Culture That Made Me: World of music was a refuge after loss for Moncrieff
Moncrieff: Doing a local musical was social suicide
Born in 1995, the singer-songwriter Chris Breheny, aka Moncrieff, grew up in Kilbride, Co Waterford.
He released his debut single in 2017. His single won the RTÉ Choice Music Prize Irish Song of the Year in 2023. His debut studio album, reached number 1 on the Irish charts.
His new album will be released December 4. He plays Dublin’s Vicar Street on December 6.
I remember my mom brought me to the cathedral in Waterford where there was an orchestra playing. I was around five years old. It was around ’97. It was the first gig I went to. At the end of it, the conductor jokingly asked — because there were lots of kids in the audience — if anybody wanted to come up and conduct the orchestra? I, like all the other kids, shot my hand up. He managed to pick me. I was delighted and spent the next two weeks listening to opera music and classic music on a CD player. That’s where it began.
I took part in musicals as a kid in Waterford. Things have gotten better now, but growing up in Waterford, doing a local musical was social suicide. It was a hyper-masculine society, and that sort of stuff was seen as feminine or gay and taboo. But girls do musicals. If you go and do a musical, you're surrounded by women, and you can maybe kiss one of them if you’re lucky. That was my motivation. I did a couple of shows in The Theatre Royal, including I played Tyrone Jackson. I tried keeping it under wraps from my friends and family and eventually got slated for it. But I enjoyed it.
When I first heard soul music, what appealed to me was that soul artists can make something small feel so big. Like Otis Redding’s song The lyrics are, “It's early in the morning / About a quarter 'til three / I'm sittin' here talkin' with my baby / Over cigarettes and coffee…”. That's a very basic four opening lines, but the way he sings it, the soul in it, it sounds so romantic and beautiful. It’s the tone and the way he ad-libs. He really paints the picture. I tried copying those people. I sounded like a horse singing in my bedroom, trying to sound like Otis Redding at 15 years old.
When I first found black musicians and black music, I was thinking, wow, are there any white people singing this stuff? Then I stumbled across Steve Winwood. If you want to get your mind blown, look up “Steve Winwood and the Spencer Davis Group, from 1966. It's an 18-year-old Steve Winwood singing while playing the organ. It's in black and white. I can't get over his voice. His tone is incredible.
Etta James is a female Motown great. She sings It's a beautiful song, an incredible song. People would have heard Etta James on Avicii's Just a powerhouse, soulful vocals that I love.
Music took a turn for me in terms of lyrical depth around 17. I remember thinking when I first heard of Bon Iver — ah, here’s another fellow with a fisherman's hat singing folkie tunes; I'm not going to listen to him. But I came across his first album eventually — called — and I let it in. I became obsessed with it. His music is so delicate. He wrote it in a cabin in Wisconsin with a catalogue guitar — the kind people bought back in the ’60s – and one mic. There's something in the soul, in the music – there's pain and vulnerability there. It coincided with my first girlfriend, who came along a year and a bit after my sister passed away. My brother then passed away six months later. The world of that music was a refuge for me.
A songwriter I’ve fallen in love with is Stephen Wilson Jr. He's a Nashville-based musician, a country and rock singer in his forties. He writes simple, beautifully written songs. His voice is incredible — he barely opens his mouth, and he gets this incredible sound. He's got a song called about how important music is to people — a song is your best friend; it helps you get over your first love. A song was there the time you drank your first beer, the first time you drove a car. Music and songs are always there for you. It's a beautiful way of Nashville writing. An amazing songwriter.
Hozier is special, in terms of pure delivery of a song and as a songwriter. I remember seeing him in LA. It was a last-minute, pop-up show. Him and his guitar. The man didn't put a note wrong. It's annoying. He's got incredible soul. His fingers are like spider crab legs. They're so long. They can stretch; he can go seven frets or eight frets. He’s out of this world.
is an amazing movie. It's science fiction, set in the near future. It stars Matthew McConaughey. The Earth is becoming more barren and will become inhospitable for life within a generation or two. There's a last-ditch effort by NASA and some other people to go through this weird wormhole and set up a new life. It’s a beautiful movie.
is a special book. It’s a fable written by a Lebanese American poet, Kahlil Gibran. It's these beautiful lessons about life. It's about this guy who lived in a foreign city for 12 years. He's waiting for a ship to bring him back to his homeland. Before he boards the vessel, a group of townspeople ask him to share his wisdom on the meaning of life. He talks about love, marriage, children and work. He writes that love is “a free, non-possessive force” and marriage is “two separate strings on a lute playing the same music”. He has a beautiful way of talking about big things. It’s a book I'm going to read to my children.
is a memoir by Sarah Wynn Williams. She’s a Kiwi woman who got a job in the UN and then realised that the UN wasn't everything it was cracked up to be. In 2009, she saw Facebook taking off, and that it was an incredible force for good that was going to become huge in the world and needed somebody who would be able to handle policy between different countries regarding privacy and their general internet policy. She joined and then witnessed what it actually became. It's mind-blowing.
is a pop culture, politically minded podcast about important things going on in the world, hosted by two American ladies, Caro Claire Burke and Katie Gatti Tassin. It's funny. A lot of it is stuff that affects women. There's an episode, for example, called “Jeffrey Epstein and the ordinary misogyny of extraordinary men”. A recent episode was about this left-leaning voice in America called Hasan Piker and how the right in America are trying to silence him. It's not a completely woman-focused podcast, but a lot of the episodes are educational for me as a man.
