BRIAN was the name chosen by songwriter/musician Ken Sweeney who released two albums, three singles and one EP between 1989 and 1999. Brian’s first single A Million Miles was voted No 4 Single of the Year in a critics poll by Hotpress Magazine in 1989, and the band, then a duo with Niall Austin, attracted a lot of record company interest after trade magazine Music Week wrote that “every discerning A&R men should be checking out their demo“. Second single You Don’t Want A Boyfriend attracted more acclaim. Following Niall Austin’s decision to return to Dublin, Ken signed with Setanta Records and released album Understand in 1992, which contained both early singles. Live shows saw Brian attract more interest as Virgin Records issued Understand in France with follow up The Planes EP. Second Brian album Bring Trouble was recorded at Cocteau Twins studio, September Sound, and featured BBC Radio One Single of The Week, Turn Your Lights On which was nominated Irish Single of The Year 1999 with live shows supporting Robert Forster and Grant McLennan of The Go-Betweens in London and Dublin. Ken now works as an entertainment journalist in Ireland and his radio docs, R.E.M. Out Of Athens, In Search of The Blue Nile, The Go-Betweens and The Irish Writers, and The Trashcan Sinatras have won Irish and international awards.
His first radio drama, Wogan’s Sweet Sixteen, about Terry Wogan fighting to play Irish records on the BBC at the height of the IRA bombing campaign, was runner up in RTE’s PJ O’Connor Drama Awards.
His debut album Understand will be re-issued by Needle Mythology on August 29th as an expanded version called Understood to include the 1993’s Planes EP and a previously unheard track which was intended for the original album.

What Ken Says: “It’s wonderful that Needle Mythology have re-issued Understand,  it
brings back so many memories and it’s turning so many people onto Brian. What I’m find out is … so many people don’t know there was a second Brian album in 1999, Bring Trouble, with  so many of my favourite songs  and which never got a vinyl release.Thematically Light Years could have been on Understand,  I’m singing “I was trying make it back to me and you, back to a time when I was the one for you“. Simon Raymonde of The Cocteau Twins plays bass. At the time I wrote Light Years, I’d just moved back to Ireland, was living in a big house near the coast in Termonfeckin, Co Louth. It was pitch dark and the night skies were incredible. I found a website that gave you times satellites went over the house and I would track them out over the Irish sea. The song seems to be about an astronaut lost in space trying to get back to a time when he meant something to the person he loved. I suspect now I wrote it about my first few years in London. You can just disappear into a big city and just long for home. I was thinking back to Ireland, Glendalough which is this amazing place in the Wicklow Mountains with deep lakes and forests. I got back there eventually in 1995 when I moved back to Ireland. I’d drive out there at 6am and enjoy the quiet looking out after the lakes.”

“What became of the music that made me feel? Turned the corner now and left me here. I’m losing touch with all the things that were so close to me, the books I read, the person that I used to be”. I wrote Getting Meaner about a point in my mid thirties where I stopped hearing music in the same way. It’s terrifying really because you feel so much growing up, that’s why you connect with music, and that’s why you want to be a musician. But you wake up one day and have to think about doing something else. I’d never heard a song  about that, so I wrote Getting Meaner. It has a Cocteau Twins feel because it was recorded in their studio, September Sound in Richmond London.

“I won’t call to your flat again or hold you that day you banged your head” is my favourite Brian lyric. No one ever got past the first few songs on my second album Bring Trouble, released on Setanta Records in 1999. If they made it as far as track seven there’s Right Through Tuesday… It’s as raw  and personal as anything on Understand (my first album). Cenzo Townsend who produced my second album is an incredibly talented guy, who later worked with U2 and George Ezra, everybody, check out his credits. I’m delighted with his success as Cenzo was a kind, warm, lovely man. He gave me so much advice, for instance.
I had a terrible lyric, somewhere in Right Through Tuesday about going back to Dublin which I sang WAS “full of Cranberries Tribute bands“. (which it was at the time). Cenzo talked me out of using that, I’m so glad he did. It would have distracted from what the song was really about. The only thing I want to make clear about Right Through Tuesday, because I’ve often been asked, is that it’s NOT about my wife! The girl concerned had simply gone off to a party St Etienne were having without me, …which when you think about it, is a much better
night than hanging out with me“

“When life creeps up upon you, gives you anything and people understand you, and take you to their hearts” Featuring the string section of The High Llamas, and their string arranger /keyboardist Marcus Holdaway. I was never so happy as when I moved back to Ireland in 1995. I’d suffered a terrible writers’ block living in London after my first album Understand came out. I was trapped in a dead end job which killed my creativity, because I had to pay off a bank loan. That all changed in the summer of 1995 when I took redundancy and moved back to Ireland. You need change to be creative and I got plenty. When I came out with that big chorus on We Close 1-2, I knew there was going to be a second Brian album. The songs just spilled out of me, one day I wrote three songs, (About This Time, Light Years and Wherever We’re Going). The wonderful Geradette Bailey of the Harvest Ministers on backing vocals added so much magic to Bring Trouble. It’s pure Go-Betweens. The demos of Bring Trouble sound very much like Understand. I’d love to release Bring Trouble and the  demos on vinyl one day”

His Mixtape:

