An interview with Limerick band His Father's Voice; Danny Carroll; and more
The four piece have just released their first new music since 2019
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Limerick four piece His Father’s Voice (Ash O’Connor, James Reidy, Laya Meabhdh Kenny, Cian McGuirk). They released a couple of tracks and EPs around 2019 but took a few years out - in the meantime featuring in the Féile na Grêine-produced film, Out of Place - before tentatiively returning last year. I got to see them for the first time at Ireland Music Week at the Workman’s Cellar and thought they packed a punch. Now they’ve released their first track in almost five years. ‘Arm’s Length’ is a propulsive, new wave-surfing five-minute reintroduction to the band. Get it on Bandcamp.
Below is an interview with Ash O’Connor. Here’s what she says of the new single: “‘Arm’s Length’ started out when I was messing around on a mustang guitar one day in the sitting room. I’m a big Alvvays fan, so playing a mustang like Molly started to bring some jangly melodies out of me. I really wanted to write a song that captures the feeling of lust lyrically, because most songs focus purely on the excitement and euphoric aspects of it. I wanted to balance that with the tentativeness of lust, how claustrophobic it can feel and the sense of being physically crushed by it. When I brought it to the band they added a resilient and danceable edge to the song, playing off the physical crushing idea within the lyrics. James rounded the song out with a new-wave riff, it gave the song a dream-like quality but it’s still catchy enough to demand attention.”
His Father’s Voice tour dates:
April 19: Pharmacia, Limerick (LASA)
April 25: Ulster Sports Club, Belfast (Asphyxia)
April 26: Upstairs Whelan’s, Dublin (MCD)
April 28: Coughlan’s, Cork (Quarter)
‘Arm's Length’ is the first single from His Father's Voice since 2019, I believe. Do you think the band has changed in those five years, whether in sound, dynamic, other?
Sonically, I can feel it in my gut that we’re a lot punchier than we used to be, which adds a really fun dynamic to playing the new tracks together. There were glimpses of that on our first EP, that release in particular wore a lot of new-wave and indie influences on its sleeve. While the same influences still ring true today like The Cure and Alvvays, everything feels like it’s hitting harder now, including the melodies and quieter moments. If anything, I think the time that passed added a lingering impatience to how we play. On top of that we’ve been switching things up vocally - James takes lead vocals on B-side ‘Jane Doe’, and Laya takes backing vocals on ‘Arm’s Length’.
I know you weren't completely idle in the past few years. You were in the documentary from the Féile na Gréine team, Out of Place, which is a nice snapshot of both the scene and spots around Limerick. Was it nice/odd to feature in that doc? And what other things have you been up to over the years?
I’m incredibly proud of everything the Féile na Gréine team achieved with Out of Place, and really honoured that we could feature in it. We went to a few of the screenings around Ireland, which was both a beautiful experience and bizarre. I think it’s really important to document music communities, capture how they work, the environment they’re working within and how artist experiences compare and contrast. I remember being a teenager and googling the hell out of Irish music scenes, wanting to find what I’d seen in overseas music documentaries in Ireland and get a sense of what it’s like to be in one. I landed on a documentary on YouTube about the Dublin music scene in the late 2000s. It introduced me to Adebisi Shank and showed me it was possible to be part of a community in Ireland which had a palpable love of the music coming out of it. Now that Out of Place exists, I find it really surreal to think about what a resource it would have been to me as a teenager.
Aside from filming the documentary and attending different screenings, we dedicated a lot of time to writing and recording new music. We spent a lot of last year road testing the new stuff, it was a pretty integral part of the process for us to get the energy down live before we released anything. Outside of that, one thing we all have in common is that we volunteer at Féile na Gréine. That’s been a real source of awe for all of us to watch the festival evolve over the years. It’s a year round effort and a credit to our friends who make it happen.
The Limerick scene seems closeknit - you were in London a couple weeks ago for a Féile na Gréine-hosted show. How was that?
It’s definitely a really supportive scene to be part of, so getting the chance to play our first show in England with Laura Duff, The Low Field and The PVP was really special. Funnily enough, it’s a lineup that’s never happened at home before, I’d like for it to happen again though. Watching the other acts made me really proud to be from Limerick, not that there’s any singular sound coming out of it, our influences all vary quite a bit. But they all do things in their music that I didn't expect them to do initially - hearing that lights a fire in me. They’re all such inspiring writers and musicians.
Do you and the others in the band play in other groups or make other music around Limerick?
I am definitely the least decorated member of the Limerick music family tree (bar a brief stint on backing vocals for Fonda in 2019). Cian however, that’s a different story. For one, he’s in Fonda now, he plays keys. He also plays guitar with Post Punk Podge & the Technohippies, on top of his new project Silicone Bog with Steve Savage (Cruiser) and Paul O’Connor (Licehead). James plays keys in The PVP, they just released an amazing first single ‘Callan’, I can’t wait to hear more releases from them. I’m going to slot music photography in here, because Laya is an incredibly prolific and beautiful photographer. Name a band in Limerick, she’s most likely taken their press shots.
