One of Ireland’s most exciting emerging bands Cliffords have shared details of their new EP, Salt of the Lee. Salt of the Lee will be released on 30th May 2025 through the newly formed label, Soil To The Sun.
It features the band’s recent single, Bittersweet. To coincide with its announcement, the band share the cinematic second track from EP, Dungarvan Bay, watch the video below.
Dealing with the first experiences of grief, ‘Dungarvan Bay‘ shifts effortlessly from intimate verses replete with spindling guitars and the masterful vocals of Iona Lynch, whose imagery evocatively captures all of the sides of loss. It swells into an enveloping chorus, and the crashing crescendos are an emotional epiphany of epic proportions.
Vocalist Iona Lynch on the new track,
“Dungarvan Bay is a song about growing with grief. Two years ago, a college friend of mine passed away, and for me and for a lot of my friends, it was our first proper encounter with grief. The first half of the song was written within a week of his passing, when I felt all consumed by the sadness. The second half of the song I wrote a year later. I realised I still carried a lot of that grief and sadness with me, but through the community of his friends and family, we had found ways to grow with it.
I wanted the song to show all the different emotions that come with loss; that there can be great moments of humour, joy, and growth. And whilst it will never truly leave you, things will change over time.“
The young Cork band self-financed and self-released a debut EP last year, but this next release marks their first steps working alongside a producer in Richie Kennedy at Battery Studios in London, and their first significant steps to introducing their music outside their home country.
Cliffords deal in a melody-rich, guitar-heavy merging of both shoegaze and grunge, all widescreen and cinematic in their scale and approach. Iona’s vocals, unrestrained and almost feral, arrowed above and beyond the sweatbox venues Cliffords are sure to be filling over the next twelve months.
In Iona Lynch, the band have a magnetic frontperson, smart, literate and wholly lost in her own music – an artist who, alongside her band, has the potential to influence a new generation of artists inside of Cork and far outside of it too.
The band have just completed their first headline tour of the UK and will be appearing at a raft of festivals across the UK (and into Europe) throughout the Spring and Summer. Full list of shows is below.
Cliffords Live:
3rd May – Sound City, Liverpool
10th May – The Road to the Great Escape @ King Tut’s, Glasgow
15th May – The Great Escape, Brighton
16th May – The Great Escape, Brighton
17th May – London Calling, Amsterdam
24th May – Live at Leeds
25th May – Neighbourhood Festival, Warrington
27th May – Supersonic, Paris
1st June – Forbidden Fruit, Dublin
14th June – Best Kept Secret, Hilvarenbeek
21st June – Bludfest, Milton Keynes Bowl
1st July – All Together Now, County Waterford
6th July – Rock Werchter, Werchter
25th July – Latitude Festival, Suffolk
26th July – Truck Festival, Oxfordshire
27th July – Tramlines, Sheffield
3rd August – Y Not Festival, Derbyshire
23rd August – Victorious Festival, Portsmouth
Photo credit: Cal McIntyre
