It’s been a minute, but Dublin’s own For Those I Love is finally back — and not quietly either. David Balfe, the heart and soul behind the project, has just dropped a brand new single, Of The Sorrows, and let’s just say: it cuts deep.
This is the first new material since FTIL’s earth-shattering, grief-soaked debut album in 2021 — the one that snagged Ireland’s Choice Music Prize and had critics tossing around words like “remarkable,” “extraordinary,” and “immaculate.”No pressure, right?
But if there’s one thing Balfe doesn’t do, it’s half-measures. Of The Sorrows isn’t just a return — it’s a reckoning.
Balfe describes the track as a sort of emotional negotiation: “It felt like I was bargaining with myself,” he says. Written for himself, about himself, but shaped by the voices and struggles of the people closest to him, it captures the aching tension of staying in a city that feels like it’s pushing you out.
Shot by Balfe himself (yes, even with a broken leg — the man’s all in), the video was born over hundreds of hours, starting on Christmas Day and ending in chaos. “It felt good to give so much life to a project about a dying city,” he says. And honestly? You feel that intensity in every frame.
There’s a moment in the song — one that stops you cold — where an older Irish voice reflects on the pain of leaving his homeland: “I had to leave it but I want to die in it.” It’s gutting. And it’s personal. Balfe has wrestled with similar thoughts about emigration — about being boxed out of Dublin, but not really wanting to leave either. It’s a no-win situation, and he knows it: “How could you leave without putting up a fight?”
That vulnerability — raw, aching, and unflinchingly honest — was what made his debut album a modern Irish classic. And it’s all still here, woven into every beat and breath of Of The Sorrows.
Balfe admits the long silence after the debut wasn’t planned — he just didn’t want to speak unless he really had something to say. “Then one day,” he says, “it all just started to come out.” It began with little things: notes jotted on his phone while wandering Dublin, heavy thoughts piling up into lyrics. Eventually, they became songs.
And this one is just the beginning. More new material is on the way in 2025, and if Of The Sorrows is the opening chapter, we’re in for something special.
Watch + listen to Of The Sorrows now.
Let it sit with you. Let it ache a little.
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