Corner Boy are one of those acts that are so fiercely DIY that their success can fly slightly under the radar. But they’re getting big. The vibrant Wexford folk act have played across the world, and regularly sell out venues across Ireland, yet you’d rarely find them covered in any detail in Irish media. A fact that’s had extremely minimal impact on that success, which seems to build year on year.
“We’ve been releasing new music across the summer, with more new music to come later in the year, and we’ve just played America”, frontman Michael D’Arcy tells us. “It’s really exciting times for us. When we first went over to play the States in 2020, we played Folk Alliance, the largest folk conference in the world, then the month after the world shut down. But we kept all these contacts we made. We’ve been looking forward to getting out there for a while ago, having played Ireland, Europe and parts of Asia, so it’s an exciting next step to play North America.”
‘Beast of Burden’ is the latest release. “It’s actually the first song we wrote on a writer’s break in the west of Ireland,” D’Arcy says. “It’s one of those songs that came out really naturally. We went out there to create, with no pre-existing ideas, away from our home in Wexford, and find a new kind of stride and energy. It provoked something in us. A lot of our songs from our debut album, released in 2022, were songs that we’d had for a while. We wanted a completely new starting place for the band, all music from 2024 onwards.”
“We’ve worked for lots of producers and recorded in lots of places over the years, but we’ve now set up our own studio in Wexford, and we’re writing, mixing, mastering and producing the whole album ourselves. The response to the single so far was incredible. We felt we had enough experience and expertise to self-produce, and it’s definitely been justified, with it played in so many different places.”
“The majority of the music we wrote previously was all done in the same place, so we needed that change of scene, far from the south east, to discuss the music and create a sound that was representative of us and all of our experience, a new energy. The studio has changed the recording process, as we don’t have to book time. Now there’s not the pressure of watching the clock, and we’ve let things evolve naturally, which is so much more enjoyable.”
“We’ve always had the intention, and prided ourselves, on our live shows being really energetic,” D’Arcy continues. “We want people to be energised, to stamp their feet and clap their hands. We want to bring a room to life. So a lot of the time that is reflected in the way we write our songs. We like a particular power and energy. There’s a song or two that’s a bit more downbeat, but the rest of it has the ability to energise people. We tend to get booked a lot of big festivals and tents, so the quieter songs don’t carry as well. The mid-tempo songs are more for ourselves.”
“For us, we went through a phase a couple of years ago where we wanted to write what we called ‘dark folk’, and the songs that embody that, the atmosphere. We had it written up on a board and everything. But there’s a beauty to the variety of folk music, and we’re allowed to reinvent ourselves constantly. We have this real nice palette to play with.”
