Haunted Images – Haunted Images

Louth-based producer and songwriter David O’Farrell-McGeary, under the moniker Haunted Images, has delivered something quite extraordinary. Known already to those paying attention through a string of excellent singles— ‘If You Want’, ‘Grey Days’, ‘Sometimes’, and the devastatingly good ‘Stay Awake’—this self-titled album feels like the full arrival. A fully realised vision forged in isolation, insomnia, and introspection.

David’s sound is a curious thing. Take the rich fuzz-textures and dreamlike layering of classic shoegaze, throw in the brooding weight of Deftones and Deafheaven, then lace it with the glitched ambience of Aphex Twin. It’s a sound that both swells and shatters, that finds grace in the grit and melancholy in the noise. Lyrically, the album turns inward, unpicking memory, trauma and forgiveness—not with grandstanding, but with intimate precision.

On what the album is about David says:

Ok let’s adjust the lens and have a closer look and listen to this then.

The album begins not with a bang, but with a burden. ‘I Forgive You’ unfolds in slow motion. Sludgy and mournful, the track’s first half crawls through layers of thick distortion and ghosted vocal lines — not so much sung as exhaled. There’s a real sense of weight here, both emotional and sonic, like something unresolved is being dragged to the surface. Then comes the break — and what a break it is. The track erupts into a euphoric finale, as if the weight has finally lifted, even if just for a moment. The guitars bloom, the textures soar, and as an opening statement, it sets the emotional tone perfectly: heavy, human, and unflinchingly honest.

‘If You Want’ dives headlong into that gloriously fuzz-caked 90s sandpit, kicking up grit and gold in equal measure. Built around a deceptively simple two-chord structure, the track wastes no time pulling you in with its quiet strummed intro — a lull before the fuzzstorm. When the distortion hits, it hits, soaked in the unmistakable flavour of that Smashing Pumpkins Big Muff grind. It’s tactile and physical, a sound you feel in your chest. But it’s not just about weight — there’s a delicacy too, especially in the vocals. David’s delivery floats in the mix, dreamy and disembodied in a way that clearly nods to My Bloody Valentine’s lovelorn murmurings. There’s a push and pull here between heaviness and softness, where the melodies weave their way through the noise like threads of sunlight through fog.

The first instrumental interlude offers a surprising shift in mood. All soft classical guitar and glowing synth ambience, ‘Arklow emo’ opens a different dimension of David’s sound world—tender, nostalgic, and ghostly. It’s a palate cleanser, but more than that, it speaks to his compositional depth. The title nods cheekily to press descriptions of his sound as “Arklow emo,” and to the Irish hometown that shaped his sonic identity.

With ‘Stay Awake’, Haunted Images doesn’t flinch. This is a track that looks directly into the darkest corners of the human condition and doesn’t look away. Written in the stillness of the night — those long, stretched-out hours where sleep won’t come and your thoughts start to circle — this song is steeped in a raw, emotional honesty. It’s one of the most powerful and personal moments on the album, tackling the crushing weight of depression and the terrifying impulse to simply stop existing. The lyrics don’t sensationalise or dramatise; instead, they gently unpack the burden of witnessing someone you love fall into that kind of despair — when you can’t fix them, can’t save them, but you can stay awake with them. It’s a heavy responsibility, beautifully articulated. Musically, the track moves between quiet, reflective passages and swelling, emotional crescendos, like breathing through a panic attack. The shoegaze textures are dialled in perfectly: thick but not suffocating, immersive but never overwhelming. In its vulnerability, ‘Stay Awake’ becomes an act of quiet defiance — a hand reaching out into the dark.

There’s something slow-burning and cinematic about ‘Sometimes’. At its core, it hums with restraint — all half-light and hesitation, like watching dust drift through a shaft of dying sunlight. David’s delivery here is ghostly, almost weightless, with that same airy vulnerability you’d hear in a Whirr or early Nothing track. It doesn’t rush or push. Instead, it lingers — reflective, lost, slightly out of time. And it makes sense. This was a song born from isolation, written in a dimly lit room where the sun barely crept in. That setting is palpable in the music. There’s a dull greyness that hangs over the track, not in a lifeless way, but in a way that feels numbed by repetition — days bleeding into nights. Then just when you think it might drift away entirely, ‘Sometimes’ swells into something fierce and emotionally uncontainable. An avalanche of drums, fuzz, and melody crashes down in the final stretch, tearing through the stillness with glorious abandon. It’s not chaos for chaos’ sake — it feels earned, cathartic even.

