Hiroshima

In spring of 2019, Canadian songwriter Eamon McGrath embarked on his first tour of Japan supporting his albums Tantramar and Guts, which saw him continue onto Europe and North America, playing over 300 shows in support of the releases. Now, in 2022, McGrath's determination to return to Japan has led him back to the offices of Moorworks Records where his latest album Bells of Hope finds a wider Japanese release.
The album's first single, "Hiroshima", was inspired by a daytime trip McGrath took to the Peace Museum, and documents the speechlessness and shock he and his bandmates experienced after being that close to relics and testimonials from such a dark and harrowing moment in human history.
"Nothing prepares you for it," McGrath explains. "A grim silence came over all of us as we stood at ground zero and later wandered through the rooms. And then, in what seems like as quickly a time as it all started, it all ended: it was a beautiful day, we were back out in the sun, the wind was blowing across our faces, almost as though nothing had even happened at all."
McGrath's lyrics in "Hiroshima" describe the sense of helplessness he felt later on that night, after the band's Hiroshima performance, where McGrath sat alone in a dimly-lit hotel room, trying to articulate in words what he'd felt only hours before. "I tried to write a letter to someone-anyone-back home," McGrath remembers, "Trying to describe what we'd all felt and how emotionally drained we all were, and I just couldn't do it. The letter never got sent, nobody ever read it. So instead, it became a song, written the next day on the bullet train to Tokyo."
The result is a moody, atmospheric and brooding piece of music, dedicated to the lives lost at the atomic bombing, speaking to the fragility of human life and the shocking lengths people will go to destroy it. "It's a human duty to go there," McGrath concludes. "Everyone should visit Hiroshima once. Afterwards, nothing is ever the same."