Tell me about how and when His Father's Voice started?
James and I have been writing together since we were teenagers but I never really remember much intent to release the music we were making. In 2018, that all changed when we attended our first few DIY LK shows. We started to bond with the organisers over the music from emerging Irish artists that they were exposing our ears to. They were really supportive even before they knew we made music, and when they found out they pushed us to start playing it live and releasing. That’s how we got to know Cian and Laya who had already been trying out a separate project together around that time. By 2019 they had both joined His Father’s Voice and we spent most of that year packed into a small little Yaris touring around Ireland.
You supported Altered Hours recently. Are they one of the band's big influences?
Absolutely. I genuinely remember the exact place I was standing in Pharmacia the first time I saw Elaine Howley using a vocal pedal for ‘Over the Void’ at a live show years ago. I was still very much working out what I wanted to be like as a frontwoman, and to see someone with such an amazing voice, treating it like a guitarist would treat a guitar using pedals blew my mind. Their songwriting is second to none, and their live sets are non-stop fire.
Do you have more release plans for the rest of the year? It won't be another five years until the next single?
We’ve got lots of new material stored up from those few years, so expect an onslaught of releases from us this year.
You're heading out on tour later in April - do you enjoy playing live?
Yeah I’m so excited for the ‘Arm’s Length’ tour in April. We’ve been playing some of our new material live for the past year, and we’ve definitely played our favourite sets within that short space of time. We’ve been really lucky to be treated so kindly by each city that we visit. I’m really grateful to each audience that showed their support to us in between releasing music. On top of promoting the new single, to me this tour is set up to give back to that audience who stayed supporting us. The crowd in each city lend a new energy to the music, and now that the single is out in the world it’s their turn to feed into how the song evolves in a live setting.
Finally, what new music have you been enjoying lately, either from Limerick, Ireland, or further afield?
In Limerick, we just had the return of Casavettes which is a pretty strong indication of the strength of the city’s musical pulse at the moment. I’m loving their track ‘Fold’, the bass tone is gorgeous and the vocals are beautiful, both perfectly accented by the drums.
As I mentioned earlier The PVP just released Callan which I can’t stop listening to. James gets to really experiment on keys with that band, it’s such a joy to listen to. Outside of that obvious bias, I think Chris is one of the best guitarists in this country, you see a lot of loud guitarists around, but you rarely see someone tear shreds out a guitar in such a pointed way as he does.
From Ireland more generally, I’ve really enjoyed blaring the new M(h)aol single Pursuit. When I’m alone I end up screaming my way through the end of it, it’s an outlet for rage I didn’t know I needed. I think it’s always a bold move when a band purposely chooses to repeat lyrics like that, and they’ve just done it so well with how the song develops.
Further afield? I’ve been getting a lot of mileage from that new Lime Garden album, Pop Star is a bit more relatable than I think we’d all care to admit.
TPOE 304: Danny Carroll
Dublin singer-songwriter Danny Carroll is the guest on this week’s episode of the TPOE podcast. We talked through all of the tracks on his debut solo album I am the Cheese. You can read a couple of snippets from the chat below.
He’s been in other bands, such as Shrug Life and he’s currently playing guitar in the Limerick band Fonda. So is it different making music under his own name? The music is 100% myself, it's undiluted and maybe I give myself permission to be more navel gazing or more introverted, when I know that it's under my name, if that makes sense. Like I had this other project with some friends of mine called Golden Cleric and we didn't really do a lot. That is a great name... if you can't be Silver Jews, you might as well be Golden Cleric. But that project was really fun and I felt like more of a character. And the songs - any song is coming somewhat from a personal place, but they definitely felt like they were written and performed in a way that wasn't so inwards. They're more observational and commentary on things and it felt like that was the fitting mode of address for that project. But yeah, if I'm putting stuff out under my own name - like there's a second album that I've done a scratchy demo version of and will be working on over this year. It's called Go On, Go Off. I'm working on Go On, Go Off. There's very personal stuff in it. There's real purging happening, and maybe doing stuff under my own name gives me a bit more permission to do that.
On working with new collaborators: The people involved really helped me get the confidence to start putting out music again. So Finn McCarthy, who plays the bass on all the album, he was hugely instrumental in me starting to do things again. He helped book tours for me, and just kept encouraging me. He helped get me in a rehearsal room with some other musicians and begin recreating what I'd done in a live setting with a band. And Chris Ryan, likewise, continued to offer like encouragement and support and Finn really pushed me as well to sort of go out of my comfort zone and try to work with new people, find new people to collaborate with on the visuals and on the videos and photos and do your research and really think about that stuff. And I think that really helped, that breathed new life into it; doing videos with Niamh Barry and Laurie Shaw., and then Iarla McKeon is a videographer that I work with a lot. I didn't know any of those people personally when I'd finished making the album. And it was a nice thing to find those people and let them react to what I had made and make something new out of it. And yeah, it changed my relationship with it.
