Tom McCarthaigh

I first encountered Tom McCarthaigh's work when I bought a Popeyes Rapestation CD at a Platemaker gig years ago. The name of the album was Abe Lincoln Nonce Hunter. The whole package was just as weird as it sounds. Over an hour of harsh noise wrapped in Tom's illustrations. It's a good pairing. Popeyes Rapestation is hard to listen to, yet hard to take off the stereo once your hooked. Toms drawing style (maybe more for this piece than his others) is hard to look at, hard to look away.

Drawn fast and loose with a bizarre dreamlike feel. Kindof like if Austin Osman Spare had an interest in Marques de Sade and Manga. 

When you were a kid did you believe that dealing with leprosy would be a bigger problem in adult life than it really was? I'm sure I had a contingency plan in the back of my mind if I was to have to do something involving lepers. Same goes for having to dig a cave in the snow if I ever found myself stranded in the Arctic for a night. Tom McCarthaigh catches the feel of these ridiculous childhood anxieties and presents them in his psychedelic marbled effect glory. Equal measures of sadness and dread ooze through these works.

So many indie kids play with childhood themes in a way to represent safety or a sense of home or longing or whatever. Tom McCarthaigh uses childhood to represent life long anxiety, morbid fears and irrational painful struggles. The infantile indie scene could either learn from Tom or give up altogether.

The flipside to his work with Popeyes Rapestation would be his work with Fret!. Two thirds of Fret! make up the whole of Popeyes Rapestation. I think Tom has given artwork for an lp, an ep, a t-shirt and maybe a tour poster for Fret! It's a different kettle of fish altogether. Slick and cool instrumental music (well almost entirely instrumental) which could be the soundtrack to break from routine. Your day job is tedious, go lock yourself in your house for the weekend reading Bukowski and listening to Fret! you'll be right as rain come Monday. 

Anyway, I diverge. Go get some of Tom McCarthaighs images seared into your brain (If you can find him.)