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ROOUE: “‘Juxtaposition’ really describes us well, same but different.”

Dublin twins Ro and Lulu – performing under pop moniker ROOUE – have about the most extensive shared songwriting background you could hope to have. Performing together since toddlerhood, they’re public emergence nonetheless comes off the back of a substantial musical education.

Theirs is pop with a twist: a kind of subtly evocative exploration that deals in deeply personal feelings amongst upbeat vibes, creating a gorgeously melancholy contrast. It’s now presented from London, but ROOUE have their Dublin roots in their heart.

“We started singing and dancing together as soon as we could walk,” they recall. “Music is a massive part of our family. When we turned around eight, Ro got a guitar, and this gave us the opportunity to play and sing with a guitar together”

“This continued into our teens when we began busking and using it to make money. When we went to college in BIMM, music became more career driven and we really found passion in making music together and harmonising. Once we had found our own voices individually, we decided to start ROOUE. We realised we were stronger together and loved making music in our band.”

“We are just so glad that other people also like to listen to what we make. Every career win is a bonus to us as we love the journey and the opportunity to work together everyday. We are surprised everyday at the love and support we have received. It’s crazy that the music we make at home reaches different people we have never met before, such a cool feeling.”

The new EP from the pair is entitled ‘Juxtaposition’, and explores a difficult time for the duo.

“The title ‘Juxtaposition’ stands for how the path to recovery is never a straight line. We wrote this EP during a really hard year filled with loss, heartbreak and self discovery. Everyday we woke up dealing with a different emotion whether it was anger, sexual empowerment or self consciousness. Ironically this was a juxtaposition in itself. We also feel that the title ‘Juxtaposition’ really describes us well, same but different. As twins we love having similarities, but also are so different. We are a yin yang of each other, so we couldn’t think of a better way to title this body of work.”

“We wanted each song on this EP to represent an emotion or headspace we felt when going through this year. The EP ends on the track ‘Slán’ meaning goodbye in Irish. This song represents the decision we made to start a new adventure away from friends, family and our home in Ireland. Ending the EP with this track was so important to us as it really felt like a closing chapter and a representation of the new stages in our lives.” 

“Ireland represents so much happiness and warmth, but also held a lot of pain and struggling, so that was a perfect song to end Juxtaposition with. We filled the track with voice notes and audio of people we have lost this year. We can’t listen to the track without tears as it sums up every emotion we have felt when writing this EP. It’s a happy, sad goodbye.”

“It’s always intimidating releasing music with a personal and vulnerable subject matter but somehow it feels like such a release,” they continue.

“It’s scary as hell, we won’t lie, and it is never easy, but once we put the words to the song and release it feels like closure. It is all worth it; honesty makes for really powerful songs.”

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Slow Pulp: “When we started playing music together it felt like I had known them my whole life”

Slow Pulp’s cleverness, as a nuanced rock band, is in being subtle and relatable as well as, sometimes in the same song, bold and brash. Originally from Wisconsin but now based in Chicago, the four-piece, fronted by vocalist and guitarist Emily Massey, are well-established in the US but making tentative early steps post-Covid in Europe.

With a third show in Dublin on the horizon, latest record ‘Yard’ will provide the meat of their set, its roots taken from a lifetime of writing music together, as Massey explains.

“My bandmates Alex, Teddy and Henry have known each other and been making music together since grade school. We all grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, but I didn’t meet them ‘till we were in college,” she says. “When we started playing music together it felt like I had known them my whole life in some strange way. I feel like our chemistry really comes out the most within the live show. A smile or a glance at one of my bandmates on stage always reminds me of how lucky we are to be best friends doing this thing together.”

“We all write a lot individually. Which I think was a process we just naturally landed on. When we started as a band Alex, who writes and plays bass, was living in another city so we sent stuff back and forth online to each other to write. I found it really helpful to work out things on my own. To really take the time to sit and figure it out.”

“The title of Yard came from a song that our guitarist Henry sent to me. It started as a guitar chord progression that he had written that I later took and wrote lyrics and a melody to. When we were trying to figure out a title for the record we felt like the song encapsulated a certain energy that related to the emotional centre of the record, and we decided to name the album after it.”

