Music

Wasps Vs Humans: “It’s about calling out the ugly side of society”

Cork punks and husband and wife couple Carl Antony and Linda Plover have spent an extended time away from music as they raise children, but their return, a fiery and direct punk record entitled ‘Scratchcard Empires’, is as of-the-minute and young-feeling as you could hope for.

Addressing a range of social issues taking in the cult of Andrew Tate and cheap meat, inner-city violence and Donald Trump, the record is all about social exploration, putting across an opinion, and outlet for a mix of visceral anger and carefully constructed social points. Carl brings the punk, while Linda brings a hippier, more traditional edge. I took the change to ask the band all about it…

What is the broader political direction of your music and what are the specific issues you want to highlight?

Although there is a sway towards politics and how society can be exploited through its governance, our music on a whole is social commentary; we write about what we see around us or on the news from the obscenities of wealth, living on the breadline, celebrity obsessed culture to consumerism, social media trolling to inner city violence. It’s about calling out what we consider right and wrong, the injustices, the ugly side of society.

Musically, how do you put together a track and how does the use of the Bodhran and the tin whistle fit in with more conventional punk aesthetics?

It’s good to draw from different genres, not pigeonhole music. I grew up with punk, as well as experimental music in the 80s, Linda’s background is folk and blues. When we create music together, it’s interesting to mix it all up. The bodhrán is a wonderful percussive instrument and I love the growly bottom end which marries well with my drumming parts. The tin whistle can be ethereal as well as creating an unsettling sound, which can work really well on some of the tracks.

There’s an age old argument about punk being alive or otherwise. Does it remain an effective social voice, in your views?

Punk is an attitude. It’s two fingers up at the establishment. I was growing up in the 70s and 80s from a working class background in the UK and punk really spoke to me, it was the voice calling out the crap, an outlet for the oppressed.  It made sense to me then and is just as relevant decades later. Just take the current house crisis as an example; the politics are the same – the ordinary person vs people in power – just different players.

Give me a take on some of your main characters, Andrew Tate, Jesus, and Donald Trump…

You could say each one of them hold power, that we as a society have bought into. We have allowed them to wield it. We believe them and follow them, as opposed to thinking it out ourselves, Jesus aside of course, although the church still wields the power. 

The track ‘Jesus Isn’t Listening’ pulls on that common thread of ideology, the need to follow someone and believe they have the power to sort out your problems, or perform miracles. The lyric ‘no rockstar, no god’, – it’s about thinking for yourself, your own response to whatever situation presents you, being in control of the choices you make.

As a couple, do you tend to agree on a lot of the social issues you address?

We both like to think we have a sense of right and wrong, good and bad and we’re not afraid to call it out.

Has raising kids changed how you view the world at all?

Having kids certainly puts things in perspective. In terms of being a performer, the ambition is different, it’s about making and playing music purely for the love of doing it and not stressing about whether people like it or not, or trying to forge a music career and take over the world – It doesn’t matter, it’s not life or death. In terms of the themes we write about, these have remained the same since we started writing together, however with having children, it also makes you acutely aware of the messed up world we live in and that worry that comes with having kids and their place in this world.

Carl in particular has quite a hefty selection of previous major live acts he’s shared the stage with. How important are those learning experiences?

I don’t think there is any learning as such, no more than watching an artist you admire live. Getting to play the same stage however can be a real treat. I recall meeting John Cooper Clarke when I opened for him in Cork some years ago. It was a real pleasure,, a top gent and all round nice bloke. You’d like to think some of that genius will rub off on you when you shake their hand..

What is your live show like, and how has it adapted since you’ve played as a couple?

I was very much influenced by John Cooper Clarke and for a number of years, I performed as a spoken-word artist/punk poet around Ireland. I am also a drummer and played drums on a couple of my poems. Since Linda joined me over the last year, we’ve been able to bring a lot more to the show and it’s as much about the music and sound as it is the lyrics. I’m the noisy punk and Linda has a more hippy vibe – having said that, she’s still got that edge whether she’s beating her bodhrán mercilessly or wailing like a banshee (as she puts it). It’s raw, rough around the edges, it’s noisy, it’s energy driven. It also has humour – there’s no getting away that we’re married in music as in life and she’ll keep me in place on stage!

