For Those I Love

About

" A mellow emotional purge laid to delicate beats "

Born into a hefty Irish recession and a life that he describes as ‘violent’, David Balfe’s first flirtations with music were his escapism, and he came alongside his best friend, Paul Curran, in his garden shed. He channelled his anger into punk and metal. Then Curran took his own life.

Riddled with grief, Balfe turned to solo work, under the moniker ‘For Those I Love’. His output has a firm dingy aesthetic: black and white videos zoomed in on Dublin’s working-class neighbourhoods, stories delivered in a firm and intoxicating urban Irish drawl, and stories of platonic love for his friend; a sound dubbed ‘grief poetry’ that explores beats and the rawest of emotions.

The self-titled debut album was released to little fanfare, initially, but a re-release hit Ireland alongside coronavirus, and immediately gathered momentum. Balfe’s music feels like a voice of the underrepresented, but it’s also a deeply personal tribute, one riddled with relics of Curran and Balfe’s life together, from voice notes to WhatsApp messages.

The result is stark and heavily emotional, and its release, for Balfe, lifted a weight. It also saw him elevated: suddenly his music and his story were in major media, appearing in the Guardian, the New York Times and NME, and grabbing live TV appearances, too.

There was a delicate, intense mixtape called ‘Into A World That Doesn’t Understand It, Unless You’re From It’, another statement piece, but it was the debut record that truly shone.

‘I Have A Love’ is raw in a way that can only be achieved by cramming in something so personal, hitting hardest as Balfe pours out “I love you beyond life.” On ‘Birthday/ The Pain’, he whips out football chants, a memorable refrain of “I can’t give up on love,” and hard-hitting lines on a murder he witnessed as a kid.

The result is dark, eviscerating, and one of the most memorable debut records you could ever hope to hear. And for Balfe, it’s all “grand until the next day.”