Poor Creature at The Attic

Some bands are born from grand plans. Others arrive quietly, almost by accident, the way a song drifts into your head without warning. Poor Creature belongs to the latter camp.

Formed during lockdown by Ruth Clinton and Cormac MacDiarmada (of Landless and Lankum respectively), the project began not with a manifesto but with a room full of instruments and time to spare. Arrangements emerged, one song leading to the next, until the duo became a trio with the arrival of John Dermody. Their first in-person performance? A benefit gig for a friend’s greyhound’s hip operation – improvised, chaotic, and, by all accounts, magical.

Poor Creature’s world is rooted in the folk traditions of Ireland and beyond, but the way they approach it is anything but fixed. They take songs that have existed for centuries – tales of love, loss, and separation – and tilt them into new shapes. Sometimes the results are gauzy and dreamlike (‘Bury Me Not’), sometimes stark and intimate (‘Lorene’), sometimes brushing up against the deep-rooted melancholy of American folk. Under the ear of producer John ‘Spud’ Murphy (Lankum, ØXN, Ye Vagabonds), the textures are rich and strange: harmoniums sigh, theremins waver, guitars dissolve into reverb.

Themes of absence run through their debut album All Smiles Tonight, but this isn’t music that wallows. Instead, it recognises the strange comfort of old stories, the way myth and everyday life tangle together. A ghost lover might live just down the road; a cheating-heart ballad becomes a metaphor for climate collapse.

Live, Poor Creature carry this same balance of earthiness and the otherworldly. In the intimate upstairs setting of The Attic, expect something that feels both timeless and fleeting – a shared moment that, like the songs they inhabit, might stay with you for years.