Do you feel Ireland is a good place to play punk in?

We would describe our sound as punk, folk, beats and noise, rather than punk as one genre. We consider ourselves as bringing the punk ethos into our music, it’s the attitude, the DIY approach, a voice for the underdog. There is a kindred spirit amongst those who experience austerity and want to call it out. The Irish community gets that and certainly in our experience, has been very open to what we’ve got to say.

What are your plans for the future?

This autumn, we’ve been doing a few gigs to promote the album and are really looking forward to playing Thomas House in Dublin with Jinx Lennon on Saturday October 12th. We’ve played there before with Jinx and it’s got a real energy, which in fairness we’ve found with all the Irish venues we play; we were at the Spirit Store in Dundalk a few weeks back and that’s always a great night. Coming up, we’ve Debarras in Clonakilty, Levis’ in Ballydehob and finishing of Fred Zeppelins in Cork.

Meantime, over the next few months, we’ll be demoing new tracks for an EP

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Bowling for Soup: “we take the piss out of ourselves. I think that’s something we’re good at”

Known as one of the hardest working bands in rock, Bowling For Soup, if you ask the charts, would be considered past their peak. That’s probably true of most pop punk, of course. But with the most loyal of fanbases and a work ethic the envy of essentially every other act on the circuit, the Texas rock band find themselves celebrating their past but also shining into the future. 

Their latest releases, for example, celebrate their Greatest Hits and fan favourites, but also explore the dynasty of Taylor Swift, a subject that feels very “now”. Their tours are absolutely relentless, and their downtime is not a lot quieter.

“I have an amazing support system,” singer Jaret Reddick says. “And for me personally, I don’t know what else I would do. I don’t have any hobbies. At every turn there’s something else, and I’m just looking at it going ‘that’d be cool, I should do that.’”

“At the end of the day I have my family, which is number one, my two bands, my voiceover stuff… when I wake up in the morning there are requirements already. I get spread thin pretty quickly. I have learnt to reel it in a little bit quicker, and that took a long time.”

“We take the piss out of ourselves, I think that’s something we’re good at doing. We’re celebrating anniversaries, and lots of the bands we started out with are coming back. Our song ‘1985’ [arguably the band’s biggest hit], I think we did a great job with that, actually. The only reference I really have to explain is to older people, with which Van Halen singer I’m talking about. It’s about Sammy Hager.”

“I think we did a good job of making the song with timeless references. The funny thing is, at the time we wrote that line that asks “When did Motley Crue become classic rock?”, it was meant to be funny. But now they are. I’m not sure we’re far from classic rock ourselves.”

“Getting old sucks,” Reddick laughs “It sucks in that there are obviously things you can’t do anymore, all the cliched stuff. But I’m very happy with the trajectory of my life. The mistakes that I’ve made have all been turned into what my life is now. When I step out of a tour bus I have to do it a little slower, but I definitely don’t wish I was in my 20s. I think we had it better in our 20s, actually. There are so many challenges now for those who are 18 or 21 that we didn’t have.”

As for the latest hit? “The Taylor Swift song is like nine years old, and it was written alongside ‘Punch Drunk Love’, which is kind of like our divorce record. We gave it away as an exclusive with a little video on YouTube at the time.” 

“I’m glad we released it, but we’re in an odd spot. We released it to go along with the Grammys, but with all the NFL stuff going on it feels weird. It could be seen as somewhat opportunistic, which was not our intention – the link was Grammy week. But we’re Swifties, my daughter has been singing the songs at karaoke since Taylor was a country girl.”

“Right now, especially in the US, she’s absolutely everywhere, but I think for her it probably goes with the territory.”

For Bowling For Soup, the lyrical links and connections with what’s now a multi-generational fanbase ensure they don’t land in their own nostalgic 1985.

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Stomptown Brass: “expect the unexpected”

Setting out to be a different kind of raucous live act, Stomptown Brass – a powerful pop act based in a flamboyant love for brass instrumentation – are on the cusp of their debut album. The record, entitled ‘It Did Went Down’, is both an exploration of variety and texture, and a summary of what’s been a raucous and memorable career so far.

