Too Much Joy share “Oliver Plunkett’s Head”
Cult rock favs Too Much Joy have just made a very self-aware video to go with their crunchy punk-pop new single “Oliver Plunkett’s Head.”
It’s basically the band arguing amongst themselves about the failure of indie music videos and features the expected brand of hilarity from TMJ. Snarky comments from their publicist are even in there!
Song explanation from Tim Quirk:
“Oliver Plunkett’s Head is a real thing you can actually see in a church in Ireland. He was a martyr who was drawn and quartered and burned by people offended by his beliefs, but I guess some of his fans made off with his skull, which now sits in a glass case. It’s a pretty horrendous sight. Being an atheist, it mystified me to see people kneeling, praying, and crying in front of it, just as much as it mystifies me why anyone would want to murder someone for believing the ‘wrong’ things about God. I mean, I’ve just never been able to understand what dudes like that are thinking as they literally eviscerate another human being; is it, ‘Hoo boy, the Lord sure must be pleased with us! We’re going to heaven for sure after this!’?
“I wrote most of the lyric way back in ’91, in some pub right after seeing it. But, despite multiple efforts, we could never get an arrangement we all liked. Fast forward to 2021, as we were looking at old songs we’d never recorded for Mistakes Were Made, and I mentioned how much I’d always wanted to make that lyric work. Sandy somehow unlocked some chords that sound like they were waiting there all this time. His arrangement called for some b verses that didn’t yet exist, so I wrote a few more words, and the song finally felt complete.
“Oliver’s been dead a few centuries, so I suppose he could wait a couple decades for his anthem.”
Here’s the link to the single on Bandcamp:
https://toomuchjoy.bandcamp.com/album/oliver-plunkettshead
Fifth single from the Mistakes Were Made LP, backed with a non-album B-side (though if you bought Moar Mistakes, you already have that, too).
