Bearface Rebrands as Ciarán, Returns: The Show Where Phones Got Confiscated in a Church, and the Album That's Four Years Late
Once the guy who closed out BROCKHAMPTON albums with tearjerker ballads as Bearface, he's now going by his real name, Ciarán. His new album *Róisín* drops November 6 via Ninja Tune — it took him nearly four years to figure out what he actually wanted to make.
At Christ & St. Stephen's Church on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the audience had their phones confiscated before they even walked in. The lights went down, leaving only a dim blue glow that barely lit up the ten-piece band onstage. No introduction, no small talk — Ciarán just played his entire unreleased album front to back, his first live show in years. FADER's Tobias Hess was sitting in a back pew, watching the whole crowd sit in silence through the set before rising for a standing ovation.
The name won't throw off anyone who's followed BROCKHAMPTON closely — it's just a different way of saying the same thing. Ciarán used to go by Bearface, the member with the delicate voice who always closed out albums with the ballad. After BROCKHAMPTON split in 2022, he basically vanished for nearly four years, only resurfacing this past July under his real name with the single "K-Bar." His new album *Róisín* arrives November 6 via Ninja Tune, with the single "Galvarino" already out since the 9th, his voice settling back into the lower, husker mid-range from his Bearface days.
According to an interview with FADER, Ciarán wasn't in any rush to put out new music after the split. He described feeling pressure from outside to "strike while the iron's hot," but he didn't think the timing was actually right. "I don't think the iron was that hot," he laughed. "I'd rather take the time to make something I actually believe in." He admitted the stuff he wrote right after the breakup was "bad," and he hadn't found a direction that excited him yet.
During that period of searching, he was living in an apartment in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn that later got condemned over a serious rat infestation. His roommates were producers Ryan Yoo (boylife), Nick Velez, and Abhi Raju, an early collaborator of Dijon's. He remembers an exterminator asking him to guess how many rats were living in the walls — the guy's own answer: "a few thousand." Before the four of them moved out, they turned the basement into a shared studio, running demos over and over and reading each other's reactions to figure out if they were on the right track.
The real breakthrough came during a rental getaway in Sparta, New Jersey. The weather was rough — Ciarán, James Ivy, Roy Blair, and mixer D Chae (Daniel Chae) got stuck inside in the rain, and over several days they only finished two full tracks. But that was enough to lock in the sound of the whole record — funky, spacious, emotionally raw. He started going back to Prince and D'Angelo, and the tight, steady drum pattern on "K-Bar" is a direct nod to Prince's "If I Was Your Girlfriend."
The album title *Róisín* comes from something his mother once said — if Ciarán had been born a girl, she would've named him Ciara Róisín. He says he never wanted to just write love songs; he's more drawn to the idea of the "journeyman" — the boxers who fight hard for a living but never dream of a title shot. "I like real stories. A song doesn't have to be about you."
As for the slow, almost dragged-out pace of his comeback, Ciarán has no regrets about it. "If all you're chasing is a few extra streaming numbers, the cost ends up a lot higher," he told FADER. "I'd rather be able to look back and say I did it exactly the way I wanted to."
