The Donegal musician Ruairí Friel’s background was primarily rooted in Irish traditional music. “I was singing and learning songs from a very young age from my parents, who weren’t professional musicians or anything, but they just liked singing,” Ruairí tells Post-Burnout.

“I learnt a lot of songs – traditional Irish songs and ballads – from my father. There was always a wee bit of music around; I had a few uncles who played and things like that. And, typically, in secondary school, I was in a couple of different bands and things like that.”

That background may come as a surprise to those who discover Ruairí through his latest venture, Silver Winged They Fly, a project that he began three years ago with his wife and multi-instrumentalist Sarah Cullen of The Reflection Box fame that melds ethereal and gauzy soundscapes and instrumentation with surreal and abstract lyricism.

Not to be pigeonholed, Ruairí cites a plethora of influences, including the surrealist author Jorge Luis Borges, the British art-pop band Talk Talk, the American math-rock band Slint, the Canadian post-rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the American folk band Midlake, the late British psych-pop artist Tim Smith, fusion trad acts like Planxty, and the iconically irreverent American alt-comedian Bill Hicks, among many others.

For Ruairí, the structure of Silver Winged They Fly seems to be a natural conclusion to these vast interests and his willingness to experiment and blend to create interesting art. “The trad thing isn’t really in those recordings as of yet, but I do see it as a thing in the future because I’ve only got three singles out so far,” he says.

“I do come from that tradition. I also come from the kind of alt-y kind of alt-rock thing, where you’re writing songs on guitar with lyrics and stuff. So, I do find that the trad thing hasn’t really come into the instrumentation, but there is some folk elements in the lyrics. The vision of it is, you try to find the song… – something that you think is strong, or something that you think is accurate to what you’re trying to get down, as close as you can – …and see what comes out.

“A lot of the time, for me, I can’t really control that in the writing phase, and when I go into it, at times, I come away from it being the happiest – or in any way happy at all [Laughs] – because, most of the time, I might come away from it frustrated or not happy. But if I catch anything – like catching a fish – then, generally, I just try to let that song speak in the way that most suits it and that’s what kind of creates the ideas for the instrumentation around it, then.”

When it comes to crafting the vast and otherworldly instrumentation of Silver Winged They Fly, Ruairí credits a lot of the finished sound to his collaboration with Sarah and the project’s producer, Orri Mc Brearty. “I’ve played a bit with Orri, and I love listening to music with Orri, and I love talking about music with Orri,” he says. “So, we ended up just nearly…like, two guys, sitting back, listening to this stuff, and then Sarah would come over, and it’d be three people, just sitting back, listening to this stuff, saying, ‘Right, what do you think? What does it need?’

“So, it’s very enjoyable from that perspective. It’s torturous, too, don’t get me wrong, but there’s an enjoyment in it, being open enough to say, ‘Maybe it needs that’ or ‘What do you think it needs?’, you know? […] There’s been a lot of roads that we’ve gone down, and then one of us or I might say, ‘No, let’s not go down that road anymore.’ You just know. If you have a certain level of trust there, you can nearly feel it in the response or the energy of the people that are collaborating on it. There are some times where you might need to be sold on an idea, where it might not work if you talk about it, but if you hear the thing, it might be the right sound.”

The impressionistic sound that comes from this collaboration is what Ruairí feels gives it longevity. He says, “The lovely thing about music is that it has the strength to be flexible, to absorb new things in the world, and you think, ‘Gee, that’s a bit like that’ or ‘Maybe that’s a little bit of a reference to that thing,’ or even something can happen that you might think is an even clearer example of the type of thing that you were aiming at the target of. I find the same with instrumental music; it doesn’t necessarily have to be a lyrical thing. There can be so much emotion and intention encoded in instrumental music. I definitely get that, and I think that they sort of stretch and change in time.”

When putting prose to the music, Ruairí starts from the micro and expands outwards. Lyrically, I’ve noticed myself working better off a title because it’s an encapsulation in a couple of words,” he says. “So, I would have the title first, then I would try to write the song because a title, in a way, kind of holds a core thing; it has some kind of core message. And then you try to write that feeling, nearly. You know yourself, it can come in different forms. [Laughs]”

This can be heard on Silver Winged They Fly’s latest single, “Starjump, Pt. 1,” which was released last month. Explaining the song, Ruairí says, “There was a point in my life where I was, maybe, feeling a wee bit morbid or something; thinking, ‘How long will I actually be around for?’, you know what I mean? I don’t mean that in a really bad way; I’m still planning on hanging around. But with other people, too.

“I was thinking of the place I grew up in – Fanad, County Donegal – and I just had this image in my mind. I don’t know whether it was a mixture of old times or mythological visions nearly, of crossing into a sort of realm, almost like a Valhalla-esque realm or almost like Sidhe, that they talk about in Irish mythology, where you cross into the fairy world and you’re looking back across the divide. That type of thing.

“And I was imagining watching my own funeral, like a Viking-style funeral, where they have a funeral pyre and stuff. So, there’s this specific hill in Fanad. I was just picturing standing up there, watching that. And there’s a lot of new children being born. I have two wee girls and a lot of my friends and stuff are having kids. That whole thing; that whole circular nature of generations and being in contact with your ancestors and things like that. It was all part of that stuff. And I don’t know if that’s necessarily scientific. [Laughs]”

As the song’s title alludes to, there will be a “Starjump, Pt. 2.” This is the first semblance of continuity between the songs they have released thus far. Although Ruarí does have ambitions for a conceptual album at some point, each of Silver Winged They Fly’s songs have been individualistic in their structure and release so far. “Each song has sort of got its own treatment, in a way; what seemed like the best idea for that song at the time,” Ruairí says of the songs.

“I would hope, in the scheme of things, when it becomes more of an album project, there will be more of a throughline whenever I’m packaging a group of songs together. The most recent song, for example, is part one of two, so the second part is a further exploration, instrumentally, of that one, which will be interesting. Maybe thematically and lyrically, I do see them as connected, just from being the writer, but I do hope they will make sense in a larger project. Although, you know yourself, it’s hard to know what you’re going to catch when you go to write, you know?”

Silver Winged They Fly’s latest single, “Starjump, Pt. 1,” is on all streaming platforms now. You can find the band’s music and social media accounts through their website.

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… tonight at 21:00 (IST) to hear this interview in full. Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music Podcasts.

Aaron Kavanagh

Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.