a child, about old friends, and so often, about life itself. "

• MATT RUPPERT, THESE SUBTLE SOUNDS

"Niall Connolly’s The Patience of Trees welcomes us into a world where hope and kindness are the bravest of things"

• CASEE MARIE, IMPERFECT FIFTH

A master storyteller, Niall Connolly is the kind of guy you want to find yourself sitting next to at a pub, a wedding, or even a funeral. On The Patience of Trees, Connolly's 9th album, his songs are slow-simmered, rich with family histories, and woven with a golden thread of dark Irish humor. “I’ve got a willingness to see the fun alongside the suffering,” he says. “But I’ve always got one eye on the party.”

Connolly, who splits his time between New York City and the Catskills, writes lyrical folk in the tradition of his fellow Irishman and occasional collaborator Glen Hansard, Leonard Cohen, and Wilco.

In the big, breathtaking build of his new album’s opening track, “It’s a Beautiful Life,” Connolly uses a simple refrain to convey the magnificence and misery of being alive. “When I sing, ‘It’s a beautiful life, most of the time,’ I mean it,” he says. “I mean both parts.”

Though he’s known as one of the busiest live musicians around—“I used to play 150 to 200 gigs per year for years and years,” he says—Connolly was forced to pause when the world shut down in 2020. As he gradually gathered songs for The Patience of Trees, he skipped stones with his young daughter and tried to summon serenity and forbearance from the forest that surrounded his Catskill Mountain home: “I was reading about how trees can communicate with each other and send out distress signals to warn and support each other within the forest. That felt like a metaphor for what everyone had to do during the pandemic.”

Connolly has been a fixture of the NYC songwriting scene since he put down roots in the city in 2007. For 17 years, he has been presiding over Big City Folk, a songwriter’s collective that pops up in pubs and cultural centers several times per month. Performers have included Lucius, Anais Mitchell, and Lana Del Ray (before she was Lana Del Ray, on a Leonard Cohen night in the song club’s early days). As Connolly explains it, he’s just importing a tradition from Ireland: “It was very common at the end of a party at home to have a singsong, share the guitar, and share some songs. I missed that when I moved here.”

The Patience of Trees is Niall Connolly's 9th album. Guests include Javier Más (of Leonard Cohen’s band), Mick Flannery and Anna Tivel. The album was produced in New York by Len Monachello, with some notable assists from Brandon Wide, E.W. Harris, Chris Foley and M.J. McCarthy. Mastered by Ruairi O' Flaherty (Lana Del Rey, Taylor Swift). Connolly will be touring internationally throughout 2024.

Access Guide and Tickets for Personal Assistants

You can view/download The Glad Cafe's Access Guide here. If you require a ticket for a Personal Assistant/Gig Buddy (at no extra cost), please contact kim@thegladcafe.co.uk.