Jet Lag by Eamon McGrath & Oldseed

McGrath and Oldseed, who have both spent the better part of the last twenty years navigating the highways, railroads and airspace of Europe, have shared stages, floors and couches as kindred spirits. Now, the pair have finally found their roads converging in the studio as well, with a collection of exciting new songs.

While on a short Canadian tour in 2023, Oldseed chiselled out four days to write new music in McGrath’s Windsor, Ontario home studio. Recorded deep in the heart of the sweltering Ontario summertime heat, and with a sense of adventure that doesn’t end with the minimalist acoustic arrangements that have been the crux of both performers’ countless live shows, McGrath and Oldseed used the sounds that emanated from the swampy surroundings of Ontario as a literal instrument: cicadas, dogs, and passing trains inserted themselves into the album alongside orchestral, otherworldly sounds and textures.

Jet Lag is exactly as its name describes: a world behind heavy eyelids, where faint daylight hangs on the edge of the horizon line and total exhaustion becomes an entheogen. There is a hallucinatory sleeplessness in these songs, a sensation channelled by two songwriters well acquainted with the feeling of playing over 200 gigs a year.

With over 300 songs written and recorded, album of the year credits, and multiple continent-spanning tours, Eamon McGrath has developed a body of work that could rival that of any artist 15 years his senior.