“When I’m writing a melody for a song, I sing kind of nonsense off the cuff words that are sort of out of my control. It’s like my subconscious coming out or something. But it almost always informs what the song is going to be about. Usually one line sticks out. In the song ‘Slugs’, for example, I kept singing “you’re a summer hit” and I liked the idea of making a sweet love song have this kind of ominous undertone, by making the melody have this minor tone. I felt it evoked the kind of internal fear or uncertainty of falling in love.”

The road to Europe has been a slow one for Slow Pulp. “When we released our first record in 2020 we were slated to do our first headlining tour in Europe, which we were very excited for!,” Massey recalls. “Obviously we didn’t get to make that happen. We are so lucky that we’ve been able to do two tours within a year in Europe to kind of make up for lost time. It is very expensive to come over and make it all happen.” 

“It has definitely not been a lucrative situation for us yet over here. But it has been so special to get to connect with people who listen to our music across the world.” 

“Our show at workman’s club last fall was one of if not our favourite show of the European tour. Everyone who came out to the gig had the best energy. We felt so much support and kindness! We can’t wait to come back.”

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Man Alive: “Doing whatever I want is quite liberating”

Mark Prendergast’s day job has occupied him since he was just 15. As a songwriter and guitarist in massive Swords act Kodaline, he’s experienced the highs and the lows of the music industry, touring the world with his friends. In Man Alive, he’s taking a step out into the solo world.

With the new project comes a distinctly personal sound. In debut EP ‘Colours’, he explored heartbreak, Follow up ‘Hiding’, recorded in a more toned-down way closer to his live offering, explores Prendergast’s post-tour antisocial periods.

“It’s a little bit about social anxiety, a little bit about just not wanting to be bothered by anybody,” he says. “I just wanted to enjoy my own company, but I ended up working on the song. When I’m going through something, songwriting is one of my favourite things to do. It always comes out in the songs.”

“I’ve been playing to maybe 100 people in London and Dublin, and it’s very hard,” he continues. “You get used to big crowds. It’s a buzz, but it’s so much easier. In a small room, you pick out people, and when someone goes to the bar or the toilet you’re very aware of it. But the intimacy that comes with it I do love. Looking at a blur of people is different to making eye contact and wondering if someone’s having a good time.”

“I played a gig in my house, my first solo thing with friends and family, unveiling Man Alive. I was really nervous, looking out at my family. It was one of the most intense nerve wracking gigs I ever did. It’s sobering. I’ve decided to just do things alone, and the buzz of it, the adrenaline rush is a new feeling. I’m really addicted to that feeling of scaring myself out of my comfort zone. I feel great after the shows.”

“At the moment, with babies and weddings in the band, there’s a lot of life to be done. In those times, I don’t think it’ll come to picking between Kodaline and Man Alive. Kodaline will be a priority, as there are other people involved. I don’t know if there will be more Man Alive when Kodaline’s next session ends. But they’re a welcome mental break, one from the other.”

“It can be very obvious if what I write is for me or the band. Of course, I’m not the singer in Kodaline. I think there’s a general feeling of a Kodaline song, and a few songs for Man Alive felt like they could be Kodaline songs, so I kind of put them away. I’ve got a song bank that came from not trying to write Kodaline songs.”

“I would class myself as an extreme extrovert. It’s funny that the conversation around this song is about struggling to come out of my shell, because it’s only in that time after six weeks with the same 13-14 people on a tour bus in bunk beds, which I love, but after a six week tour, you just want to be left alone. Your social battery is dead, and you need to sit on the couch, order food and vegetate.”

“The person who I’m describing in the track ‘Miles Away’, I’m not that person a lot. I love hiding away and disappearing for a couple of days. What I’ve enjoyed the most about the project is being in the studio and experimenting, to see if I can make music myself and release it. Doing whatever I wanted was quite liberating.”

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Onion Boys: “It’s quite all over the gaff sometimes”

Riotous garage-rock band Onion Boys are edging their way towards the status of cult-ish Dublin institution. Famed for their live shows, which feature dynamic performances, during which they often explore their own crowd and invite up temporary members, they’re biding their time in a rise that’s becoming harder to control.

Scruffy and more than slightly manic, the rise of this type of band tends to happen gradually and then, suddenly, all at once. Right now, we feel on the cusp of that “all at once.”

