Two sisters making waves on the Irish music scene, Maebh and Mella Carron have recently been joined in their long-standing band, CARRON, by Maebh’s new husband Darragh McGrath. A family band in the true sense of the concept, then, the trio are fiercely creative, flicking between emotional harmonies over beautiful melodies, and a poppier sound they developed and expanded during the isolation of lockdown.
CARRON’s latest single ‘Lights Up’ draws on Nordic pop influences and is produced by now semi-regular collaborator Richey McCourt, who gives it a kind of ethereal sheen. It’s a bit of an aside, but a gorgeous one that reflects their increasingly varied style.
“There wasn’t any opportunity for us to get into the studio, although we were writing a lot of music during lockdown,” the band say of the period of what was, for many musicians, an odd and isolating time. “We decided to ask around and see if any producers wanted to do some remixes of our acoustic music. We were quite nervous about that, about what our fans would think. Richey McCourt was one of the producers who did one of the remixes, and it was really good, really fun.”
The collaboration led to the new single. “We decided to work with Richey again, his style is really that kind of pop thing we’ve been enjoying, and the whole experience gave us confidence that we’d keep our fanbase if we tried new things. We have another pop style single coming out before Christmas, but we’re also going to get back to that more organic sound, which is where our passion is.”
“We’ve kind of blended all the genres together we like to listen to with ‘Lights Out’. We love stuff like Florence and the Machine, Lorde, Lyra, Sigrid, Robyn… those were the inspirations, but we stay true to the harmonies and the drama that comes from our musical theatre background.”
Live, though, that dramatic side is toned down. “We do like to put on a show,” they say. “We like the idea that our songs flow into each other organically, and have these kinds of moments of high drama and others that are more acoustic and chilled out.”
“We’re going to look into talking a bit at shows about what the songs are and who we are as sisters, and why CARRON is the way it is,” they say. “There’s a lot of stories behind the songs. When we’re writing, this kind of writing is almost shy and ambiguous, and could be interpreted a lot of different ways. We’ve got more confident in our lyrics, I think, and things have slowly become less like that.”
“Some of the newer stuff is a bit more out there, we’ve let go and been truthful about what we’re trying to say. The biggest thing with CARRON was always that we would write about what we know, what we feel and what we experience. It allows us to connect with other people.”
“We feel your songs are a diary, essentially. You give out to people, you tell them about your feelings, and so on. It’s nice at times, though, that we know what each line means and we can look at each other and smile and know what we’re talking about, that one moment that’s just between us.”
“It’s a connection you don’t have with anyone else in the world, you look at each other and you know what’s coming next. It’s amazing.”
