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Amble: “We’ve never had a conversation about the type of music we make. It’s natural”

West coast modern folk band Amble, a memorably atmospheric and personal act that have risen to both a million plus streams, and playing major venues incredibly quickly, are, in practice, the sum of years of experience, despite only being a little over a year old. Each of the three members landed together, as musicians before they were friends, complete with their own set of songs ready to go. The fit, from there, was a natural one.

“We played a little gig in September last year, and that was the start of Amble,” Ross McNerney tells us. “I sent a little voice note to the others after the gig and said the music needed to be recorded. That’s how the band started, social media, really.”

“It works because we all love the same music. We’ve never even had a conversation about the type of music Amble make. It’s just naturally what the three of us want to do. We were musicians and then we became friends.”

“We’re blown away with it so far,” McNerney continues. “There’s no way we expected the response we’re getting. We’ve sold out several shows that are five months away, so the response has taken us aback. We only have five songs out, and we’re only really happy with ‘Lonely Island’ and ‘Mariner Boy’. We record live, and the best take gets it, that’s the way we like to record. So there’s no editing on any of the tracks. You get the exact same sound live as you do on Spotify.”

“The day will come where we might get a drummer and a bass and go mad in a studio, but for now we just want it to be real, raw, music. If people like it, great, and if they don’t, well at least we’ve made music that we like.”

There’s plenty more on the horizon. “We’ve recorded an album now, which includes four of the songs that are already out, re-recorded,” McNerney says. “There are some songs on it that are written by the three of us, as well as individual ones that brought us together. It’s eleven tracks, all recorded live in Windmill Lane, and it is what we are, no add ins.”

“Our individual work has come to the fore with Amble because of the band, and that’s allowed us to make an eleven track album within a year of meeting each other. After the March tour, it’ll be about giving our music the best chance possible. The album will be out as early as we can have it next year, and then we’ll be looking to get on a few festival rosters in Ireland and in the UK, and then adding more music and more shows in the autumn.”

“We’re fully invested in Amble, we believe in it, and we think the music has longevity in it. That type of music, it’s kind of timeless. This sound, not in terms of our music, but in terms of the genre, will always be there. We definitely have a two or three year plan in our heads about where we’d like to see it.”

“I feel like a lot of our songs are based on the ocean, the sea and so on. It seems to come into our music a lot. It’s a style that comes from storytelling, that makes more sense coming from Limerick or Longford than Dublin. It draws on our upbringing, on farms and oceans.”

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Polly Barrett: “I thought the songwriting part of my life was over”

Closely connected to nature, and with an almost zen-like feel to it, Cork native Polly Barrett’s long-awaited new album ‘Sapling Be’ is a return that had a difficult journey in its route to being. The result combines her deeply organic style of composition with heaps of emotion, a spacey rural vibe that couldn’t have been written in the city, and a true sense of treading her own unique path.

“I went through a period of about six years where I didn’t write anything,” Barrett tells us. “I wanted to, and I tried really hard for the first few years. Eventually I thought that part of my life was over, and I even enrolled in an online course to get a certificate in another area completely, changing paths. It was the longest and hardest period of writer’s block I’d ever had.”

“It was at the same time as I had my son, and that big life change definitely contributed to it. The whole creative industry feels unreliable for family life, so there’s a pressure. I started writing again during Covid, finishing a first song after that long period in 2020, which actually came really easily in the end. That was such a great feeling, and the reaction it got online gave me the boost I needed to keep going.”

From there, Barrett’s road to an album that comes years after she made a very different mark on the music scene was an easier one, and one that also saw her reinvent herself.

“It felt amazing when it all came back, and it made me a lot braver and more experimental,” she says. “I wasn’t really interested in treading the same path, so I’ve been more daring and tried a few new things. It’s been a totally different experience; I feel like I’ve been so immersed in this album, and made so many more conscious choices about it. This is a sound that I’ve very consciously created.”

“I’ve always been very close to nature and felt quite a spiritual person, but it’s only in the last few years that it’s manifested in a very real way in my life,” she continues. “One of those ways was through forest bathing, as well as the process of becoming a parent and seeing the world through the eyes of your child. It all has a profound effect.”

“All my nature references come from West Cork. It has that wildness, and parts of it feel like they haven’t been touched in so long. I feel a real sense of connection with the countryside and the wildlife, like you’re privy to something special and magical, and I think that comes through in most of my songs.”

