Liffey (which features on Pillow Queen's late 2020 debut album In Waiting) is a song of noise - melody and tuning emerging from an onslaught of wailing guitars and pounded muted toms, then cymbals pushed through the noise gate so far that they're reduced to an indistinct hiss. The harmonies are almost lost in the mix at times, pushed way back, but they're there. This all combines to make the track sound a little claustrophobic, and yet ... through it all, there's somehow a reassurance of hope and positivity.
Amidst this noise you can also find some arresting images. "Someday you will have my head ... on a silver plate" is the key refrain sung almost beseechingly. There's also another faintly Biblical reference: "to wash and dry your feet".
It's those engaging lyrics, sung with passion and beauty and overlaid with visceral, powerful rock music - but done a little differently - which has embedded this song firmly in my mind.
The structure of the song is interesting, too. There's a definite build to the chorus (the "silver plate"), but it's a long build. The verses start out sparsely arranged, with more and more sound rushing in as the song pushes on. Near the end, you're left listening to simple voices and that drone again, which takes a long, long time to fade away. That approach of taking time to deliver the song is probably not what I was expecting from an otherwise raucous rock, close to punk, sound.
I'm left with some questions even after repeated listens. Is that a bagpipe drone at the start, before the fuzzy wail of guitars kicks in (it returns near the end of the song, underlying an otherwise acapella section which has clear strains of trad Irish folk singing). Is that a harmonica about halfway through, or have I gone entirely mad? (Probably the latter, but maybe as a by-product of the wall-of-sound-plus production on this record.)
Even without the reference in the name of this track, this is unmistakably music from Dublin, the city which just keeps on producing slices of pure art.