Placed dead centre in the album, ‘I Don’t Know Where It Begins or Where It Ends Anymore’ feels like the stillness at the heart of the storm — a necessary pause, yet one that carries its own quiet intensity. This instrumental plays like a dream you’re trying to hold onto, but that keeps slipping through your fingers. A pulse of ambient synths, chimes and vaporous textures drift slowly outward, untethered from any fixed structure. There’s no rhythm to lock into, no verse-chorus cycle — just the gentle unfolding of sound.

‘Take Me Instead’ marks a thrilling left-turn in the flow of Haunted Images — a sharp-edged, sonically daring moment that leans into industrial abrasion and experimental textures without losing sight of the album’s emotional through-line. It’s arguably the boldest piece on the record, one that doesn’t just expand the sonic palette but smashes it open and rebuilds it with scorched circuit boards and found sound fragments. What’s especially striking is David’s use of real-world sonic debris — notably capturing the buzz and glitch of cellular data interference from his phone, running it through distortion and mangling it into something strangely musical. It’s a fascinating act of transformation, alchemising technological detritus into something raw and expressive. The guitars here are less about walls of fuzz and more about texture and friction, scratching against the mix like rusted wire. Despite its abrasive core, there’s still something deeply human underneath it all. It’s that same aching vulnerability that runs through the record — only now refracted through digital decay and chaos.

After the chaos and corrosion of ‘Take Me Instead’, ‘Grey Days’ returns us to more familiar shoegaze territory — but it’s not a retreat. Instead, it’s a recalibration. Here, David shows that he doesn’t need maximalism to make an impact. What makes ‘Grey Days’ so affecting is its restraint: the fuzz is still there, the layers still hum and churn, but they give way more easily. There’s breathing room between the noise. The song glides on a delicate, sugar-spun melody — the kind that slowly unfurls and quietly lodges itself in your memory. David’s vocals feel more foregrounded here, offering a clear emotional anchor amid the haze. There’s a softness to the delivery, almost conversational, which makes the weight of the lyrics hit even harder. It’s a bittersweet track, all shimmering melancholia and subdued beauty. That balance between sadness and something almost serene is masterful. There’s a sense of resignation in the lyrics, but also a kind of grace — the way we carry pain not because we want to, but because it never quite leaves. As David suggests, it’s the grey days — not the catastrophic ones — that linger longest, that work their way into the texture of your life.

!FLASHING IMAGES WARNING!

‘A Grey Sky Over A City Of Ghosts’ is the haunting instrumental epilogue to ‘Grey Days’, but it feels more like an extension of its soul than a direct follow-up. This is where the music sheds any remnants of structure and settles into something more ephemeral, like a fading echo of an echo. If ‘Grey Days’ was the raw, exposed emotion, this track is the hazy, distant reverberation of that feeling — like remembering a dream just before it slips away for good.

And then, we reach the final chapter. ‘Heavenlevel7’ the oldest song in the collection, is both an epilogue and a delicate resolution. After an album steeped in introspection, pain, and dissonance, this track arrives as the softest of sighs — but still full of that careful emotional complexity that defines the record. Lyrically, it’s a song about grappling with identity and the disorienting distance of disassociation. The line “I think it’s OK now” — quietly tentative — hangs in the air like a question rather than a declaration. It’s the album’s closest moment to peace, but it’s a fragile, almost hesitant peace, borne from the weary acceptance that things might not be “OK” in the traditional sense, but they are now — at this moment. And sometimes, that’s enough.

Haunted Images is a record of stark honesty and vast scope. It’s a deeply introspective work, but never self-indulgent—the careful songwriting and production choices invite the listener in rather than shutting them out. What’s striking is how current it sounds. There’s a weight and precision in the production—those drums thundering through the mix, every layer tuned to the emotional frequency of the moment—that makes this album feel contemporary and vital, rather than nostalgic or referential.

More than just an impressive debut, this is a statement of intent. David has carved out a space that’s uniquely his: shoegaze for the haunted, post-rock for the heartbroken, ambient noise for the emotionally curious. It’s an album that doesn’t just explore darkness—it brings lanterns and maps.

Haunted Images is out now and you can grab it digitally or on CD from the Haunted Images Bandcamp Page.

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