Ledher Blue – What’s The Craic

What was the purpose of my life until now; “Why am I here?” Zé from Ledher Blue thought as he got into Dublin.

Ledher Blue are the product of two distinctively different individuals that the waves of life comically decided to beach in a northern town of Portugal – Guimarães. The city is known for its historical meaning in the birth of Portugal, for its nasty hooligans, for its emigrant parvenus, its domestic parvenus, its humble proletariat, its shame, envy, resignation and most importantly a mystical ability of seeing the depressed times – which have long been in the region – united in empathetic jealousy, certain that betters days are coming. The club keeps losing but we’ll be champions, the people are poor but we’ll get better, everything may be bad but he will rise in a foggy sunrise.

Zé and Pedro, the pair behind Ledher Blue, encapsulated the diversity of the town in an existential way. One was always happy, one was always longing, one found a girl, the other found the one, one flourished, the other stagnated when one fell in love with the bars and was now bored the other said, “don’t gamble your life for a couple of poems”, but impressively they would always converge from different perspectives to the same idea. Certainly, one loved Illiad for Aquiles and the other for Hector, one for Vronski another for Levin, one for Grey the other for Vane, one for Liam another for Noel… what matters is that instinctively – or “zoroastrianly” – the pure meaning for their message was not what each wanted to say but the product of the pressure. This conflict was in their youth the birth of friendship and in their slope the birth of the band.

That is why one can say that one song looks happy with mournful feel, or rebellious with fearful grooves; it can be satirical in lyricism and classical in structure, it tries to be a singular unitarian message independent of the peripheral chatter. It’s alternative sometimes, post punk in the others, even poppy on some choruses, but most importantly it always feels original and unique.

Zé’s move to Dublin meant a big separation for the friends and bandmates, but most importantly brought a new perspective for their old problem. The problematic youth from Guimarães, their problematic youth, was not unique to the land. It could be observed on the Irish town. The lifeless eyes, the change dribbling in an oversized pocket, the fortuity misfortune, the keys in the bathroom, a generation sprayed with anxiety and embalmed in panic. It was paralysing. The song forcefully quieted on the lips of a dead philosopher was slivering to the bones of our time. It was as if everybody – even unconsciously – believed that regret was the only certainty of existence; that unescapable longing for the unlived life. And as the uniqueness of our situation dissolved, as our small town became countries, we found new binoculars, not only to inspect reality but most importantly our own. Transcendentally, we found our true selves, which we may have seen before, but were now so overwhelmed to the point of acceptance. As theory imprisoned and pressured reality, the only answer was King Sebastian. The individual who could look down at Narcissus smugly and was able to curse an whole nation was mystified as the long awaited saviour. Sebastian may have lead Portugal to the abyss when he disappeared in the desert but with it created a myth; the myth that he would return in a foggy morning and save us all. Hope. This hope was what united our town. What united the past generations from this existential dread and what would cure our generation. Sebastianism was the cure, it was clear.

“Not only the message was so clear it seemed to dazzle but also the universe, the habitat of each song was drawn.”, says Ledher Blue. “We felt rain during ‘Dublinesque’, the popped dark smoke from old cars for ‘Sorrows of the Amended Hearts’, the lady on the bus in ‘Craic’, the winey red out of a absolutist cape emerged on ‘Èlan’ with libertarian scarlet blues and shadowy greens, we heard the people talking in the pubs of ‘Fun’, we could distinguish the whiteness of their teeth; it stopped being a group of songs and became something else. Complete. Portugality embroiled in Irish thread. A message for all but about none, a concept for the unknown based on the past, a tale without morals.”