The Field Mice – Quicksilver

I’m thrilled to be listening to an early preview tape of the new album by Lightning In A Twilight Hour, Colours Yet To Be Named– out this November (2025), featuring Bobby Wratten, Michael Hiscock, Anne Mari Davies. I never heard The Field Mice until after my first album Understand came out but I understand why people often compare the two bands. Bobby and myself have birthdays around the same time and are huge fans of Miracle Legion and The Stars of Heaven. Our friendship goes back to the early 90’s and I’d often ring him up in Mitcham and his lovely mum would instantly recognise my voice on the phone. If you’re friends with Bobby, time doesn’t matter to him. That’s important to me. We met up after twenty years down at the South Bank in London with his lovely partner, musician Beth Arzy who also plays on this new Lightning In A Twilight Hour album, and it was as if we’d seen each other the day before. Post Field Mice I had Michael over to my house in Ealing trying to recruit him to join Brian. Field Mice guitarist Harvey Williams I hung out with when I lived in London, check out his new Singleminded book on records.
I love this Field Mice song Quicksilver, and Ian Catt’s production. Hey! I liked it enough to record Brian’s Planes EP with Ian Catt. So what does this new Lightning In A Twilight Hour album sounds like ? Like Northern Picture Library which is my favourite period Bobby’s work. It’s great hearing the old team back together, again Bobby,  Michael,  and Anne Mari, with producer Ian. They have a single There’s More To Live Than Crooks out on Sept 12’th via Elefant Record.

The Revenants – Scott Miller Said

The song kills me. A meditation on life and death from Stephen Ryan, who was previously the singer of The Stars of Heaven. Like Billy Bragg’s Tank Park Salute, Stephen is writing about his dad after he passed away, in a series of lyrics which mention Simon and Garfunkel’s 59th Street Bridge Song and “the cautious man checks both sides of the road.. “(perhaps advice his dad gave him learning to drive?).
The song becomes more poignant as it goes along, summer visits to St Luke’s Hospital, and ends in a cemetery, as Stephen sings “In the garden of Mulrayne/Under the cedar tree“.
Guitarist Conor Brady and keyboardist Don Ryan, who played live shows with Brian, and here as members of The Revenants, add so many layers to this meditation on mortality.

Miracle Legion – Gigantic Transatlantic Phonecall

This alway reminds me of moving to London in 1989. Travelling around on tube trains in the middle of the summer trying to find a job and a place to live, having left everybody I knew and loved back in Ireland. It’s the last song on their wonderful Me and Mr Ray album,
Sings Mark Mulcahy “I get a phone call tomorrow, I never knew a time could bring such sorrow,  ..There’s a little bad news on the line“. Miracle Legion are from New Haven, Connecticut but there’s something about their music that reminds me of my own life growing up in Ireland. The Backyard, The Heart Is Attached or All For The Best – which John Peel on the BBC would play in the middle of the night.  There’s a warmth, kindness, and humanity in Mark and Ray’s songs which I took to use in my Brian records. Miracle Legion  generously sent over a quote about the re-issue of Understand on Needle Mythology, it’s the most treasured thing I have.

R.E.M – Perfect Circle

I was hooked on R.E.M from the moment  I heard their first full album Murmur.  This was back in the early 80’s, in a world before social media, or even the internet, you couldn’t google R.E.M.. There were no guitar solos on Murmur, the sleeve was so mysterious. I
caught R.E.M’s first Irish show  at the SFX Hall in Dublin in 1984. Later on I came across a typed handout R.E.M. gave out at their early shows in 1981 plugging rival bands, which just turned out on the web out of nowhere. It inspired me to go to Athens, Georgia and make a radio documentary about early R.E.M called R.E.M. Out Of Athens‘ for RTE Radio. I spoke to Michael Stipe and Mike Mills and they graciously went back to the start for me, along with close friends, the roadies who were on tour, and the bands who supported them, like 10,000 Maniacs who recounted how generous they were to their opening acts, giving them tour bonuses if they had a good night. REM treated their supports, their crews, everyone so well.
Producer Joe Boyd, tells me in the doc  “R.E.M. are a very honourable bunch, from top to bottom, the way they conducted themselves, in everything they did, it’s a good lesson. Good Karma is not a fiction.” You can listen to my radio doc here: https://www.rte.ie/culture/2017/1220/927398-r-e-m-out-of-athens-listen-to-ken-sweeneys-new-rockumentary/

The Blue Nile – From A Late Night Train

In 2014 I was sent over from my newspaper in Dublin to cover the MTV Awards in Glasgow, Scotland. To be honest, I was dying to go to Glasgow because I love The Blue Nile. I had some contact with Paul Buchanan (Blue Nile singer/ songwriter)  a few years before so I
sent an email to someone who had set up the interview  saying “listen, I’m in Glasgow, I’m a big Blue Nile fan, is there any chance I could meet up with Paul?” I didn’t think I would get anything back from it. Then I got an email saying Paul would love to meet up. We met in the
West End, the area that they are associated with. I also ended up hooking up with PJ Moore, another ex band member.  The Blue Nile had lived in Dublin for a while and they were good friends with a journalist friend of mine called George Byrne. George died suddenly and somehow we agreed that I’d make a radio documentary about The Blue
Nile for RTE Radio and we would dedicate it to George. I got very wet walking the streets of Glasgow with Paul and PJ but the life experience and story was incredible.I heard all the stories about songs like From A Late Night Train and Saturday Night, which Paul
told me was about the couples who used to meet outside this particular BHS store before going on a date and he would walk past them. He could see their expectation and what they hoped. Those stores were closing down while I was there and I found that very poignant.
In Search Of the Blue Nile aired on RTE Radio in Ireland and also on BBC Scotland on Christmas Day that year: https://on.soundcloud.com/D6mhK7QWtSpy9BMCA

Understood is out on August 29th 2025, via Needle Mythology. Look Here for more information on Brian.