George Houston is discussing his death. Not in the physical sense, but the young musician has been undergoing a rebirth of sorts in recent times.
“I don’t know if you know about numerology or anything, but there’s this thing with your birth year,” he says. “Each year you have a tarot card prescribed to you, and last year, while I was recording the album, was my death year.
“This year I’m on a different card, and it’s all change ... When the album was finished, it was like this big breath out. Now I can start thinking about new things. It feels like a new era.”
Despite being only 24, Houston, who is from Burt, Co Donegal, has already released three albums since launching his career in 2020 with the wry folk-pop single Boo Fucking Hoo.
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He’s correct about it being a new era for him, though. His latest album, TODC, which, in a reference to his interest in tarot and numerology, stands for The Original Death Card, also marks him out as a talent to watch. He treads a line somewhere between the droll melancholia of Jens Lekman, the country-folk quiver of Orville Peck, the lyrical wit of John Grant and the tender alt-indie stylings of Sufjan Stevens.
That spark has been noted by the likes of Paul Weller, who asked Houston to support him on his US tour last year, and Jools Holland, who recently invited him to play on his Later ... show on the BBC.
Houston is a thoughtful conversationalist (despite apologising for being “blabbery” when we talk) and a discerning lyricist. He loved growing up in the countryside with “a big garden and plenty of fresh air from a very lovely family background”. His music-loving parents encouraged Houston and his two siblings to learn an instrument from an early age; seeing David Bowie in the film Labyrinth proved a pivotal moment: a convergence of his two loves, music and film (something he is exploring by making music videos for every song on TODC).
“But there’s parts of growing up in rural Ireland that you become very aware that you’re not so welcome, like growing up in Catholic schools,” he says. “I love my background and I love where I’m from, but there are parts of rural Ireland that can still do better with how they welcome queer children to the world. Because I know too many [gay] people that will never come out, and will get married and have a wife and children. It’s two very grim alternatives, so I’m incredibly lucky that I had this cocoon of community around me.”
There’s something very traumatic about growing up and loving all of that, and knowing that they hate you back
— Houston on the Catholic Church
On TODC he uses tarot as a framework to examine other topics that loom large in his life and his songwriting, most notably sexuality and the Catholic Church. The title track has lyrics such as “I’m thanking God for all the work that I’ve done, to love those faults he’s installed” over a jaunty indie-pop melody. The snarling Drag Queen, an album standout, lays waste to the church with the refrain “The feeling is mutual, and the feeling is hate”.
“I wanted to write songs about queer love, and femininity, and different things that I’ve experienced in my life,” he says. “I’m definitely out of my comfort zone, and I am being a lot more vulnerable in this album.
“I do reference religion a lot in these songs. I was raised going to Mass every Sunday, and I do have an affection for the Catholic Church; I think there are lovely cultural traditions within it, and I visit churches everywhere I go, because I think they’re beautiful, calming spaces.
“But there’s something very traumatic about growing up and loving all of that, and knowing that they hate you back. And then, on top of that, the things that you love and [the person] that you are is likened to being a ‘sinner’ and being told you’re going to hell forever.” He shakes his head, sighing. “So yeah, there’s lots of trauma to unpack there.”
Houston, who is bisexual, says he never felt the need to come out publicly, “because I have that kind of security blanket of also being straight”, he says. “That is a ridiculous thing, but it’s true. I never wanted to come out in secondary school, because I didn’t owe the homophobes in the school any of myself, and I didn’t want to give them any satisfaction of knowing more about me.
“I’m very anti the term ‘the closet’, because I’m a strong believer that that is a myth, and the closets are built up around children when they grow up by not educating them about who they could be, or about the different kinds of relationships and identities in the world.
“So I never did come out. I just showed up one day with my boyfriend to my parents’ house, but they already knew.” He shrugs. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to come out, but at the same time I wasn’t keeping anything a secret. I just wanted it to be normal, if that makes sense.”
It was an earlier song of Houston’s, In Aeternum Vive, from his 2023 album, Vehicular Suicide, that caught Paul Weller’s ear. As well as inviting him on tour – Houston’s dad drove him across North America to play such iconic venues as the Fillmore, in San Francisco, where he recorded a live version of his album track Jesus Freaks – Weller offered Houston the use of his Black Barn Studios to record the album.
The singer recorded 10 tracks there over five days last August; the subsequent autumn tour with Weller was intense but an enormous learning experience. “Some shows were more chatty, and people had a drink, and you just played into that. And some shows you could hear a pin drop and it was really lovely,” says Houston.
“I remember the Lincoln Theatre in Washington – the audience were very engaged. Then there was this theatre in Minneapolis that [was synonymous with] Prince, and every one of my idols played that stage. That was a real pinch-me moment.”
Weller, he says, was a great musician to tour with. “I was very worried about getting in people’s way, because I’m, like, ‘Oh my gosh. How did I manage to get here?’” He laughs. “But I think Paul maybe recognised that, and made the effort to come and chat to me, which was very lovely. He’s brilliant for lifting up smaller acts. I wish there were more artists like him.”
The Weller connection also went some way to landing Houston his appearance on Later … with Jools Holland, where his acoustic, tender telling of the single Lilith (performed in a resplendent glittering costume with black angel wings) was supremely assured.
“I suppose Paul put in a good word for me, which helps big time,” he says, laughing. “I was just really lucky, and it was really good timing with the album release ... Jools came and said hello, and he made the effort to say he’d listened to the album and stuff ... I was more nervous than I let on, because it’s a hard song to sing. It’s one of my more high-pitched songs, and a bit more yodelly than I usually go.” He shrugs. “But it worked.”
If there’s one thing Houston has learned over the past five years, it’s that a sense of humour is imperative, both in navigating the music industry and tackling tough topics in his songwriting.
“I like to describe my music as sad music for people with humour as a defence mechanism,” he says, laughing. “I’m probably a people-pleaser at heart; I get great joy from making people laugh and talking to people on stage, and I like to see people smile when I’m telling a story through the songs. I would hate it if people went away from a show of mine and were, like, ‘How do I describe it?’”
“I want people to feel engaged and know that they were listening to what I was singing.” He breaks into a wry smile. “A bit of humour helps with that sometimes.”
George Houston plays at the Under the Drum festival, in Co Antrim, on Saturday, August 9th, and Balor Arts Centre, in Co Donegal, on Thursday, August 14th; he plays in Galway, Derry, Belfast and Dublin in October
