
The Ocelots – Wexford brothers Ashley and Brandon Watson – are very much a product of their lifestyle. Having come into music the hard way, they beat down doors across Europe as they travelled on the cheap for several years before professionalising their subtle and witty folk-rock narratives.
“Things were as chaotic as we were,” they say. “We did a thing where we found an apartment in Wexford, then we looked at Ryanair flights, and if there was a flight for €15 to any city, we’d go there for two weeks with almost no preparation. All we’d do is email every single person and venue that played music in the entire city to tell them we were there. As we were 17 or 18, we were naive enough to think people would welcome us. And some people did.”
“Two or three people saying they’d give us a gig is all we ever needed. Sometimes there was a lot of emergency AirBnBs, and extra hours of busking for somewhere to stay. It was quite an adventurous time.”
“I guess we missed it when touring got more professional, because you kind of lose the sense of adventure when you’ve got an itinerary and soundchecks. Especially in places like Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the hosts cover you with amazing hospitality.”
“There was one place in Edinburgh, when we walked in, and they were like ‘who are you guys?’. They sat us down and investigated. About an hour later someone walked in and put us in the corner to play in front of about three people. Then there was an argument about whether we got a payment of a burrito and an orangina or not.”
Things got a good deal more professional afterwards, with The Ocelots exploiting their experiences to make music full of personality and road stories, a kind of mesmerising and upbeat form of harmonised folk.
“The change happened quite slowly to something more serious,” they say. “We’d played these seemingly terrible gigs in different places, but we’d played shows in Barcelona, Edinburgh, Munich, and it was a bit smoke and mirrors, a bit misleading, as it looked like we were a lot more professional than we were. We had played everywhere, just by looking for the right cafe. It got big enough that we did a few support slots, with people like Jack Johnson, and working with proper agencies, and then things started to change.”
“We wrote the second album in Covid when we had all this time. We practised with a metronome, all this stuff we’d never done before. We learnt production, and it was really wonderful, such a blessing, actually. It’s a mature album. The first album had songs that we wrote when we were teenagers, and it was released years later. We had changed as people. We’ve always had a big backlog, as the recording element was always such a challenge.”
“‘Everything, When Said Slowly’ [the new album] was recorded in 2023, and is the product of writing a lot of songs quite quickly. We’re both songwriters. The recording was the challenge, and it was important to get better at that.”
“Live was always so natural to us, and not all that challenging, so we were moving in the direction of being recording artists and giving the performances the energy they have live. It was something we struggled with, and still struggle with. We’re really excited about this album, because we get quite nerdy about other bands’ production, and we’ve been working towards that.”
“We can’t meet our standard of expectations, and we’ve scrapped a lot of stuff, but we’re much nearer the mark with the new one, close to who we want to be.”