So happy to be bringing Aoife Nessa Frances back to Oxford after her spellbinding show in April 2019.
The debut album of new Irish auteur Aoife Nessa Frances (pronounced Ee-‐fa) is shot through with a sense of mystery -‐an ambiguity and disorientation that illuminates songs with smokey luminescence.“
The album title is a result of a mishearing. Cian Nugent [Aoife’s musical collaborator and co-‐producer] was telling me about childhood trips he made to Llandudno in Wales, passing through a station called Llandudno Junction,” reveals Frances.
Land of No Junction later became a place in itself. A liminal space -‐a dark vast landscape to visit in dreams...A place of waiting where I could sit with uncertainty and accept it. Rejecting the distinct and welcoming the uncertain and the unknown.
The songs traverse and inhabit this indeterminate landscape: the beginnings of love, moments of loss, discovery, fragility and strength, all intermingle and interact. On the eponymously titled final song Frances sings “Take me to the land of no junction/Before it fades away/Where the roads can never cross/But go their own way.” It is this search that lies at the heart of the album, recalling journeys towards an ever-‐shiftingcentre -‐a centre that cannot hold -‐where maps are constantly being rewritten.
