Winter Aid Announces 'Inner Sunset' EP

Fresh on the heels of the 10th anniversary edition of his debut EP, The Wisp Sings, Winter Aid, aka Irish songwriter Shane Culloty, has today announced the Inner Sunset EP, for a January 12, 2024 release. In conjunction, Culloty has shared the title-track single + video, his first new music in five years. Pre-save the Inner Sunset EP.

Part of the past five years of relative silence, beyond “The Wisp Sings” incredible continued life, was due to Shane and his wife uprooting from Dublin to San Francisco. Assimilating to life in a new city and country shortly led into the pandemic, which, between lockdown, elopement, and immigration form-filling, further delayed new musical activities. Inner Sunset marks this transition with songs that bridges the time between two homes - partly written in both, and completed this year with additional production from Chuck Johnson.

Discussing the single, Culloty offered, "'Inner Sunset' was the first song I recorded after moving to San Francisco: I left all the windows open in our little apartment, and recorded the guitar and vocals in one track. You can hear the sound of the bus and evening rush hour traffic on the 101. Inner Sunset is a neighborhood in San Francisco, and though it's not where we lived, every time I watched the sun go down the name came to mind. A lot of places in the city have names that can seem quite poetic when you hear them first, evoking an imaginary setting before you eventually attach them to a concrete place of street signs and bus lines. “Inner Sunset” also felt like a good name for the feeling of needing to move on in life, to end one chapter and start another.”

The six-song Inner Sunset is a largely instrumental affair, with the streets, sounds, and scenery of Culloty's adopted new home inspiring the four tracks, and filtering into the recordings themselves. Two songs,”Interlude for Shankill” and “Dusk,” date back to life back home in Ireland. Throughout the EP's six laidback tracks, these landscapes dictate the feel of material, providing both a sense of closure and a new beginning.

Photo Credit: Andy Omvik