Roisin Murphy Returns with ‘Hairless Toys’ Album Cover & Tracklist, New Song “Gone Fishing”: Listen

Robbie Daw | February 17, 2015 2:27 pm
Popping Up: XO
Find out all about this up and coming British dance-pop producer.

Many quirky ladies of British pop have tickled our fancy over the years, from Kate Bush to Florence Welch to FKA twigs. And perhaps none of them dazzled us more in the year 2007 than Roisin Murphy, whose sophomore album Overpowered and singles like “Let Me Know” and “You Know Me Better” were nothing short of fantastic during that particular pre-Gaga pop vacuum.

Eight years and many stops, starts, collaborations, one-offs, teases and one Italian language EP later, Murphy has finally announced her follow-up LP: It’s called Hairless Toys, it will be out May 11 on the PIAS label and the cover art is what you see above.

The first single from Murphy’s upcoming album is “Gone Fishing,” which is also the first track on the seemingly compact, eight-track set. In a press release, Roisin states that the song was inspired by Paris Is Burning, Jennie Livingston‘s landmark 1990 documentary on New York City drag ball culture.

“This song was written after I watched the documentary film Paris Is Burning, having read an article which referenced it in a discussion about House music’s origins in black, gay culture,” Murphy states, according to Pitchfork. “I was deeply moved by this film. ‘I had to run this far from home’ – it’s about the outcasts who could never fit into mainstream society and how they created a safe place in the drag ‘Ball’ scene of New York in the ‘80s.”

Surprisingly, then, “Gone Fishing” doesn’t really sound like the club banger you’d expect, especially given house music’s resurgence in the past two years. Instead, it’s a much more subdued, synth-driven number that borders more experimental than anything “Vogue”-like.

The jury’s still out on what the rest of Hairless Toys will sound like, but below is the tracklist for the album:

01. Gone Fishing
02. Evil Eyes
03. Exploitation
04. Uninvited Guest
05. Exile
06. House of Glass
07. Hairless Toys (Gotta Hurt)
08. Unputdownable

Are you looking forward to Roisin’s proper follow-up to 2007’s Overpowered? Let us know below!

Get more pop music coverage, from artist interviews to exclusive performances, on Idolator’s YouTube channel.