On ‘Conventions of Cool’ and humour in his songwriting: It's kind of instinctive. It's not like I write a song and then I'm like, 'Oh, there's not enough jokes in here. I better put some quips in here', or that kind of thing. It's just sort of how I express myself. Like I remember when we did the Litany of Failures thing (TPOE 276) and I have a song on there, which is on this album, and you asked like, 'Oh, you've got that line, "Everything's coming up Milhouse"' and you're like, 'Oh, were you sitting on that for a while?' No, that's just kind of how I express myself. That's just sort of how it comes. 'Conventions of Cool' in a way I don't think of that as one of the funny ones. I think that's one of the more vulnerable ones. But again, naturally, there's things that are amusing and I hope that people find humour in them or light and shade in them. Again, like my favourite songwriters do that; one of my favourites of all time is David Berman. His lyrics are hilarious, but they're also heartbreaking.
On looking back at the finished album and the process behind making it: It's good to get it out. I find it very hard to be objective about it, like I'm very critical of it. In all sincerity, I find it hard to not hear the flaws in it. It's that old cliche, oh it doesn't belong to me anymore. The most exciting thing is the process of it revealing itself to you, like this was really something I figured out as it went along. I didn't know what I was making or wasn't even sure if I was making an album or what the real plan was. There was a lot of new things insofar as like, I had never done home recording and considered that of a standard enough to put out. There's all these instruments I'd never played before, like lapsteel melodica and loads of keyboard stuff that was totally alien to me. Like I'd played in a three-piece indie rock band playing electric guitar and singing. That was what I was familiar with from a recording perspective. So this was all new uncharted territory for me. And it was really exciting to get absorbed in that process and see how these songs changed as I added new elements to them. So that part, I can really look back on that, and I'm really happy about it. The finished product, I'm kind of a bit detached from and know it's out of my control whether people like it or not. And again, it's not really for me to like the finished product. It's more for me to enjoy the process.
Links and other stuff
Mortyfied
Colm O’Callaghan on Morty McCarthy, the drummer in Sultans of Ping, and their lifelong friendship. “They had the decency to get out before they got bored and before they got boring.”
The Early Bird Show
Natalia Beylis joined Maria Somerville on her NTS show, featuring a guest mix of songs that ease her into the day. Natalia Beylis also announced a new album this week.
Idris Ackamoor on Afrofuturism, activism and André 3000
Great profile by Thomas Hobbs. “The timeline continuum. From the blues to New Orleans to Michael Jackson to Prince to rap music and its use of bass: all of this has its roots in Africa.” I loved their 2018 album An Angel Fell.
Olivia Rodrigo, All-American Bitch
”She's a living testament to leaving the idealized version of pop purity behind.”
Laura Snapes on not drinking at music festivals
“I feel faintly disappointed in myself but also pleased that I approached it much more consciously than succumbing to the usual festival vortex.”
Maggie Rogers’s journey from viral fame to religious studies
Maggie worked on Lizzy Goodman’s Meet Me in the Bathroom, transcribing interviews. Sounds like a past life.
Aoife Barry interviews Mohammad Syfkhan
“Every country has its own traditions, heritage and history, but the Irish public has taste,” he says. “It loves music of all kinds. It is not restricted to one country or another.”
Landless - ‘The Fisherman’s Wife’
The first taster of new album Lúireach, out June 7. Written by Ewan MacColl for the 1960 BBC Radio Ballad 'Singing the Fishing', an audio documentary comprising songs, music, sound effects and field recordings relating to the herring fishing communities of East Anglia and north east Scotland. Told from the perspective of the wife on shore, the song subverts the usual trope of a woman pining for her love at sea. Instead, she speaks of her own work: raising children and repairing fishing nets, resentful but resigned to the fishing way of life.
Monjola - ‘On My Mind’
New single from the Nigerian-born, Dublin-based artist, with an eight-track debut EP, It’s Not That Deep, due out in June. “On My Mind’ delves into the theme of anxiety, as I confront it directly and engage in a dialogue with it. This piece explores how anxiety can hinder our ability to fully immerse ourselves in moments meant for joy and fulfillment. Sometimes when we take a step back and reflect about what we're being anxious about we realise it's not that deep."
Melts - Field Theory
Second album from the Dublin four piece. Recorded live to tape at Black Mountain Studios in Summer 2023 and produced by Gilla Band's Daniel Fox, it's a collection of turbulent electronic psych-rock shaped by bulldozing motorik synth lines, densely layered guitars, primal percussion and the cavernous vocals of frontman Eoin Kenny. While their highly-praised 2022 debut Maelstrom dealt with forces on a larger scale affecting a whole city, Field Theory explores connections on a smaller, interpersonal scale. The title takes the scientific term Field Theory, which describes how forces interact and influence particles around them, and applies it to the interactions between people, to the space between all of us, how people interact and affect others around them. Expanding on the album’s themes, Melts write: “Like gravity we are drawn to and miss people and like light waves we love people and are loved. We live in orbits of each other, drawn by unseen forces. The album explores these forces, how we relate to each other, the people we live with and the people we live without. At the heart of Field Theory lies the realisation that we inhabit each other's worlds as much as our own, through a field of wide-ranging forces, as important as the ones keeping the planets in place.”