Playing in the way she does now, combining instrumentation like bodhrán, tongue drum, whistle and guitar with a sublime and distinctive vocal, has also seen Barrett’s stage set up change.

“Live, I use a loop pedal and three different instruments, plus my vocal, which feels quite different to what came earlier in my career,” she says. “I just want to create what I’m creating as honestly as I can, I’m not trying to write a hit or become Ed Sheeran or anything like that. So I don’t really think about other people and their take on it until quite late on.”

“This time around, I wrote the music and then thought ‘who’s going to like this’, rather than trying to write something that someone else would like. I think that’s worked well for me.”

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Reylta: “my album is like an itch that had to be scratched”

Timeless, life-affirming and yet often very notably dark, Reylta’s debut album crosses the parapet armed with a range of oddities that, combined, feel like an expression of humanity’s broad emotional spectrum. From orange chocolate to suicidal dreams, from sex meets religion to a song written as she sat at her grandfather’s wake, the Galway artist, who blends folk and modernity on her debut album ‘Everything Unsaved Will Be Lost’ really does explore the depths.

“This album is something I had to do, like an itch that had to be scratched,” Reylta says. “My whole thing is that I really want to make songs that heal people, or touch on a thought that you might not have had. It’s not something to put on in the car to sing along to, it’s more of a private album, something you listen to and take a journey with, through some sort of emotional realisation.”

“Some of the songs have been really prophetic. You have to give the songs everything when you write them, and then a couple of months later, almost the exact situation I’m describing happens. I end up saying to myself ‘I told you this a few months ago’, and it keeps happening.”

“It’s very much about the stuff I take inspiration from, too. Damian Rice and Hozier, Dolores O’Riordan, all that sort of stuff is what I grew up with, not traditional music, but I knew I wanted to get in touch with traditional music. There are a lot of folk artists at the moment talking about their own perspective.” 

“Stuff like Phoebe Bridgers’ folks pop is through her lens. I wanted to use my lens, but I also wanted to use the Irish culture, which I feel so connected to, the legends and storytelling are so plentiful. There are so many elements to it that are right there, and I intend on using it throughout my music.”

“I think a lot of Irish people do feel a bit of detachment from the magic that is in our culture. We all feed into the chicken rolls, the crisps sandwiches and the drinking, but don’t delve so deeply into things like the cures. Oddly, I never listened to folk as much as when I lived in England.”

There’s also a notable dark side to Reylta’s record. “Writing about it helps with those issues,” Reylta says of her mental wellbeing. “The first song on the album is my letter to my friends and family about my mental health issues. I didn’t realise until I got to college that most people didn’t want to die every single day.”

“Some people got mad when they heard it. I don’t think they’re mad at me, more at the situation. So I wanted to reveal these truths about myself in a softer, more beautiful way. I want people to love me while I’m here, but I’ve been so mentally unwell for so long, I want people to remember me for what I was. I don’t think it’s as easy as just getting help. It’s never worked for me.”

“I’m a very out there, spritely, confident person. You wouldn’t know by meeting me that I’m quite depressed. I think the reality that my type of person is the worse mentally well person they know might have come as a shock to some people. I don’t know if the record helps me, but it is my reality, and I would prefer that people would know that.”

“There’s a darker side to every song, and a darker side to me, and I’d like people to know me. I think it’s a good thing to have that out there.”

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Autre Monde: “You weren’t allowed to come in with an idea”

Autre Monde’s road to musical stardom was curtailed, like a number of rising bands, by Covid. Now back with a new release entitled ‘Sensitive Assignments’, and revitalising iconic Dublin label Popical Island along the way, Pádraig Cooney took the time to tell the Gazette how his band stepped back, and started again.

“It was really disappointing at the time,” Cooney says of their unfortunately mistimed debut album. “We released the album a couple of weeks before Covid hit. We played in Other Voices Ballina, which was really buzzy. The next plan was to go to [iconic American industry showcase] South by SouthWest, and then Covid hit. Obviously there were more important things, but it killed the momentum of our band. We just kind of went away.”

For a while, the band stayed quiet, until a new songwriting technique emerged. “What did happen is that after a while we started writing again, and we did it in a really patient way,” Cooney recalls. “We had a rule that you weren’t allowed to come in with an idea. So these songs, we spent a number of months not finishing anything, just experimenting, a lot of loops and synth sequences.” 

