Drew Linehan returns with ‘Antoinette’

Following a successful first outing in Pot Duggan’s in Clare last month, Cork-based musician Drew Linehan is surging back to life with a new single.

After a year of scheming since the astral electronic single ‘Happy House’, forming a live band and playing an explosive debut, Linehan's pop project Automatic Blue is releasing ‘Antoinette’, a pulsating track with a chequered history.

The track from Linehan, who form part of Cork collective Hausu Records, previously belonged to Skrujax, an ill-equipped band of young punks which performed several times on Cork’s youth gig circuit.

While Skrujax blew out after what the band’s drummer described as a “tumultuously horrendous experience fuelled by alcohol and self-doubt” at their final performance at the Midleton Tattoo Festival in 2016, many of the pop songs Linehan wrote during those days became his first steps into the world as Automatic Blue.

In between recent sessions with fellow Hausu members Ghostking is Dead (Matt Corrigan) and Arthur Valentine (Luke Aston) and working on his own releases, Linehan has dragged ‘Antoinette’ out of its tattoo-festival-tomb and made it a synthpop monolith - enormous guitar chords, an undeniable groove in its synth bass, and earworm melodies.

The song sees Linehan place the carefree optimism of his younger self against a fear of loneliness and inadequacy in an age of digital dating pools, switching narratives between his young hopeful self and modern-day disillusionment. Partnering up with Leah Hartnett on vocals, he displays his growing prowess as a home producer on the track, which is set to be followed by more planned Hausu releases in the coming months.

‘Antoinette’ will be available to stream on all major platforms on Friday 24 May.