Dublin trio Bedrooms on their debut album Perfectly Still and recording with Bill Ryder-Jones
Bedrooms launch the album at Whelan's on Saturday, September 28
Dublin three piece Bedrooms (Dane Staunton, Devin McGarry, Fionn Montague) released their debut album Perfectly Still on Friday, September 20. Produced by Bill Ryder-Jones, it’s a gorgeous, sunny-disposition of an album. It sounds like summer evenings in June rather than rain-sodden days of ever-darkening September. They launch the album at Whelan’s on Saturday, September 28 - tickets here. I talked to Fionn about how Bedrooms started, recording with Ryder-Jones - of course they’re big fans - and influences. Buy Perfectly Still at Bedrooms’ Bandcamp page.
You guys have been going since around 2017, right? How did you get started? Were you in other bands beforehand?
The band started playing together in late 2018. Myself and Dev, the singer, went to school together and had a school band doing Nirvana and Smiths covers, but we always wrote our own songs. When we met Dane, bass, things came together very quickly, practising and working on song ideas. You can tell very quickly when things are coming instinctively, there’s a look you share in a rehearsal room when a song is coming together and everybody knows it. We had that from the beginning.
Listening back to your early tracks like 2019's 'Chico's Bodega', I guess the sound was always there. How did it develop over the years and onto the debut album Perfectly Still?
It developed by getting slower and softer. Bedrooms has always been about serving the song, we want to write structured songs with strong hooks and melodies. To me, a song like ‘Chico’ is a breezy indie pop song, but I always knew we were capable of something stronger and more focused. We consciously started writing slower songs with a focus on the dynamics of each section, asking ourselves “how do you keep a song interesting when very little about it changes?” Partly this was due to getting into slowcore bands like Duster and Galaxie 500, but it was also a way to put Dev’s voice to the fore. When you have a voice as powerful and clear as Dev’s, you have to harness it.
Tell me about how Bill Ryder-Jones came into things with you? He produced your EP Afterglow in 2021 and has produced this album too. Was it kinda 'love at first listen' between ye?
Bill was our dream producer to work with. He and Nat, his engineer, are the best thing that’s happened to us as a band. His Yawn album had a big influence on the sound we aspired to, and his production on Brooke Bentham’s song ‘All My Friends are Drunk’ was the reason we contacted him. I knew he had his own studio, so I sent his manager an email with some songs we’d recorded. She came back to us and said yes. And that was it. If I can sum up how quickly we clicked with Bill; I remember on the first take of the first song we recorded - ‘For Today’ - he turned to us in the control room and said “Oh, this sounds like Duster.” We all turned to each other smiling knowing he got it.
Ryder-Jones has had such an interesting career, stretching back over 20 years with the Coral. I imagine ye're big fans of everything he's done, including the brilliant album lechyd Da that he released at the start of the year?
I think it’s his best album. You can hear the level of thought that’s gone into the production and placement of every note in the right spot to add something to the overall. All of his albums have a singular sound with a clear continuity and cohesion between the songs. Bill is great at creating a world within his albums, and taking you to a place. I think the best music does that.
When and where was recording done? Was it your first time working on a full-length project? Did it feel different to everything else ye'd done before?
Everything was recorded in Bill’s Yawn Studios in West Kirby. It’s a sleepy seaside town on the Wirral that’s become a home away from home for us. It was a very different experience to what we’d done before. When we’ve done shorter sessions the focus is on making sure everything is recorded within a few days, with a little bit of room for experimentation. When we recorded Perfectly Still we got the basics of each song recorded and then it was like throwing paint at a canvas and seeing what stuck. With more time for new ideas the songs are changing and you have to change with them. It was us, Bill and Nat in the studio everyday trying to make the best album we could. For me as the guitarist, it was both challenging and a great learning. I was changing parts I’d been playing for months on the spot for the betterment of the song. It taught me not to settle on an idea, even if you know you have something great there’s somewhere else it could go or worth trying. Making Perfectly Still, we knew we were creating something, as opposed to recording music.
Let's talk about some of the tracks on the album. The latest single is the opening track, 'Crusher/Birds of Prey'. How did that song develop?
‘Crusher/Birds of Prey’ had a long gestation period. We worked on it for a few years because we were never satisfied with it and kept going back to it to make it better. It’s a simple repetitive pop song, so we didn’t want to lose that feeling while making it more interesting and dynamic. The core of the song was always there, and Dev had the “Sin a bhfuil / I’ll get my fill” line. It was the last song we decided on for the album. We made a demo a few weeks before we went to Yawn that captured the essence of what we wanted it to be, it was clear from that point it would probably be THE song on the album and the first single. What Bill and Nat did with it brought it onto another level. It was worth waiting for.
There's a hint of Real Estate and Local Natives through your sound. Are they influences? Who else are you into or had an influence in making the record?
We’re definitely fans of Real Estate, I think it’s impossible for any indie band to escape that jangly guitar sound. Some influences are always in you, for us people like Alex G and Whipping Boy have always been touchstones for where we wanted to go musically. Big Thief, Hovvdy and Slow Pulp definitely influenced us leaning into acoustic guitars and a folkier sound on the album, but also bands like DIIV and Deafheaven had us embracing a layered shoegazey ‘wall of sound’ when we needed it. All of those sounds are really clear on a song like ‘Wait’, where it starts slow and soft, building to a cacophony in the outro.
How much do I read into the lyrics on the album, like on last song 'Feckless': "You told me I was feckless, lacking self-awareness." Are they drawn from personal experience or just general? And how is the lyric writing done?
Devin: The lyrics are personal at times and general at others. I try to leave space for the listener to take what they want from them. In the past a lot of lyrics were scribbled down the week they were recorded. This time round I gave myself plenty of time to think about them and try to make them nice. Hope you like them.
Finally, what is your favourite song(s) by an Irish artist right now?
I’m a big fan of Banrion, her new song ‘17 Egg’ is beautiful. It’s the second song she’s done with Passerby after ‘End Times’, which I listened to obsessively. I need to hear an album’s worth of material from that collaboration.