Tipperary singer-songwriter Jack O'Connor celebrates release of debut album with Dublin gig

SNKT is the stage name of Cork and Stockholm-based music artist Jack O’Connor, who is originally from Redmondstown, Clonmel.

However, while his alias comes from the Swedish word for saint, O’Connor is far from anointed as he unpacks sins across his debut ‘No Saints’, which was released in April.

He will be performing tracks from his debut album, and others, when he plays a gig in Whelan’s in Dublin on this Friday night, June 23.

The son of Seanie and the late Marie O’Connor (nee O’Rourke), he is a past pupil of Clonmel High School. He was a member of the theatre group Stagecraft and also performed briefly with St Mary’s Choral Society.

O’Connor began writing and producing music as a student at UCC, pulling from his country’s gift for storytelling with a coming-of-age soundtracked by Robyn, Kate Bush and The Knife.

Taking from his experiences of what he describes as “discovering his queer identity,” along with the rush of an Irish college experience, SNKT inherently began as a project born out of club pop adoration met with searingly candid confessionals.

“I realised that when you’re the one with the pen, you can easily portray yourself in the best light possible,” O’Connor says.

“I found myself being more honest in terms of writing, where I saw faults in both parties. This is where I thought of the ‘saint’ idea, in that there were no saints in these relationships”.

Considering the personal nature of his latest batch of songs, O’Connor decided to approach ‘No Saints’ as its sole writer and producer after working with Grammy Award-winning producer Philip Larsen, among others.

The end result is a fully formed, ebullient pop debut, anchored by O’Connor’s deft vision of heartfelt dance music.

Lead single ‘Lost in Love’ is a peak club hours track in an alternate universe, where dancefloors are unencumbered by lockdowns. Written during an isolating period last summer, the song finds O’Connor grappling with the pandemic alongside the end of a fleeting romance doomed from the get-go.

Love and lust factor heavily across No Saints, but at its core SNKT’s debut is regarded as a document of unvarnished personal growth and acceptance in real time.

“I feel like this record is very me,” O’Connor says.

“Growing up gay in Ireland had its challenges, though I learned so much of myself through music, and I feel this record is, in part, a tribute to all the great music I was raised on that gave me strength when I was weak.

“Through this record, I was able to truly be my unashamed gay self and I hope to be able to spread the same joy that I was able to hear and feel in my teenage years to anyone who’s going through a rough time,” says Jack, who says he moved to Stockholm in 2016 to get a feel of the high quality way in which artists there are creating pop.

He spent a few years in the Swedish capital writing and producing.

Tickets for this Friday’s Dublin gig can be booked from whelanslive.com or through the link on his Instagram or Facebook @snktmusic.