Lemoncello Lore #6

Big boisterous beginnings

Hello!

Hope 2026 is treating you v, v well. It’s good to be here.

Starting as we mean to go on, we have TWO shows next week for the ever-gorgeous people of Belfast and Ballycastle. In Belfast we have the brilliant Lorcan Byrne by our side, banging the drums that’ll blow the bloody roof off the Black Box Belfast. If you click right here, you'll find the the last of the tickets for Black Box Belfast on the 22nd of the month of January, the year being now of course, freshly, 2026. We’ll take a slightly less alliterative approach for Yarn Ballycastle, where the two of us are so excited to head up and play in this cosy wee venue on the North Coast, with support from Andrew Toman. And believe it or not, on this here link here, you'll be brought to a magical place not too far from here, where you can pick up some very nice lil tickets for our show in Yarn Ballycastle on the 23rd, of January, 2026. - Be quick before they be gone!

There are posters for these gigs somewhere but this lovely photo by Erin Plaice will do

Behind the scenes it’s been a big week for us. We delivered our finished masters of a new album (!!!!!) and finalised all the artwork and designs, working with some of our favourite artists who have made the coolest looking stuff ever. This album has been in our heads and in writing for almost 3 years, and it’s finished almost a year to the date since we started recording it. Now we have signed off on everything, stamped for approval and it’s out of our hands forever. I listened to the final masters one last time this week, looking out on the sunny Costa Del Sol on a little winter holiday and I did in fact burst out crying at the end. I think it suits the sun. Maybe it’ll be a summer album?

crying in the clurb rn we diiiiid it

More on that

extremely

soon…

In other news, I had possibly one of the nerdiest nights of my life recently with some good friends, in which we sat with every single Fionn Regan record, listened to every single song ever released, and rated them according to a very specific scoring card carefully designed for this event. I think the listening lasted around 7 hours. We were all fans from our youth, so the songs brought up different significant moments in our life for all of us. There were even demos torrented from Limewire in its 2008 heyday played from iPod classics. It was one of the weirdest exercises of the brain ever, listening to someone’s entire output (no skips, back to back), and sort of a trip. But an all timer night I strongly recommend trying.

incredibly diligent note-taking and accompanying artwork by Conor C

I’ve also recently started a book club with some of my close Donegal pals, something I literally never thought I would be into, but suddenly am SO into. Like I feel cosmically charged to do so. We’ve picked the book The Safekeep as our first novel, and everyone is excitedly posting pics of buying their copy to the chat. This is 30 perhaps—weirdly acute, hyper-focussing in on specific windows of art, sharing this with friends, connecting our experiences. I’m into it.

That’s all for now sure, but sure I’ll surely be talkin to ya soon.

LOVE and BE WELL and chat SOON!

Claire

x x x x

P.S. if anyone’s ever ran a book club and has any tips/knows how to do it lmk …. :)