“During lockdown, this guy called Danny Leadpipe and I started making music,” an enigmatic frontman who goes only by the pseudonym Jonny Dublin tells the Gazette. “We’re influenced by similar bands, and he’s a very successful producer. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, and we add the bustle of day-to-day life. We throw in as many references as we can, whatever works.”

“It’s quite all over the gaff sometimes. It’s very fun, but it’s not quite who I am in real life. After the shows, the persona allows me to be a bit of an asshole. I’m usually exhausted and just want to sleep. The guys in the band have so much experience that the bigger venues are fine. I’ll get what I’m given. We’ve played really big shows at places like All Together Now. I just think about it as going up and having fun, and doing what we do.”

“When we go and play other countries, people still seem to find it accessible. We’ve done four shows in Germany, and we were playing festivals after six months together. Playing live is where it’s at for us. You can’t get the same energy from streaming and that kind of thing.”

There are limitations to their rising status, however. “The stages are tiny in Ireland,” Jonny says. “I want to be that frontman that runs around and jumps around and it can be difficult. Sometimes we have nine lads crammed up on stage. I love getting off the stage and getting into the audience for a bit.”

“We live in this content driven world where you have to be constantly feeding the algorithm, being on people’s minds. We don’t really get it, and we talk about that a bit in our lyrics. Don’t get me wrong, I do like getting ourselves out there, but constantly being a new thing is odd. Still, we probably wouldn’t be where we are without it. You can reach so many people with a single post.”

“The EP had to be delayed unfortunately. It’ll be out around the time of the gig in May. We did programmed drumming, and the drummer decided he could do it and he jumped in. It’ll be more of a live version, and it shouldn’t take too much longer.”

“We’re trying to make the EP sound like the live atmosphere, with as many voices as possible. Depending on who is at a gig, sometimes we have three guitarists. Some of the guys will be there sometimes and we’ll talk from the audience and up they’ll get. In Germany we had the bassist switching around, guys moving back and forth. It’s a very fluid thing.”

“We all have our personas, partly because I’d already done some artistic stuff and I wanted to make it a different thing, and take the Mick out of that poser rock stuff. My friends think it’s funny.”

“From now, I’ve got to finish college for a year, then it’ll be all out, and we’ll be recording all the other songs we have. We’re holding a lot until then.”

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Lemoncello: “the songs are made like a conversation between the two of us”

Lemoncello’s debut record, an indie-folk offering that’s both deeply personal and, in clever ways, conversational, is the work of long-time friends Laura Quirke and Claire Kinsella. Released last week on Claddagh Records, the self-titled album is already expected to be one of Ireland’s top folk-tinged releases of 2024.

On it, the pair explore personal and vulnerable themes, but also modern society’s dingy corners, like doom scrolling and unfiltered takes. Above all the exploration, though, it is their vocal interplay that really stands out against the backdrop of playful strings. 

“The record is personal but the songs are made like a conversation between the two of us often,” they say. “Claire will come up with an arrangement or production idea that answers the words in the lyrics or that pushes the melody in a direction where it can be more powerful. I think the same thing happens in a good chat with people you really trust, they take what you say and give it back to you in a way you wouldn’t have thought of.”

“Putting things that have happened or things that interest you in a frame of music or art is definitely a means of therapy. It’s storytelling I suppose. A way to make sense of things. Also, as it comes straight from the subconscious, things arise that you’re not even aware you’re thinking about sometimes.”

“We recorded and mixed the whole album to tape so I suppose that simplified things in some ways, but also made it more complicated in others. Julie, the producer, cut her teeth working at Strawberry Studios, engineering on recordings of artists like Joy Division and New Order and was front woman in punk bands like Thrush Puppies or her own Bridget Storm project.” 

“Her style very much made it into the production choices of the record and just the overall feeling of the thing. Recording to tape definitely gave us some limitations that you wouldn’t have with digital recording, but I think those limitations, for the most part, served the music. It was like being back in a playroom as a child, instruments, toys everywhere and a big tape machine to record all the play and no screen to look at.”

“Touring as much as possible will be our reward for all the work making the record and putting it out. It’s such an important part of the process, sharing the music live. We can’t wait to play the album for people and let it live and grow in the room with an audience.”

“I would say we try to be as present as possible in the music when we’re on stage – playing off each other, locked in – responding to each other in the moment. I think the songs and the music are a bit moody and introspective maybe and we like to lean into that dynamically so it can go from very quiet to quite loud pretty quickly.” 

