Gawain and the Green Knight

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Gawain and The Green Knight are a homemade valentine to that cute ghost in your attic. Their music sounds purple and makes you wonder what songs made your great great great grandparents get a little weepy (in a good way) when they were tipsy.


The band (made up of married couple Alexia Antoniou and Mike O'Malley) was founded around the same time as their relationship in 2017. Antoniou had invited O'Malley to discuss music over whiskey on what ended up becoming, to their surprise, their first date.  Up until then, he'd been playing the Irish bouzouki at nightly gigs on NYC's Irish music circuit, while she'd been stockpiling songs that, as described by The All-Scene Eye, "used characters from history and literature– French monarchs, Italian ascetics, and Trojan warriors–to act out timeless joys, regrets, and longings."


Inspired as much by Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer's reimagining of the "Child Ballads" as Madeline Miller's "Song of Achilles,"  Gawain and the Green Knight are equal parts Joanna Newsom, The Decemberists, and one of those old-timey paintings whose eyes follow you around. They are here to sing about their affection for humanity and their healthy fear of death, and to cradle these songs in lovingly arranged chamber folk.