God Help The Girl - Work With Catherine Ireton

Work With Catherine Ireton

The main discovery of the project turned out to be Catherine Ireton, with whom Murdoch had established contact by chance in 2005. Catherine Ireton comes from Limerick in Ireland, she was studying Drama and Theatre Studies at University College Cork between 2002 and 2005. There she was the vocalist in the pop-jazz group elephant, with whom she published the album In the Moon in 2004. The band broke up in July 2005, but before that the songwriter and guitarist of elephant, Michael John McCarthy, moved to Glasgow to do a post-graduate course and passed the album In the Moon to his friend who showed it to Stuart Murdoch. When Stuart Murdoch heard the album of elephant, he invited Catherine Ireton, who was in her final year at university and both directed and played in theatre performances in Ireland at that time, to Glasgow in March 2005, held a trial recording session for her and afterwards asked her if she wanted to work with Belle & Sebastian. The singer agreed and moved to Scotland in the same year. She joined the project along with other vocalists, singing and recording demos of nearly all the songs.

Catherine Ireton appeared on the sleeve of the EP The White Collar Boy as early as 2006 even though she did not perform any songs on it. Finally she appeared as the vocalist in the single Come Monday Night and then in the main album God Help the Girl, both released in 2009. Out of 14 pieces on the album, Catherine Ireton performs (solo or with other singers) in 10 songs.