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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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Davie Furey: “I’ve no interest in genres. A good song is a good song.”

Davie Furey, an ever-evolving musician with stylistic links to pop, folk and rock, is back with a new album entitled ‘Glimpses of the Truth’, reaching into his heart to explore music that aims to have a deep emotional resonance. 

‘Glimpses of Truth’ is fresh, if recognisable as distinctly Furey, digging deep into own stories as he connects through narrative. The songwriter’s become well-known for his live efforts, and will shortly head out on a tour of Ireland showing off the record.

On the new album, Furey says: “It starts with the optimistic ‘History’ and ends with the hopeful and reflective ‘Heaven Can Wait’. In between, as in life, there are the ups and downs of reality and dreams.”

“I’m not sure if it’s a progression but it certainly feels and sounds different to me,” he says, referring back to his two previous records. “I’m much more settled in my own voice, more comfortable in my own skin. This has been pointed out to me by some of those who have heard the record. Every song is its own chapter in the album story. I hope that every song has something different to say.”

“I’m always up for a little adventure both lyrically and musically,” he continues. “I’m regularly trying to say things differently. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t, but what’s the point if I don’t try contrasting styles. I always struggle with putting a genre on my work, which I’m glad about! Most people say folk but I think that’s just because of name to be honest. Personally, I’ve no interest in genres. A good song is a good song.”

“My approach and perspective has changed,” he says of  releasing music. “I’m more grateful for being able to do what I do, which possibly comes with age and life experience. I’m a lot more carefree. Sure, I put in a lot of work in preparing the songs, but it’s also important for me to leave some room for spontaneity. I guess, I’m not afraid of failing anymore and I’m enjoying singing the songs now more than other times in my life.”

“The word “success” can be a hard one to define. I’ve got to be realistic in that I don’t have a major label pushing the record with an endless amount of money. I do what I can to deliver the record and hope that it will reach some listeners and that ultimately the connect with the songs on some level.”

Alongside the record, the live setup if where a lot of the effort goes into maintaining his career. “I can’t just turn up and not work on selling tickets!,” he says. “There’s a mountain of work that goes into putting on a tour for someone like me. Covid put paid to nearly 3 years of touring so I’m relieved that we can do gigs again. The process of delivering the songs is no different really. The only worries really are financial, in that I want to make sure everyone gets paid properly. It’s such a relief when I know beforehand that there is a healthy number of listeners at the shows.”

“I have a particular strong relationship with ‘Stargazer’ as I sang it regularly on tour with Paul Brady last year and the audience started singing along to it. For the listeners to start singing along to a brand new song is a beautiful experience. ‘Heaven Can Wait’ has a real innocence to it which I love as it reminds me of putting my two girls to bed, telling stories, where their imagination really comes alive. I love such moments.”

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Svaneborg Kardyb: “You develop a kind of automatic language, a search for limits”

Danish duo Svaneborg Kardyb – Nikolaj Svaneborg and Jonas Kardyb – walk the line between classical and contemporary music. An imaginative, percussion-infused experimental jazz outfit, their sound is delicate and difficult to reproduce, an enthralling and adaptable combo that’s forged from years of ad-libbing live and learning how to extract the most from each other’s styles.

“We have songs, of course, but the way through the songs, and how we go from one song to another, that’s improvised,” they explain. “That keeps our lives shows alive. We don’t necessarily know how it will turn out, and it keeps us in the moment. It’s about interplay, and it feels good, sometimes neither of us know what to do. We can end up in places where nobody knows what’s next, and we’re both waiting for each other.”

“We have mixed Scandinavian jazz, and folk/ roots backgrounds,” they explain. “When we started together we played a lot of ways, and at one point we were really into simple compositions, looking at just how simple they can be. If you get something really simple right, it evolves, the sound changes, and simple chords become the most beautiful thing. You practise and practise and develop a kind of automatic language, a search for limits.”

“We wanted the simplest themes that were organic and original. We started jamming, and we left so much space in the music, as there were just two of us. We felt so much freedom to express ourselves, and we committed. At one time, Jonas was playing in eleven different bands, but we met up and played music, brought coffee, and went from there.”

“One night we might play for a guest audience, and the next night at a kind of rock festival. Maybe at the rock festival we’re on at 2pm and the other night we’re on in the evening, but it kind of works. The music fits in a lot of places and I think a lot of people relate to it. A lot of people say they don’t like jazz, but they like what we do.”

“The whole thing is less of a genre and more of an approach, of thinking curiously about music and what you’re hearing. Nothing has to stay the same every time, not the melody, the course, the tempo, whatever… If the song starts quicker or slower, then instead of returning it to the ‘right way’, you work with what you’ve got. That’s what is curious for us.”

“A lot of the melodies fit in with folk, and with pop. We like an airy feel, to jump about, and so on. Sometimes we have shoes on when we come on stage, and then Jonas takes off his shoes, and people laugh, and it’s like an ice breaker.”

“It started out looking at what happens if you use a maracas instead of a drumstick, or a bell, or a tambourine, and we learnt to play differently, with different sounds. At some point you feel limits by always following convention, or by putting percussion on in a simple way. We like long notes, ambience, resonance.”

“We didn’t sit down and decide to play jazz, it’s just kind of where we landed. But it’s also electronic, playful, with almost pop melodies. We try to connect to where we come from, too. We connect with Danish folk music. All over Denmark, community singing, singing at weddings and birthdays and that kind of thing. These songs are about nature, life, and spirit.”

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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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