With the band particularly famed for their sometimes manic live shows, the recorded version, songwriter and trombonist James O’Leary tells us, goes out of its way to explore different realms.

“I would say to expect the unexpected,” he says. “The natural limitation of brass bands in recorded long-form is the tendency to sound quite same-y and one-dimensional after a while. We have worked pretty hard against this by packing together a diverse number of textures and styles which means the listener journey is always moving through different moods, tempos, tensions and resolutions.” 

“There’s probably a bit more singing on the album than you might expect with this kind of band – a few of us can hold a note so why not throw that in the mix! But there are some underlying musical and lyrical themes which tie the whole thing together so it’s not a complete free-for-all.”

The album represents a major landmark for the band, and the fact that it’s taken so long is perhaps an indicator of where the group’s priorities lie, though it’s clear that having done it, serious effort has been made to have done so properly.

“The album marks ten years of the band’s existence which is, of course, an unusually long wait for a first album,” O’Leary says “It’s probably fair to say we could have released a decent album years ago but there was always a sense that we hadn’t quite made the style our own until not too long ago. It can be a bit tricky to free yourself from the stock perception of what a “brass band” sounds like, so we had to really work at carving out our own corner of that space. That extended gestation has really added some richness to the work that an earlier release would have lacked.”

That richness has included, more recently, the addition of electronic elements. “This is partly a result of a number of us listening to a lot of electronic music, and also an effort to find something which sounds a bit different in the brass band setup.” 

“It’s been a balancing act we’ve been working on for a number of years: the raw acoustic vitality of brass bands is so integral to their music but it’s also a natural ceiling in many ways.  We’ve done our best to keep what we can of this energy while attempting to capture some slightly more interesting moods and ideas than the acoustic setup would allow. I would like to think the album is a good demonstration of this balance and hopefully listeners will mostly feel we got it about right!”

Meanwhile, the band’s playful side, which has included kids’ shows, a series of chaotic performances in the back of the now-defunct Bernard Shaw, and their own unique add on to the end of St Patrick’s Day way back in 2015, will continue.

“I’ve no idea who came up with this,” O’Leary recalls of the band’s unofficial stroll on the end of the 2015 city centre parade. “We were in a phase of trying all sorts of ideas and pop-up performances back then, and this one just kind of came off. I don’t think there was a huge amount of expectation so the result was definitely a surprise. We finished off trapped on both sides in the middle of Suffolk Street with people almost hanging out of windows above us to see what was happening. Then just as the streets were getting a bit sloppy, we managed to escape!”

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Dea Matrona: “We like to go in different directions with our songs”

Born on the streets of Belfast, as a busking act that developed their sound during time spent mitching from school and writing songs for fun, Dea Matrona have become one of the hottest independent rock bands in Ireland in recent years.

The duo, made up of Mollie McGinn and Orlaith Forsythe, were originally famed for their covers, but have worked their way into more and more originals, and find themselves as one of the more touted acts on the rock circuit, touring internationally on the back of their increasingly viral videos.

“When you’re busking you really have to work on drawing people in,” McGinn says of the early days. “We had a lot of times where we’d be out, setting up, and the rain would blow up the amp, and we’d have to run and try and fix it in public toilets with hand dryers, stuff like that. We always got them back working, but maybe bringing loads of electrical equipment out wasn’t the smartest idea.”

“There wasn’t a particular moment moving off the street,” she continues. “We’d be busking every weekend and people would come up and ask us to play at a bar, or festival, or at their wedding, so we’d do it. But we’d keep busking, too. For a few years we just wanted to play everywhere, all the time. Some of the busking videos did really well, including in the States.” 

“There were times when we’d be filmed by people walking past and we’d come home and the videos would be flying online. It was really weird. Towards the end we did decide to capture ourselves, but for the first few years we were just having fun and other people did it for us. It was really cool.”

“We decided to put on our own shows, sell tickets, and be more professional with the album and touring and online work and so on at a certain point. We have a very worldwide fanbase, so we want to get out and play for as many people as possible. We’ve been playing in Latvia, Estonia and Poland, and we’ll see Dea Matrona t-shirts in the audience, which is mad.”

