Shimmer Boy: 'I want people listening to my music to understand that they're enough.'

Musician Aaron O’Sullivan’s new stage name reflects his fresh sound, writes Kate Demolder

Aaron O’Sullivan wants people who listen to his work to believe in themselves.

Aaron O’Sullivan was trying to think of a good name for his new project for some time. For most of his musical life — the West Cork lad began playing at three and gigging at 15 — he went by his given name, but but for this new era, it no longer felt like the right fit.

For a time, O’Sullivan performed under the moniker Jordan Run, but for what he was trying to say post-pandemic, that didn’t quite fit either. “I’ve since started to understand the industry a bit more, and figure out who I was and what sort of style I wanted to go down,” he says.

“So, for this new work, Shimmer Boy just felt right.”

Shimmer is a quiet light, or a reflection, he continues. A symbol of the quieter parts of himself. “It’s more understated and reflective, and works as part of a personal project. It’s youthful and fun and… probably one of the better decisions I’ve made in some time.”

O’Sullivan is a West Cork multi-instrumentalist born to a painter father and a hairdresser mother. The family moved to Castlehaven when he was an infant, where the rural setting and family inclination brought him to music. Classically trained in clarinet as a child, O’Sullivan pivoted to guitar in primary school, self-teaching for sometimes 10 hours a day.

Prior and during a degree in guitar and performance MTU, he both busked in Skibbereen and gigged at DeBarra’s Folk Club, two exposure sets which regularly saw him called up to support the likes of Eric Bell, James Arthur, Kellie Lewis, and Culture Kid. Then, the pandemic hit.

“I found it really hard,” he says. “Like, I’d finished college, was about to make a living from the thing I loved, and that was all taken away. I felt like everything I’d been working towards had just been… stripped away.”

Building back up came by way of a search for balance. “Overall, that’s the hardest thing,” he says. “Like most artists, until they break through, which is harder than ever, you have to juggle several different roles. Like I do admin for two businesses, content for two, I perform in four, I play guitar in one, and then I’m songwriting and organising everything in between.”

The past year has been centred on learning to delegate, as well as enjoying the small things when they come, like his debut single Under the Surface being used in an episode of Made In Chelsea. “It’s all about trying to reasonably avoid burnout, because I’ve had like two or three points where I’ve just felt like completely collapsing under the weight of it.”

O’Sullivan sings of this plight on Brixton, from his debut album In The Aftermath, We Bloom coming July 1. In Brixton, the realities, struggles and rejections of being a working artist in Ireland today unfurl, centring around Johnny, a fictional character ignored by the industry for not having the right social numbers. The piece also speaks to the pull Irish artists feel to leave in order to survive.

“There’s a strong history with great music here, but I think people are told subliminally they have to move away to make it work,” he says. “I know that there are a ton of amazing services here, like the Basic Income for Artists grant, but I think that romanticism of just being an artist… It’s just so hard to attain.”

In The Aftermath, We Bloom is also the first record O’Sullivan recorded entirely sober. “I fell into the trap of having a few too many pints,” he says. “It was never anything too extreme, but it was enough for it to take the joy out of what I was doing.”

In the two-and-a-half-years since his last drink, O’Sullivan feels that everything in his life — performances, songwriting, relationships, fitness — have soared, with productivity skyrocketing most of all.

“It just comes hand in hand with being a musician,” he says. “You get free pints at events, there’s drink promo, most festivals are run by drinks companies… It really was a mindset shift, and just an internal decision to still do what I normally do, just without drink.”

With that renewed sense of purpose, O’Sullivan wants people who listen to his work to believe in themselves most of all. “You can achieve a lot on your own, without having to rely on external validation,” he says. “Finding community is so important, but I want anyone who’s listening to my music to understand that they, on their own, are enough.”

As for his dream? “I would love to be performing my music more regularly,” he says. “I’d love to be on tour, I’d love an agent and I would love to get some music in some movies as well. If Paul Mescal is reading this… Maybe he could take a few of my tunes with him?”

• Shimmer Boy’s debut album In the Aftermath, We Bloom is out now