“Every night the song is delivered a bit differently, depending on what the crowd is like, their presence comes into the songs. This also makes it a very intimate show often – everyone in the room is a part of what’s happening. I think there’s a bit of drama in there, in our performance. Performing is cathartic for us and we can only hope it would be like that for the audience as well but neither of us can stay in the moodiness for too long without trying to make each other laugh in between songs, or telling a story that’s too long.”

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Corinne Bailey Rae: “Art feels more limitless to me now.”

To the casual listener, Leeds native Corinne Bailey Rae might be best known for smash 2006 hit ‘Put Your Records On’. For much of her career, her music was an exploration of her own experiences and emotions, a kind of highly cathartic, relatable output. Then one day, on tour, she briefly visited a Chicago archive of black culture and history, The Stony Island Arts Bank.

Inspired by what she saw, Bailey Rae’s first album in seven years, ‘Black Rainbows’, released in 2023, became a very different, very cultured record. “This was a side project right up until I saw the graphic designed for the art work,” she says. “I forgot to say ‘don’t put my name on it’, and when I saw it, and thought about my seven year obsession, I changed my mind.”

“I had heard about this visual artist called Theaster Gates, who was making art out of bricks and fire hoses and stuff. Through that, I learnt about this massive library, the Stony Island Arts Bank. I invited him to my show in Chicago, and he took me to the arts bank, even though I had to leave  town at 8am after the show. I walked into this 100 year old Greco Roman bank with pillars in this very poor community, in the southside of Chicago, with a lot of crime, violence, drug addiction, and so on.”

“It’s a difficult landscape. But I could have stayed forever, and it became an obsession of mine, looking at all the books and some of the grotesque, racist, problematic content, too. I picked stuff up and I felt like everything had a story. I wanted to do something, but straight away I separated it from my normal work. Then I realised that it was me, not separate to me. It was just not about my relationships and thoughts and feelings anymore.”

“‘Black Rainbows’ is all other people’s stories, but it’s about how they relate to me, and they kind of tell themselves to me. When I held something, it wasn’t quiet. When I left, and got back on the tour bus, all I could think about was the stories behind these objects.”

For a long time, Bailey Rae wrote away around the Arts Bank, until ‘Black Rainbows’ came to be. “I felt like the songs could be anything. It didn’t have to be big choruses, or to go on the radio. It has had a really good reception. On the other hand, without a big single being played on the radio, I think a lot of people don’t know that it’s out. Then again, I don’t feel like that’s a reason not to make an album.”

“I had a lot of space with the third album, but I was looking for radio smashes, and I found that kind of paralysing. I didn’t need to ask anyone for them to tell me that it wasn’t quite right. I felt there wasn’t a point in finishing songs if they weren’t going to be big like ‘Uptown Funk’.”

“Instead, I find myself around contemporary artists like Theaster Gates, looking more broadly at art. He works in glass, he has a band, he works with bricks, he lectures. Art feels more limitless to me now. I’ve learnt from this brilliant artist, from the way that he does things. Sometimes it was weird, I’d never been in that kind of environment before. I was a long way from the pub with my rock band! Instead I was nurturing my art.”

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Between// Roads: “We shine brightest when we’re on stage”

Characterised by the memorably soaring vocals of frontwoman Amie Grendon, Between// Roads sit on the fringes of folk and rock sounds, pouring their hearts into exploratory songs that can play out like glances into the members’ hearts.

The Dublin based act are a slow developing one: despite having formed back in 2018, they have produced only a short series of singles and an EP in that time, but quality, rather than quantity, is paving the way for an organic progression.

“Amie and Seán have been playing music together for twenty years. In 2017, they decided to start Between//Roads,” the band explain. “Early in 2018, they put the feelers out through any medium they could in order to put a band together. Dan was the first person to respond, and as soon as the lads met him, they knew they had the drummer they wanted. Wes was introduced to the lads through another friend, and much like Dan, when you know you know. Between //Roads were a four-piece for about a year in which time we recorded and released our first EP ‘All Who Wander’.”

“We were delighted with the reception the EP got, including some good national radio play and some memorable gigs. However, tight as we were, we still felt we were missing a little something, and once again, we put out the call and Emma came and completed the line up in 2019. Interestingly, the first song we ran through with her was [new single] ‘Got Away’.”  

