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In the images accompanying Róisín Murphy’s new album Róisín Machine, the singer appears as a vampy disco queen, striking poses in shibari-esque bondage ties, blue latex pants, and ripped fishnets. Against a glossy red backdrop, she peers through dirty blond bangs, eyebrows painted with enough kohl to make Siouxsie Sioux jealous. The effect is both delightful, and distinctly weird. “I feel like today there’s a very conservative attitude to imagery and beauty for musicians,” Murphy says over Zoom from her home in north London. “So I wanted to kick it up the arse a little bit.”
For Murphy, kicking pop’s status quo up the arse is nothing new. Born in County Wicklow, Ireland, the singer moved to Sheffield at 19 and swiftly immersed herself in the city’s vibrant underground club scene, from which she emerged in the late ’90s as one half of the electro-pop duo Moloko. After they split, Murphy’s 2003 critically-acclaimed solo debut Ruby Blue was followed by 2007’s major-label release Overpowered, still considered one of the most influential pop records of that decade. The artwork for the latter memorably saw her wear the most outrageously over-the-top fashions of the moment, courtesy of Gareth Pugh and Viktor & Rolf—a year before Lady Gaga hit the world stage and took the avant-garde style mold Murphy had carved out into the mainstream.
Then, after taking a backseat while raising her two children, Murphy returned in 2015 with her Mercury Prize-nominated, genre-hopping masterpiece Hairless Toys. “I was coming out of this black space psychologically as an artist having taken time off to bring up my kids in suburbia, and suburbia is a sort of void, or at least a void of fashion,” Murphy, 47, explains of the record’s moody aesthetic. Set against eerie gray backdrops, Murphy’s wipe-clean trenches and natty nylon suits paid homage to the DIY spirit of the chosen families that populated Paris Is Burning’s ballrooms, while also spinning a more personal yarn about her domestic life outside of the music world. “When I came back with Hairless Toys, I didn’t want to do fashion at all, so I went for clothes that were ugly and minimal and smelled bad,” she adds. “When it came to fashion and music, I saw that everything had changed, so that wasn’t what I wanted to do.”
Her new album, Róisín Machine (for those unsure of how to pronounce her name, the two words rhyme), begins with a husky incantation from Murphy that reappears across multiple tracks: “I feel my story is still untold, but I’ll make my own happy ending.” Fittingly, the record is her most unabashedly joyous yet; a journey to the illicit pleasure center of her late-night thrills. Co-produced with one of her first collaborators in Sheffield, DJ Parrot, it’s also a winking, carnivalesque tribute to Murphy’s three decades commanding the dance floor. “We wanted all the tracks to come together and feel like a dubbed version of a proper album, in a Larry Levan way—proto-punk, proto-house, proto-disco all mashing up together,” she notes. “I was reading a lot about Danceteria and the scene in Valencia at the same time, and it was all about that wild mix of people.”
Aside from Murphy’s wicked, self-effacing humor, it’s this encyclopedic knowledge of countercultural history and club culture—her references bouncing from Frankie Knuckles to Cabaret Voltaire, The Cure to Laurie Anderson—that makes the throbbing pulse of her new record feel like the ultimate reflection of her eclectic sonic universe. “I've been going to clubs since I was 16, every possible kind of club you could imagine, I've been in it,” says Murphy. “I've had some amazing experiences, but the Sheffield experience feels most incredible because it was like family. They weren’t massive parties, but they were illegal or free—parties in caves or barns or lofts or cellars—everywhere we could find, we’d throw a party. I love clubs, because a door closes behind you and the rest of the world just goes.”
Tumbling down the rabbit hole of Róisín Machine, the real world also seems to melt away—helped along by the provocative fashions she sports across the artwork, all of which she styled herself, and most of which were pulled from her own archive. Murphy’s love for the fashion world is mutual—from her memorable performance at Viktor & Rolf’s spring 2010 Swiss cheese cut-out tulle show, to playing at parties for Balenciaga and Valentino—but her approach to styling has shifted. “High fashion has become fast fashion,” she says. “A piece becomes obsolete and it's not timeless; a thing comes out and then it’s last season. With an album sleeve and with a concept, at the end of the day, the idea is going to last forever and you've got to really think about what you’re going to put on it because you have to live with it. I'm going to have to live with it, my children are going to have to live with it. It needs to come from a personal place.”
For Murphy, this means everything from old John Rocha pieces knocking around the back of her wardrobe, to an entire final collection in eye-popping neons she bought from the RCA graduate Camilla Damkjaer in 2017. “I’m not working with the same producers on every record, so I’m not working with the same fashion designers either,” she says. While Murphy has teamed up with plenty of fashion stylists in the past, these days, she prefers doing the legwork herself. “When I was doing these performances at home during lockdown, I pulled out outfits from under beds, out of bags that hadn't been opened in years and the place is a fucking mess,” she says. “If anything, the styling part of my job is the most physical because it's so many bags, suitcases, pulling, opening, closing, taking care of, putting on. It actually keeps me fit!” And what does she wear for all that heavy lifting? “Screwfix couture, of course,” Murphy answers, before breaking out into a full-throated laugh.
Unsurprisingly, the bulk of the energy that brings the deliciously seedy artwork for Róisín Machine and its singles comes from Murphy. “I get in the mood before I go on set,” she says. “'Go on, let's fucking have it!’ I get very Northern and that. I'm down on the floor and you've got these fucking fantastic Vogue photographer who’s not used to seeing that. He’ll say, ‘This middle-aged woman, she keeps popping out for another spliff.’” Murphy laughs again, before pausing to add: “‘That’s the dissonance, though. There’s the singer, but there’s the boss of this situation also. They’re used to working in a different way, where it’s separate. It can be very tough, and the most machine-like I have to be is when making the visuals.”
Which returns us to the title Róisín Machine. A pun it may be, but it’s also a reference to the tireless work Murphy has invested in maintaining her career as labels have come and gone. Learning to reconcile her endless curiosity and urge to experiment with her tenacity as a businessperson has been no mean feat. Thankfully, her fiercely loyal fanbase has always been on hand to help keep the cogs whirring, even when—as she nods to, however tacitly—the sexist and ageist attitudes of many in the pop business have at times felt stacked against her. But while the irony of so many pop trends over the last two decades being kickstarted by Murphy isn’t lost on her, she’s now comfortable in her position as a beloved outsider. The key, for Murphy, is just to focus on the end product; even to actively celebrate the machine-like hamster wheel of working a pop musician in 2020. “I won’t stop until I deliver,” she adds, firmly.
All the same, it’s when letting loose, as she does with wild abandon on the dance tracks that populate the record, that Murphy becomes the superstar her fans have always known her to be. “I’m an exhibitionist at heart,” she says. “I was as a kid, and as far as I can remember. It’s a misunderstood preoccupation. People assume exhibitionism is about getting looked at, but for me it’s a joy to put the thing together, the creativity of making the exhibition, even if it’s an exhibition of oneself.” And with Róisín Machine, Murphy has crafted her most thrilling exhibition yet.