Artist: Arborist
Title: Bye Bye, Johnny Cash
Format: digital single
Cat#: Fika122SG2
Release date: 16th September 2026
Bandcamp | Spotify

“Bye Bye, Johnny Cash” is the third single to be taken from the new album Looking For Love, from ARBORIST – the musical outlet of Mark McCambridge. Directed by longtime collaborator Tristan Crowe, the video is sophisticated and louche (and possibly NSFW), beautifully shot in the dark, ornate interior of Belfast’s Rattlebag cocktail bar and featuring the talents of Derry-based burlesque dancer Audrey Blue. The song is the seedy tale of a man obsessively visiting a dancer in a strip club, one of the enthralling cast of fictional characters in McCambridge’s study of the underbelly of life in his home city of Belfast. Atmospheric and evocative - with a dash of sleaze accentuated by Meilana Gillard’s sensual saxophone solo - “Bye Bye, Johnny Cash" is exquisitely uplifting despite the tawdry subject matter.

McCambridge says of the video: "The song Bye Bye, Johnny Cash was born of a sordid tale from a friend - it deals with another kind of 'love' and loneliness to those found elsewhere on the album. As the band play, the audience are bored and distracted, only to turn and become enraptured with the burlesque dancer lurking behind them - what hope do we have of someone spending 4m30 watching a music video when sex is just a click away? And the song's denouement speaks to our collective fear that you just never know who's watching.”

Dancer Audrey Blue says: "Was a pleasure to weave burlesque across mediums through Arborist's sound, paired with the macabre backdrop of Rattlebag".

Arborist’s fourth album of exquisitely inventive Americana is the first album to be self-produced by McCambridge himself, largely from his home studio in Belfast – late night recordings lending the album a crepuscular, stark atmosphere and the feeling that we are present with him there in the room.

These quiet hours are clearly where McCambridge feels most at ease - after all, this is a singer Bill Drummond has described as writing songs,“riven with more loss than any record since Leonard Cohen quit this world”, who Kim Deal chose to sing in beautiful, intertwined harmony with on debut single “Twisted Arrow” and who Matthew E White and his Spacebomb band collaborated with to such astonishing effect on the previous Arborist LP, the Northern Irish Music Prize winning An Endless Sequence of Dead Zeroes.

Spacebomb’s resident bassist Cameron Ralston (Bonnie Light Horseman, Hiss Golden Messenger) again features throughout, alongside Eamon Ferris (The Waterboys) on drums and Ben McAuley (Van Morrison) engineering. It is close-mic-ed and intimate, calling to mind albums such as Songs Ohia’s Magnolia Electric Co., The Divine Comedy’s Regeneration, The Blue Nile’s Hats and Wilco’s Ode to Joy, as well as early-70s records from John Cale, John Lennon and Bill Fay.

Recently honoured with a ‘Fellowship’ by the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University in Belfast - alongside author Caoilinn Hughes and playwright Conor McPhearson – 2026 looks set to be a seminal year for the Irish artist.

Looking For Love is ARBORIST’s first album to be self-produced by McCambridge, largely from his home studio in Belfast – and at times it feels like we are in the room with him. It’s a different kind of record for him as previously he has always sought collaboration; whether it be with Kim Deal who chose to sing intertwined harmony on his debut single “Twisted Arrow”, or recording in The Curfew Tower owned by The KLF’s Bill Drummond who described Mark’s songwriting as being “riven with more loss than any record since Leonard Cohen quit this world”, and who Matthew E White and his Spacebomb band collaborated with to such astonishing effect on the previous Arborist LP, 2023’s An Endless Sequence of Dead Zeros, winner of the prestigious Northern Ireland Music Prize. This time, with no outside producer steering the way, McCambridge found that the quiet hours were where he felt most at ease, despite periods of trial and error, and, by his own admission, moments of feeling genuinely lost in it all.

Despite playing many of the parts himself, McCambridge still called upon old friends from the community around him; Spacebomb’s resident bassist Cameron Ralston (Bonnie Light Horseman, Hiss Golden Messenger) again features throughout the record, alongside Eamon Ferris (The Waterboys) on drums, with the great and the good from Belfast’s vibrant music scene. The album was engineered by longtime collaborator Ben McAuley (Van Morrison) and mixed by Jimmy Robertson (Anna Calvi, Beth Gibbons, Fat Dog). The results are staggering, devastating and uplifting in equal measure, calling to mind albums such as Songs Ohia’s Magnolia Electric Co., The Divine Comedy’s Regeneration, The Blue Nile’s Hats and Wilco’s Ode to Joy, as well as early-70s records from John Cale, John Lennon and Bill Fay.

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More about Arborist

Belfast native Mark McCambridge played his first show as Arborist supporting James Yorkston. A solo tour followed, and impressive performances led to notable support slots alongside Low, Cat Power, Echo & The Bunnymen and Guy Garvey. Arborist's debut single, the Americana-tinged "Twisted Arrow," caught the attention of the critics with an astonishing duet with Kim Deal of The Breeders. The debut album Home Burial (2016) and its follow-up, A Northern View, both received glowing praise, from The Guardian ("instant classic" ★★★★) to MOJO ("devastatingly bleak… upliftingly beautiful" ★★★★) to Uncut (8/10), with BBC 6 Music play from Cerys Matthews, Cillian Murphy, Lauren Laverne, Radcliffe and Maconie and Gideon Coe — and Steve Lamacq calling single "Taxi" "one of those records that makes you immediately stop what you're doing." He went on to even greater success with the 2023 Northern Irish Music Prize winning third LP, An Endless Sequence of Dead Zeroes, which was recorded at SpaceBomb Studios in Virginia with musician and producer Matthew E White. For his fourth LP, Looking For Love, he has signed with Fika Recordings and with a tour approaching in November, 2026 looks set to be a seminal year for the Irish artist.