“We usually only play two or three covers in a set now, just play for an hour or so,” McGinn continues. “We want to have the perfect debut at the right time, and I hope the debut album, which we’ve been working really hard on for a long time, is going to be that.”

“The album is really true to ourselves and contains a lot of new songs people won’t have heard. We take some risks with the songwriting, the production, and so on. And there are some songs that have already been released, too, some of the fan favourites.”

“We like to go in different directions with our writing. Sometimes we turn everything on its head and do something we don’t expect, and there’s one on the album where we have some fun with lyrics. There’s lot of different themes. We go from love to the apocalypse.”

“We had a record deal for the album offered, but being independent is really important to us. We are definitely happy with that, it feels right. If you’re looking at going more global, maybe the label becomes important.”

“I remember when we were mitching class in school and writing songs about what would happen in the day, just for fun. We never really planned to write or play guitar, but it just sort of became our thing, and we kept going.”

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Jake Carter: “If I make a difference to one person, that’s a huge achievement”

Dublin-based Liverpudlian Jake Carter is forging a career on several fronts. Having appeared in Dancing With The Stars and performed in a number of stage shows over recent years, he’s a rising star on the acting scene. Despite this, Carter insists music is where his heart is.

“There’s a nervousness to the first full body of work that I’ve completely written by myself,” Carter says of his debut EP, ‘Point of View’. “It’s been a long time since I’ve released music, everything slowed down since Covid. But I’m so excited and happy to be getting it out there. I do a lot of different stuff. Acting, TV, and so on. But I love singing, writing and recording music, and I’m really proud of the sound that we’ve created with this EP.”

“I moved over to Ireland seven years ago, and it took time to adapt, and find my own lane, my own sound,” he says. “With this EP, I feel like we’ve found that. I’m very comfortable writing, recording and performing in this realm, and I feel like I’ve found who I am. I’m working with a Dublin-based producer called Richy McCourt who’s been amazing, he gets where I’m trying to go and we’ve built a great relationship over the last few years.”

“There’s amazing pop music in Ireland that influences any tracks that come from here, I feel,” Carter continues. “Picture This, Moncrieff, Wild Youth, and then the bigger ones of course, your Dermot Kennedys, your Hoziers, your Niall Horans. Ireland is thriving with amazing artists and I take influence from that. I take things from Take That, McFly, and other bands I listened to growing up, too. Then there’s Harry Styles, Tom Grennan, and acts of that kind of ilk.”

“I love singing my own songs on stage, but I’ve been lucky with TV and stage opportunities, and I’m very grateful for that. It all lends itself, once you can put your hand to anything it helps. I just love performing, whether it’s a musical, comedy, pantomime or my own music, writing and recording.”

“You can get very wrapped up in things like streams and TikTok followers, but I try to take myself out of that situation. If it only gets to one person and you make a difference to them, that’s a huge achievement, so I try not to think about it. Of course, if we got massive streams and huge success, that’d be amazing.”

“Live, we have your standard guitar, drums, bass, and I play piano. Then we use samples, which my drummer triggers. With the EP, I try to go back to the real band sound, so there’s a lot of real piano, guitar, acoustic and bass. That was a big thing when I was growing up: real acoustic sound and instruments in the tracks is something I love.”

“I think it’s going to come back. There are a lot of artists that are just them and acoustic guitar. Jamie Webster, from Liverpool, is someone I’ve followed a lot in the last few years. He sings with a thick Liverpudlian accent. Singing in your own accent is a big thing at the moment and I love that, it just feels more real.”

“People shouldn’t shy away from who they are when they’re singing. I think you’ll hear a lot more Scouse coming out on this album than on previous singles. I’ve embraced it, and I go with it. Songwriting is about the writer. It’s the biggest therapy, a release of emotions. That’s why a good song connects. With all of the tracks on the album, they were released over five or six years, and you can probably hear different stages. It’s different perspectives of love.”

