When Wunderhorse first dropped in on Dublin, it was to immediate acclaim. With a cutting guitar vibe and tracks that see them explore love, loss and a sense of eerie distortion of reality, Jacob Slater’s band were the unheralded support act for Fontaines DC when they played the Iveagh Gardens a couple of summers back, at the time the band’s largest show. 

That show has proven a platform here: Wunderhorse now headline Vicar Street themselves, with sophomore album ‘Midas’ widely acclaimed as one of the best guitar albums of 2024 so far. On it, Wunderhorse became a band, as opposed to the previous ‘Slater and friends’ type set up.

“‘Cub’ [the debut album] seemed to steadily grow, so we’re hoping for the same thing with ‘Midas’. It does feel like it’s all heading in the right direction,” Slater says. “There’s a natural chemistry now to the way we play together, and Wunderhorse has become a lot bigger and better than me on my own. It makes sense that it’s a band. I’m still writing the bones of the songs, the chords and the lyrics, but Jamie on drums, Pete on bass and Harry on guitar all write their own parts, rather than my old place as a kind of musical director.”

“Most of the tunes on ‘Midas’ we recorded on the first couple of takes, which is how we wanted it. The things I like about guitar music, rock music, has been lost to this modern idea of chasing perfection. A lot of my favourite records sound a bit scruffy in places. I think there’s a charm to that.”

“I listen to tracks back and notice mistakes, and that’s part of it, but it is what it is. The band is forged out of playing live, and we wanted the record to be ‘warts and all’, a representation of that side of us. A lot of people got into us from coming to see the live gig, so we wanted to give a bit of that.”

“Recording in Minnesota came from Craig, our producer. We told him the kind of record we wanted to make, and he picked out the studio based on that. The place in Minnesota was near the top of his list. I thought it was a surreal thing that would never happen, but it did.”

“We feel quite blessed. Of course there are some hurdles, and some illusions are shattered. You do lose that naivety, and I realised that most people in the industry might have a different motive to what you think at the start. You get wise to it. Our position is very good, the label very supportive. It’s night and day from some of our situations in the past.”

“With my last band, Dead Pretties, we weren’t prepared for a big record contract. It all went wrong, which was nobody’s fault but ours. The wheels came off a lot quicker than I thought they would.”

“Now, we played Kentish Town Forum, selling it out, which was great, and we packed the Woodsies Stage at Glastonbury, which was a real shock. I wasn’t expecting many to come and see us. At the other end of it, you start to go a bit loopy when you tour the States. It’s like driving around in this tin box watching the world go by across a whole continent.”

Wunderhorse will see ever more of that world, with newly launched ‘Midas’ already taking off, and looking likely to propel them into the upper echelons of the growing dingy-rock scene. Their Vicar Street show on October 16th will feel, to Irish fans, like a euphoric return.

Jacob Slater, frontman of powerful new indie-rock band Wunderhorse, has form. A few years ago, as the vocalist in garage rock band The Dead Pretties, Slater was briefly the talk of the London indie scene, his band releasing just a handful of singles but garnering a massive cult following over the course of a few months. That band burnt out and called it a day before true fame hit.

Slater’s return as Wunderhorse has been helped no little by Dublin legends Fontaines DC, who have been bringing the laid back, Cornwall-based surfer dude and his band around with them on their sell out tours. As Wunderhorse, Slater is still building a series of guitar-heavy but emotionally-led tracks, in between a life which he spends heavily on his other passion, riding waves.

In fact, when we catch up with him, he’s sat in a cafe in Cornwall, as his own home is a surf hang out without a reliable internet connection. “There’s crossover between surf culture and music,” he says. “A lot of people down here play music, either professionally or for fun. I guess both are considered more left field pursuits, so it makes sense.”

As for those early days with Dead Pretties: “I was playing music for very different reasons, Slater explains. “It was all about making it big, going as crazy on stage as possible, big songs. By the time I turned 20 I was quite burnt out, to be honest. As well as the punky kind of stuff I’d always listened to softer stuff, too. More varied classics. When that band finished, I wanted my next band to be more varied, not to make me feel so trapped in a style.”