Cork post-punk act Pretty Happy are one of the musical success stories of covid times. Scoring International acclaim for their quirky single ‘Salami’, the theatre-influenced three-piece, who often dabble in spoken word elements in their music, have been grabbing airplay as far as afield as US’ mega-station KEXP, and look set to be one of 2021’s breakout acts.

In fact, the band, who released their EP ‘Sluggers Bridge’ this July, have been slightly bewildered about it all. “It’s me an Arran screaming about pork, of all things,” vocalist Abbey Blake joked to the Irish Examiner earlier this year.

“Ironically,” Blake told us recently, “Salami was the song we nearly didn’t record but then received the most attention for. It’s definitely given us more confidence to get a lot stranger in our song writing.”.

“The EP was recorded in Blackwater Studios in Fermoy back in September 2020. We had recorded the EP just before Arann and Andy moved to London. We hadn’t played live for some time, so the songs were quite new besides Salami. I think we were trying to capture our live energy in the studio so we recorded the songs live together, besides vocal and guitar overdubs. We were also trying to establish the theatrical Art Punk style we had begun to explore with these songs. Salami was the single that kicked off the EP.“

The EP is the product of a variety of approaches to writing, an almost scattergun type thing that sees Pretty Happy come out with inventive, imaginative music.

“I suppose we either start off with a riff or a sentence and we just keep building,” Blake says. “No one comes in with a finished song really. We’ll have a melody or a rhythm and someone will start to speak, sing or shout over it, starting off with a short phrase or word, and then we’ll develop the story from there. Or we’ll start with a word or sentence we think sounds odd or interesting and add music as we go.”

A joyous force of nature, Berlin-based Wexford woman Wallis Bird is a musical soul-injection, producing sparkling odes to life and its many charms. Bird has been a loss to the Irish music scene, where in the mid-00s, her Temple Bar shows became regular haunts that shone sunshine on gig-goers’ weeks. With a long awaited return post-covid on the cards, she’s chomping at the bit to see her home crowd in the coming weeks, and keen on some collaborations.

“I’m nervous, I won’t lie,” she says. “I feel like a newborn in this now because everything is different. The usual “deadly buzz” wild audience is an understandably careful thing now. It will pass, as all things do, but it’s a play it by ear situation. Technically I’m prepped for every kind of buzz, so I’m gonna take it one song at a time.” 

“I hope to be involved in everyone’s session, that’s my aim. Collaboration shows like this [HIbernacle, in Galway in late September] are one in a million and it’s something I love best about being a musician – jumping into someone’s world and fleshing it out together.”

Bird’s German show returns have signalled the emotion that might be involved: “Some moments were like tearing our skin off with elation,” she recalls of recent shows. “Then  one song later swiftly clutching our skin back on again, people bawling their eyes out, it’s been real intense. I know that in a few years I’ll think “lord those were once in a lifetime shows”.

ZOiD is a bit of an exception to the norm in current Irish music circles. Combining jazz and techno, two scenes that the city’s not particularly known for these days, he produces beautiful tracks with a wide mix of guest vocalists, which he then somehow twists into a coherent whole. That in itself is quite an achievement.

He’s also prolific. Daniel Jacobson – his real name – traces his routes back to a specific Dublin scene of years ago, one centred around the label D1 Records. I caught up with him to discuss his latest release, ZONGS, due out shortly, and found a man with plenty to say about his colourful craft…

You seem to have been inspired in part by the Dublin inner city and also jazz influences, which from the outside looks like an unlikely combo. How did that come about?

Well… I got into techno and jazz simultaneously when I was 15 or 16. Me and my friends worked on the forecourt at a petrol station in Deansgrange and we’d spend all the money we earned on techno records. They’d be from Germany, the US, the UK, Japan, Netherlands… and occasionally we’d come across a record from Dublin, on a label called D1 Records.

It was exciting to know there were people not far away who were making this music on a par with other labels around the world! It inspired me to start producing music. I bought a synth and the first tape I made found it’s way to Eamonn Doyle who ran D1. He rang me up and I got to go and make tracks at their studio, play livesets at The Funnel, and later on release an album on D1 (ZOiD Vs Jazz Musicians of Ireland Vol 1).

In terms of getting into jazz, I loved the challenge of trying to play it because it was impossible. Also I thought it would be cool to understand everything going on in the rhythms, harmonies and melodies of jazz so I could use all that in electronic dance music. That was my reason for studying jazz full time for 4 years. It didn’t exactly work out…

Obviously the record is heavy on collaboration. How did that work in practise, and how did you keep it coherent as a whole?

In practice it was a whole bunch of emailing files back and forth over a couple of years. It was cool because nearly everyone has a basic mic they can use to record themselves, and i didn’t mind if the recordings weren’t very high fidelity. If they were a bit noisy or low quality, I thought it would add character.

Liam Grant and Les Keye who helped me with the mixes probably have other opinions… but anyway, there was a really big diversity of tracks and I was worried for a time that it wouldn’t be coherent enough… after a few months of working on the mixes with Liam though, it all started gelling and sounding like an album. I remember the first time I listened to it all the way through, while walking along the East Pier in Dun Laoghaire, I was so relieved – IT SOUNDED LIKE AN ALBUM!! It took ages to get it there.

Was it part of the plan to feature only female vocalists?

I picked vocalists I like and they just happened to all be female. There were a couple of tracks with male vocalists but they didn’t get finished in time (Danny G, if you’re reading this… let’s go haha!).

Pop-punkers CheryM – pronounced Chair M – are a vibrant, fun-loving guitar band from Derry, one that documents life, love and frustrations, and accentuate their music with a real love of professional-looking, film-like videos. They jokingly call themselves the original Derry Girls.

“We literally write songs about our friends, we write songs about being in love, falling out of love, shitty experiences from school and how to overcome them, bullies, working shit jobs… we write about what inspires us and our experiences so far in this life so yeah I guess they’re all just from our perspective,” Richardson says of the band’s output so far.

The latest single, in fact, is a nod to a Netflix show the band particularly like, and hones in two particular characters.

“The idea behind ‘Listening To My Head’ was based around Betty and John Broderick from the Netflix series Dirty John season 2, as I became a bit obsessed with it over lockdown and soon decided Betty needed her own anthem,” Richardson says. 

“The story goes that Betty and Dan Broderick are a very wealthy family living in California. Betty has supported Dan the whole way through his law degree, financially supported him and basically been there for him when nobody else was. Dan then decides to have an affair, runs off with his secretary, takes all the family money, the kids and the house and leaves Betty with nothing. She then plots and succeeds in killing Dan and his mistress. ‘Listening to My Head’ is written from her perspective. And no we do not condone murder!”

With their witty, colourful approach, CheryM quickly drew the attention of cult UK label Alcopop Records, but they’re going to take their musical journey at their own pace, to ensure they’re well placed when it finally comes to a debut full-length release.