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Havvk: “Our album is about how you treat yourself”

Moody and jarring, heady and yet at times deeply emotional and reflective, Havvk’s music is sometimes referred to as a modern-day form of grunge, but is more accurately something of a tour of the more emotive end of heady rock, a clever balance of brisk and considered. 

The trio consist of Julie Hawk, Matt Harris and powerful new addition Nigel Kenny (formerly drummer with the now defunct Bitch Falcon – apparently he has a thing for bands named for birds!). They’ve taken an unusual road to establishing themselves: with their third record on the horizon, it’ll also be released from their third different location, with the debut two records the product of lives, at that time, in London and Berlin respectively.

With all that experience behind them, the band have adopted a motto for the new album that they intend to carry through the year: “if it’s not fun, we’re not doing it.” Fun, it seems, means playing live, but only when you want to. “There’s a lot of people we want to play with, and we’re working on material for a new record already, we don’t linger,” Harris says.

“Rocky O’Reilly has been our producer since album one. He’s based up in Belfast so we can’t wait to play up there. We don’t play as much as we’d like to, though, as we had our formative years as a band somewhere else. We’re a bit picky and choosy about where we play.”

“Time in Berlin has influenced our sense of community,” Hawk says. “When we moved to Dublin we planned to embed ourselves in the community that we felt closest to, but it aligned with Covid so that’s been hard, and we’re only really getting to it now. What Berlin gave us was a very artist friendly place. We didn’t need to work five days a week to be able to afford to live, so that gave us space. As a band, though, we’re thinking longer term, and the community we want to surround ourselves with is in Dublin.”

“We only get one chance to make a first album in each country we live in, so we’re just going to move again,” she jokes. 

“If you put Julie’s voice on anything, that’s an identifying feature, so we don’t have to stick to a style or genre,” Harris adds. “We like being in a free kind of project. Julie’s nickname is eclecto, she likes a bit of everything, from coral music to Japanese electro-pop.”

“I was an excellent sleeper,” Hawk explains, “then nearly five years ago I started waking up at 4 or 5 in the morning. I had no tactics for coping with it, and I had to step back after a while and question how I was treating my brain and body during the day.” 

“It had a knock on effect on everything that I was putting my brain through and the stress I was carrying. Sleep also has this mysterious side to it, it’s a scientific area we don’t really understand, and I found it really interesting, and a theme that suited our music really well. It had both peace and inner disruption. So that’s what the album is about.”

“It’s as intimate and reflective an album as we’ve done. It’s not about opinions or politics, it’s about how you treat yourself. I love talking about this kind of stuff, though. I’m a big believer that talking helps.”

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JYellowL: “my music is a form of release to me”

Having long been at the forefront of the rise of Irish hip-hop, JYellowL is years into an impressively varied career, but his focus remains heavily on learning. Of Nigerian-Irish origin, Jean-Luc Uddoh is fiercely political in his outlook, with his music blending that interest with a deeply personal side. Three years since his last record, he’s exploring the lofty aim of perfection.

“There’s definitely another album on the way, I’m about 60% of the way through with it, but I want to make sure that it’s perfect,” he says. “I want it to be a perfect album. I want to make sure I’ve said what I want to say, that it’s ready for the world.”

“Most of the time my songwriting is built around a concept that comes before the lyrics. I try to speak to myself and understand what it is I am trying to say, and then rely on my creativity to say it in a way that sounds good. It’s a method of my songwriting process.”

“If I want to say something emotional, for example, I have to make sure the music is crafted towards the emotion I’m trying to portray. It’s very important to me to be able to communicate that clearly to producers. When I outsource that, knowing myself what I want is very important. Trying to sonically describe something that’s in your head can sometimes lead to them looking at you like you’ve three heads. So I picked up some music theory, piano, keyboard… at least I can have a skeletal structure then of what it is I am looking for.”

“It’s something I’ve got better at, I’ve learnt a lot from working with different people. Each producer is different, they might be better at sampling or better at more traditional music.”

A lot of that music takes on a distinctly political tone, a natural follow on from JYellowL’s degree in politics and the way he thinks.

