Bren Berry - IN HOPE OUR STARS ALIGN (2025)

I think of the twelve songs on IN HOPE OUR STARS ALIGN as a collection of love letters and protest songs which are layered with hope and an intentional sense of positivity. They cover personal reflections on family and friendship, love, home, Dublin, ill-health, resilience, music and creativity, and address some of the social and political crises that we are living through in these troubled times. The album title is taken from my song "Fire Drill" and is inspired by Seamus Heaney’s lines “hope and history rhyme” and “hope for a great sea-change” from "The Cure At Troy”.

Knives (Heavy Metal Rain) is the new single from the album and it is an anthem to the power of activism and hope in the face of the accelerating climate crisis.

Songwriting has always been an elusive mystery to me and I could never find my own singing voice. My friend Ciaran Tallon encouraged me to try to write one song during a drunken night in my house in May 2021 when I played him a few of my musical doodles. A few weeks later, I was reading Bob Dylan’s Chronicles on his 80th birthday, and decided that, rather than murdering one of his songs, I would honour the occasion by trying to finally crack the songwriting code. Something told me to drop the register of my voice, and everything just clicked into place for me. I found my voice in every sense of the word and wrote my first complete song - Black Satellite - which is a tribute to Dylan and New York and the great times my wife and I have had in that city including spending part of our honeymoon in the legendary Chelsea Hotel. I quickly followed it up with Bullet Proof and wrote around twenty songs over the following eighteen months.

I am extremely grateful to Gavin Glass and Daniel James Goodwin who raised the bar so high and helped to make this record sound so great. Gavin also added so much of his musical brilliance along with a host of other amazing musicians (listed in in the album credits). I still can’t believe I’ve made a record after all this time away from making music. I gave it everything and I am so grateful to everyone who has been there for me along the way.

Bren x