“We had 150 little clips, and we picked the ones that we felt had something. They are songs on the album now, but they came from this background, something we hadn’t done before. And we wouldn’t have done it under any other circumstances.” 

Equally, the songs have quirky, imaginative meanings. “The second song is about becoming fascinated by an 80s dictator in Burkina Faso, and trying to use him to impress people,” Cooney laughs. “Then, ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ is about the book ‘Milkman’ by Anna Burn, which has this bit about the parents of the main character.” 

“Then there’s the bit about being dads. The songs are self contained, and ‘Road To Domestos’ is kind of about learning to use a house. It was something along the lines of the first Grinderman album, a kind of send-up of the self-seriousness of songwriting.” The patterns of Autre Monde’s songwriting, and their subject matter, then, are wildly varied and exploratory. 

“‘Popical Island lost our headquarters years back, and that knocked it on the head really,” Cooney recalls of the death of the iconic label that Autre Monde’s record marks a firm comeback for. “The first Autre Monde rehearsal was on the last day of the place. When it was gone, we didn’t replace it, and we never really took the step to being a business.”

“It was great at the time, but it was pigeonholed as being a bit twee,” Cooney recalls of the label. “I felt like I had to fit into that, which wasn’t really me, though we did some great music and great community stuff. We were all at an age where we could be around all the time back then, going to gigs. Things are different now, but most of us still make music. So we’re coming back under the banner, it just might be a bit less frenetic.”

“Live, we’ve got a really lovely, mild-mannered sound bar instead of a drummer, and it works really well, so we’re all ready to go with our new set up. There are seven shows so far, and the Dublin one will be at the end of October.”

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Cruel Sister: “It’s a frank exploration of my own mental processes, and mental health”

Cruel Sister, the stage name of Dubliner Nico Faith, named for a traditional murder ballad, is very much its own distinct thing. Faith goes it alone, pointedly, producing much of her work in her own bedroom to growing acclaim, pouring her heart into a highly fraught, emotional sound. The latest example of her work is ‘Turgid’ an EP that screeches with emotion, both literally and metaphorically.

“It’s a lot darker than my previous EP, a frank exploration of my own mental processes and mental health, and how that changes how I interact with the world around me,” Faith explains. “It ponders my own insecurities in life, love, and just day to day stuff. I guess it’s pretty deep. I wrote the songs without really planning an EP, but they were written in the same kind of period of life, the last year and a bit, and I guess they kind of take on a kind of theme. The theme became apparent to me when I put them all together.”

“It’s quite cathartic to perform. This EP has a lot of very screamy vocals going on,” Faith says. “It takes a lot out of me to do, and it’s quite daunting putting something so raw out there. I’m not sure at each gig if the audience will be into this kind of music. But it’s what I’ve got to say, which is, basically, argh! Maybe you’ll like it, maybe you won’t. But I love performing so much, it’s my favourite part.”

“When you put a song like ‘Turgid’ or ‘Lenny’ into the world, after trying so hard not to censor yourself, you hope people might connect to it. I know that when I see somebody doing something that looks quite authentic, I appreciate that in a world where we’re used to so much quite over-processed pop music. I have a lot of appreciation for authenticity, and I guess I hope when people see me live, they can see that and relate to it.”

“I produced this EP myself, which is a big part of why I started Cruel Sister”, she continues. “I’ve always wanted to do this kind of music, and I always thought it had to be in a band. I do play with a band, but I came to the realisation that I needed to write this alone. It’s about listening to the voice inside you that says that this is what you want to do.”

“For most of my life, I thought I was going to be a visual artist,” Faith continues. “At the age of about 19 I changed to wanting to be the person who made the music, the producer. So I did that in college, with the support of my dad, who’s a musician as well. I always played music, but I’m entirely self taught. I was very young when I started writing my own songs.”

“I put a lot of reverb on to start with as I hated the sound of my own voice. Now I feel much more confident as a singer, I’ve exercised the muscle.” 

“I’m still thinking about what’s next. I feel like an album is a huge piece of work, an undertaking of such work and thought, that I’ve got to ask myself what’s next, what sound do I want to make. What I’m enjoying is changing constantly, so much that I’m almost already done with the sound of my new EP and ready to move on. I think I’ll know what comes next when I get to uncovering the new songs.”

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Paro Pablo: “It’s political on a ground level.”

