Eugene McGuinness

Eugene McGuinness surfaced suddenly in 2007 with the striking debut single “Monsters Under the Bed,” whose sound evoked everything from the Odelay-era Beck to the ’80s U.K. cult heroes the Television Personalities. At the time he looked poised to become the Damon Albarn figure among the fresh wave of neo-Brit-pop acts trailing behind the Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand. Like Albarn, McGuinness is a singer and songwriter whose tastes range well beyond prevailing trends; he delights in juxtaposing disparate influences, as evidenced by an early interview in which he professed equal admiration for Broadway master Stephen Sondheim and U.K. grime star Dizzee Rascal—both of whom leave audible traces in his work. Born in London in 1985 to Northern Irish parents and raised in Liverpool, he began composing songs during his mid-teens. By age twenty he had secured a publishing deal with Domino Records, then the most prominent British indie imprint. In early 2007 the label launched the subsidiary Double Six Records specifically to issue his nervy, synth-driven single, an ode to information overload and insomnia. Following the track’s swift acclaim, McGuinness recorded a BBC Radio 1 session that spring, and Double Six released the eight-track mini-album The Early Learnings of Eugene McGuinness that summer. His self-titled second album appeared the next year. In 2009 he and his brother Dominic McGuinness issued the collaborative album Glue under the name Eugene and the Lizards. McGuinness returned with his third studio album, The Invitation to the Voyage, in 2012, followed by Chroma in 2014.