“What it is for me as a person is that I’m very much a thinker,” he explains “I like to analyse the world and be constructive, understand things well, how the world works and why things are the way they are. As I got older I realised that a lot of politics actually affects our lives more than anything, economics, standard of living, stuff like that. A lot of people aren’t aware how certain things actually impact them.”

“I always speak about these things in my music, things that I feel I need to give attention to, as an outlet. In a way, it’s a form of release for me. Putting out my music is a natural step. It’s like having a conversation, if something annoys you, you have a conversation with someone else. For me, the next step is putting it to music. For one, I’d like people to understand that immigrants are not the source of your problems.”

“I learn a lot from watching big acts now, and how they sequence their sets and connect with their audiences. That’s one of the big things I’m working on.”

JYellowL’s music has taken him in a couple of strange directions, not least competing for Ireland’s Eurovision entry last month, and a prominent role in the soundtrack to one of the FIFA football video games.

“Eurovision was a rollercoaster of emotions,” he says. “There were a lot of amazing interactions with great people, surrounded by great musicians. The beauty of it was the variety. Music is so subjective and when it comes from such polarised styles of music with only one winner, that’s difficult, but it was really fun.”

“Even to this day I have people on this journey with me because of FIFA. It’s crazy that it’s been five years, there are people from all over the world that I connect with because of the game. It’s amazing to know that my music is part of people’s lives, and connects with their memories.”

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David Hedderman: “I don’t really remember writing a lot of the songs”

Two decades ago, on the Irish indie scene, a young band called The Immediate were considered to be the hottest property in town. After a single album, one member, Conor O’Brien, went on to found the now-iconic Villagers. Meanwhile his friend and bandmate David Hedderman moved to Berlin to pursue an artistic career. 

While Hedderman was both teaching and producing a vast array of beautiful artwork, however, he was also quietly working away on music in the background, gently grinding out an album entitled ‘Pulling At The Briars’ which is a far cry from his earlier incarnation. Personal, gentle and rootsy, the record took 15 years to pull together.

“When I left The Immediate I spent just one year in Dublin and then I moved to Berlin with my guitar always with me,” Hedderman says. “I would play as a kind of therapy, a positive way of connecting with music. I don’t really remember writing a lot of the songs, they came out as this cathartic thing. I’d always play them on my own, and then with different musicians. When it came to recording the album, I was able to pull it together.” 

“I think whenever something’s gotten serious for me, I’ve liked to jump with something else. After 15 years of getting my visual art to a certain level, I didn’t feel like I could keep doing the same thing. I had a beautiful studio for years with open life drawing sessions four days a week. When the rent went up I let it go, and I didn’t really know what I was going to do. Eventually the album idea came up. I had about 15 songs, and I wanted to document them.”

“My music and my art don’t really cross over, but I did get an email about doing an exhibition and a gig at the same time, and that did appeal to me. Doing something in a different kind of way, to play and to exhibit work. I think I’m at the point with this album where I want it to grow organically. With art and with the music business, they’re difficult worlds. I’m always trying to do things without force, even though that can be quite impossible.” 

“There are certain things you have to do,” he continues. “But there are quite a lot of musicians who are also artists. The way we live in the music and art business, and that I keep away from galleries and institutions… you just have to lose everything you’ve got and put yourself out there.”

“Conor [O’Brien] plays on and produces the record, so it does have some connections back to that time. Sometimes I think the less said about it the better, but one of my favourite songs is the instrumental song. I like it a lot because there’s not a lot to tell about it. I wrote it 13 years ago in my head, but I could never play it the way it sounded in my head. It was almost like a soundtrack. It kept getting morphed, cut and changed, with little bits added on and stuff.”

“We only had five days to record the album, which helped as I didn’t get too stuck in the process of it having to be perfect. I was rehearsing so much, and I played this one song in the kitchen for a friend and it was obvious it sounded so bad. Big credit to Peter Broderick in the studio, as he got the song completely even with all the weird time signatures and counter melodies.”

“It became this gorgeous thing. For that song alone – it’s called ‘In Your Own Way’ – it was all worth it. It’s just wide open, like a jazz thing, poetic. It doesn’t tell you what to feel, it’s more like an open door that invites you in and lets you go.”

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