The Dublin hip-hop scene has flown to international acclaim over recent years, but for Finglas artist Paro Pablo, the timing has been odd. Having stepped away from the music in 2014 after support slots with Aslan and Hoodie Allen, he watched the scene he’d left behind take off in a huge way, only returning in 2019, with hits ‘4Life’ and later the EP ‘Never Known Love’.

There were stops off, too, in a band called Low Profile, and in writing material for other people to perform, as well as an earlier act that appeared on an RTE singing contest show, but the band were told they weren’t going to win well before the end, despite reaching the final – a peak, but also a hard lesson.

“I would have started out writing poetry when I was 14 or 15,” Paro Pablo says. “My little sister had passed away and I had a lot of anger inside me and no way to express it. That was my way of getting it out, and I won a couple of competitions. Then I got a set of DJ decks for Christmas, and I started writing music. Which was terrible at the time, but that’s how it started off.”

“I’ve been doing it for 15 years now, but with rap and hip-hop you never stop learning. I had been booked for festivals like Electric Picnic in 2020, and then Covid hit,” he recalls. “I felt like I was starting again. The industry is like that, you put something out and it goes well, and for a while things are good, but then you have to start again. There’s no longevity.”

“I think what I write sounds political, but it’s political on a ground level. I’m talking about people and what they go through, but politics wouldn’t be my cup of tea. I do one called ‘Comfort in the Chaos’, and it’s about growing up not knowing what we were doing, but also kind of how that turned into what we have today, with people, especially my generation, who will never own a house. You’re not going to get rich in the music industry.”

“It’s really sad that it feels like it doesn’t matter what you do. I have mates who own successful businesses and have to live in a shared house. Then there’s the homeless crisis, which I write about in ‘Anna Livia’, which is named after that statue that used to be on O’Connell Street, but really it’s about the hostel that’s right there. It’s political, I guess on a real, personal level.”

‘Anna Livia’ will appear on the Mixtape Paro Pablo has coming out shortly, with the mixtape named after the track ‘Comfort in the Chaos’. “With the live stuff, I usually have a full band. I did five shows with Damien Dempsey on his Irish tour,” he says, “and we talked a lot about our music. He said to me that nobody wanted to listen to him until he was 36 years of age.”

“He said he listened to my songs and that how I make people feel is amazing. He told me to take it more seriously, so since then I have done that, I have strategically thought about how to put things out and do things the right way. There’s no label, or backing, so it takes a little bit longer, but I think it’ll work out in the end. We’ve talked about working together, but I’m keeping that for the right moment. I want to build my own name up, to make it bigger, and broader. Hopefully the Mixtape goes well first.”

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Empathy: “I think every band should see themselves as a live band first”

Dublin rockers Empathy immediately stand out as an unusual and powerful band. The launch of debut single ‘Jeffrey’ – a somewhat delayed recorded appearance on the back of a series of live shows – highlights what makes them interesting: a band designed to make you feel good, as hinted at by the name, but nonetheless launching a debut single that delves in the psychology of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

The debut single is just a hint at what’s to come, with an air of perfectionism hinted at by the way the band have almost two albums worth of tracks ready to go, but are still fosused on getting that debut single just right. I spoke to guitarist and vocalist Dean about what it’s all about…

First of all, can you tell me a little bit of the background of Empathy and how you came to be?

We are a 4-piece alternative rock band from the Northside of Dublin. Adam (Drums) and I (Dean – Guitar/Vox) had been playing together in various other projects and found that the two of us had great musical chemistry, so we decided to start playing and writing together until we realised we had to make this a permanent thing – so we formed Empathy.

Everyone in the band grew up a stones-throw from each other. Sam (Bass) and I went to school together. Adam & Sam were childhood friends, and Dan (Guitar) and I hung around the same group of music-heads when we were younger. So, we all knew each other growing up, and had very similar tastes and ideas when it came to music.

The name is a relatively unusual one for the genre, which tends to go more ‘agro’. How did you come by it

There are two ways of answering this question. The first is that the name is what we intend to achieve when sharing our music with people.We want to create music that will leave an impression on the listener, and if we’re doing our job right, make them feel what we are feeling. Whether that be via the lyrics, or the general aura of the sound.