“Since then we have released a lockdown project called ‘The Tape Sessions’ and two successful singles, 2021’s ‘Blue Eyes’ and 2023’s ‘Burden’.  With these releases came more radio play, more gigs and more recognition.”

“That the band have managed to achieve as much as we have is a testament to our love not only of their music, but of each other. We have an unquestionable bond and shared vision in relation to what we create and we feel this only gets stronger with every rehearsal we share, every gig we play and every song we record.”

“Getting played on Radio 1, on one of our favourite shows, by one of our musical heroes Fiachna Ó Braonáin was extremely special. The story behind Faichna’s support is quite funny actually. Seán met him at the Borris Festival of Writing and Ideas last May. He wasted no time telling Faichna about Between //Road’s new single, passing on our details and mining him for advice. You can only imagine how much we all laughed when Seán let us know how shameless he’d been. However, Fiachna’s response that day, and indeed, his support for us on his show was such a lovely experience for us.”

“We have a strong sense of what we want our work to sound like. When we work together, we are very focused and very productive. This is because we have a deep creative attunement to each other born out of years of making art together. Because of this, germs of ideas that start out on WhatsApp quickly become fully formed songs.”

“Without a shadow of a doubt, Between //Roads shine brightest when we are on stage. Whether it’s to a packed venue, or in a small pub, the magic happens when we play live. We are tight, we are engaging, we are infectious, we are hungry and we are fantastic. We have never played a gig where the audience has not enjoyed it. We believe this is because we are so united in what we do. We are much more than five people on a stage, we are one unit, not only connected to each other in a flow-state but with the audience too. You can feel it in the room when we play.”

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The Henry Girls: “we are drawn to music that has roots in folk or jazz”

Donegal band The Henry Girls, made up of Karen, Lorna and Joleen McLaughlin, have seen a slow burning rise that feels, even after all these years, like it’s coming to a head. A recent series of long Irish tours in support of their new album ‘A Time To Grow’ have centred clear nods to traditional Irish songwriting alongside a jazzy spark all of their own, and their rise feels organic and engaging. 

“We’re three sisters from Malin village in the Inishowen Peninsula, right up at the top of Ireland. We’ve been playing and recording music together professionally for over 20 years,” they say. “We draw from all kinds of music but I feel we are drawn to older, acoustic, music that has roots in folk or jazz.” 

“The new single, ‘Don’t Fear The Night’, is written by Joleen and you can clearly hear her love of old style jazz in this piece. We are also all big fans of three part harmony singing from that era that was made famous by the likes of the Andrews Sisters and our favourites The Boswell Sisters, from New Orleans. We even had a live album of us performing their music in 2020.”

“We’ve been working away on and off over the last twenty years but we’ve been more professional and committed over the last 10 to 12 years,” they explain. “And then our momentum was interrupted a little bit during lockdown but I think we’ve started to pick it up again now. Having the new album to promote has given us a real boost and we’re loving singing the new songs live.”

“We definitely all bring our own ideas and influences to the sound. We love to see what each other will bring along and how we can add to it. It’s very much a collaborative effort.”

“We will play anywhere! We’re from one of the smallest villages in Ireland so everywhere is a big town to us. I think there’s more pros than cons to that. You’re always connected nowadays anyway with social media and the internet so I don’t think there’s any real advantage to being in the bigger cities. It’s much more affordable to live further away too but it’s still possible to stay connected to it. Sometimes you can feel a bit far away, especially with all the driving. You get used to it though.”

“We tend to keep our live shows pretty simple, just the three of us and our instruments. It’s all very intimate, a bit like a session! We like to get the audience to sing along so that we can feel connected.”

“We’re totally delighted by the progress of the new album so far. We didn’t know how people would like it because we worked with a new producer and we have a few new sounds added in on some songs as well as stripping back on others. Also we feel these songs are a lot more personal than before so that can be a bit nerve-racking when they go out into the world but we’ve had very positive responses.”

“Most of the time harmonies just come to us pretty naturally, that’s because we’ve been singing together for so long, but we do sit down and work things out and tighten it up, especially before a recording session. Sometimes harmonies can come to us while we are in the middle of recording, it’s a great way to try things out.”

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