The second answer is that 15-year-old me thought the name sounded interesting and the meaning of the word was easy to attach a story to. Overall, my feelings when it comes to band names is that the music and the people make the name. If the music is good, if the music speaks to you, makes you move or makes you pause, then the name takes on a different perspective.

‘Jeffrey’ is your debut single. What’s the story behind it?

I would describe the song as an interpretation of the thought process and internal monologue of one of the most infamous serial killers of the 20 th century. I’ve studied Dahmer’s background, and I thought it would be interesting to try and create a song that encapsulated the internal thought processes and moral wranglings that one would supposedly go through to justify the type of crimes perpetrated by Dahmer.

The music is heavy and violent but shifts to match the processions of thoughts. When you listen to the song, the verse, pre-chorus and chorus all have specific themes. The verse represents Dahmer indulging in his memories and inviting his sadistic thoughts. The pre-chorus is his moral struggle, nearly trying to justify his past-actions, and the chorus is Dahmer finally “letting go” of his doubts and relishing in his repulsive nature.

I think it’s fair to say we do have a cultural fascination with serial killers. Is this a broader interest of yours?

I would say that statement is more than fair. It feels like every week there’s a new documentary, film, or TV series about the escapades of some twisted person. I get the fascination. My background is psychology, so my own personal interest stems from watching his interviews and studying his background, family life and crimes in a psychoanalysis class. It wasn’t the serial killing part that was interesting, but everything in between that. When I came up with the riff, it informed the topic, as the melody was vile. At the time, I just
happened to be studying an extremely vile man.

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Jape: “I’ve realised I want to create music without the public persona”

As something of a legend of the Irish music scene, Richie Egan – frontman of his own band Jape, and also a member of now Redneck Manifesto – is now resident in Malmo, Sweden, but remains intrinsically connected with what’s going on back home. So much so that the release of his latest record ‘Endless Thread’ will bring him straight back to Ireland to perform.

“I have been doing stuff on a small scale in recent years,” he says of his new life. “I continually work, and at some points people’s ears prick up and at others they don’t, but I’m a bit of a lifer. I’ve been making commercial music, too, to keep the wolf from the door.”

“A lot of work goes into stuff, and when you put it out into the world, it’s nice to get some kind of recognition. As a body of work, you want it to resonate. Music is like a chain, stuff is connected to what comes before, and by virtue of that, I’m in the chain of Irish music somewhere, even if it’s the weakest link,” he jokes. His latest effort doesn’t lack a few firm opinions.

“‘F*ck the Church’, the closing track on ‘Endless Thread’, feels a little like a tribute to Sinead O’Connor, though it actually predates her passing. “It’s timely, I suppose, but the church’s time is up,” Jape says. “We don’t need organised religion in our lives in my opinion. It’s pretty direct, but it just came to me really fast.”

Next to it is ‘Delete the Timeline’, about social media. “Kill everybody,” Jape jokes, before adding “I used to be very much involved with Twitter, but I came round to the idea you should use your energy wisely. Twitter took energy, rather than gave it. It used to be more sharing and courtesy but it seems very dark now. I find my life is a lot more fulfilling if I focus on creating, not destroying.”

“I’ve realised that I want to create music but without that public persona,” he continues. “I’ve been heavily into Buddhism in the last few years, and to me it seems like there are more answers in quietness and solitude than constantly talking.”

That said, the music will be heading out on the road, in a slightly different form, and Egan is not averse to returning to old times, either. “We’ll be re-releasing Redneck Manifesto records on vinyl soon, as they’re going for crazy prices online, so there’s a chance we’d come back as a band,” he says of his old outfit. “It’s not just up to me, but we all still get on well. I think it’d need to be with new music, not in a nostalgic kind of way. It’s not as simple as lashing together the greatest hits.”

Jape shows will be a different proposition, though. “The live gigs… I did a tour after Covid and found it really stressful, anxiety-inducing. I wasn’t feeling the idea of going up on stage, just playing some songs, people clap and you go away. It felt disjointed to me. From there came the idea of having a quiz. I wanted to learn about each other, and the idea for this round of gigs is that you can put your name into a hat and become a contestant on this quiz, which is going to be called ‘Jape-ardy’.”

“Other than that, we’ll play as much of the new album as we can but also some old stuff. People know certain songs, and it’s not a hard job to play those songs for people. I’d like to play as many songs as possible, the ones people want. The way my memory is, though, I’ll need a bit of preparation time, so give me a shout beforehand,” he concludes.

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