FEATURE: Spotlight: Cliffords — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Cliffords

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HAVING just completed…

PHOTO CREDIT: Emma Swann

some amazing tour dates, it did get me thinking about Cliffords. They consist of Iona Lynch, Gavin Dawkins, Harry Menton, Daniel Ryan and Locon O'Toole. I have not seen them live but I will make sure I do when they next come to London. Their Salt of the Lee (Acoustic) album was released last month. It mixes the songs with their The Salt of the Lee E.P. and acoustic versions. I shall bring in some interviews with the band, in case you have not heard of them or do not know too much. I am starting out with Rolling Stone UK, who interviewed the Cork-based back earlier in the year. They are a terrific Irish guitar band. A nation that is producing so many at the moment, Cliffords are proof that some of the most important and distinct music is coming from the country:

“What’s the story behind how Cliffords came to be?

We were a secondary school band, basically. We formed in a place called Ballincollig and we were just playing in a garage for years. That was with me and Gavin who’s in the band now, but we had other previous members too. After a few years we did a battle of the bands at UCC (University College Cork) and we were so bad, like truly terrible. But we ended up winning and we met Harry our guitar player and we met Locon who is our keys player. That was two years ago and we’re here now!

Is there any artists that are particularly big influences on our sound? I can hear shades of Wolf Alice in there, if we’re going for contemporary ones

It’s cool because we all have different tastes, but I know the lads would definitely say Radiohead is their biggest influence and for us as well Wolf Alice is a huge one. I’m a really big boygenius fan and Phoebe Bridgers is a huge inspiration for me. Then there’s the Smashing Pumpkins too.

I can hear shades of The Cranberrries too, but I appreciate that might be a lazy comparison…

Nah you can’t go wrong with The Cranberries and I do get that a lot! I think it’s a similar voice type thing and look, I was watching one of their music videos the other day and realised I had the same haircut as Dolores O’Riordan. And as for lyrics, Joni Mitchell is my all time favorite. So we’ve got a good mix and we also do an album of the week club, where each person chooses an album each week and everyone has to listen to it.

It’s been really cool to expand our tastes. Like this week it was Tom Waits, and for years I had asserted that I hated Tom Waits. I really hated him and called him the scary man. Every time I got in the car with Harry, who loves Tom Waits, I’d just say turn off the scary man! But I listened again this week and I was like God, I’m wrong, he’s class!

You mentioned growing up in Cork, does that sense of place become a central character in your music?

Yeah and people make fun of me because I overuse it! I was out last night and someone said to me ‘It wouldn’t be like you to mention Cork in a lyric, Iona’. It is pretty true that almost every song has a street or even like some kind of imagery or iconography.

There’s this red cross on the top of a church around Cork, it’s up on a hill so you can always kind of see it and it’s like always looming and I don’t know why, it’s just so like attractive or something, but like loads of bands write about it as well from Cork, so I bring it up loads in our next recordings. It’s personified, but it’s nice”.

In May, they released the Salt of the Lee E.P. For NME. Iona Lynch and Locon O'Toole spoke with them about their rise. “The streets and sights of Ireland’s second-largest city loom large in the rising four-piece’s sonorous indie, woven into the tales of their young lives”. As NME write, this amazing band’s incredible stories are taking them beyond Cork and to bigger things. In a year that has seen some hugely promising bands come through, Cliffords are among the very best:

“As today’s designated interviewees Lynch and O’Toole talk, they often focus on the idea of bettering themselves. Cliffords have an album of the week club; recent selections include Divorce, Ethel Cain and Tom Waits. The club helps make a “massive difference” to their songwriting, the keyboardist says, “because there’s so much music out there and it helps you understand [it better]”. Their first experiences recording helped boost their abilities as musicians who could “think about [our music] on the next level”. Ask what their ambitions are, and after joking about mansions in Miami, they keep things simple. “I want to get better and play shows,” Lynch shares. “I want to make a really good album and I don’t care how long it takes for us to do it.” Across from her, O’Toole nods: “We love the process, that’s the thing.”

Given how much new music is being put out these days, the band are well aware of the need to make themselves stand out – but you get the impression they’re not willing to compromise on their art to do so. Dawkins’ arresting trumpet lines add an unusual, emotional extra layer to songs like ‘My Favourite Monster’, but the band aren’t going all-in and making it their gimmick. “Every song, he’ll go, ‘I hear a trumpet line’,” Lynch says, jokingly rolling her eyes. “We’re like, ‘Not in every song! You have to play the bass sometimes.’”

Right now, it feels easier than ever for Irish bands to get a look-in where they may previously have been overlooked, thanks to the country’s culture having something of a capital-letter Moment. For Cliffords, the opportunity is a double-edged sword – something they’re grateful for, even as it points to a prior ignorance and narrow-mindedness. “Everyone in the industry keeps asking this question of what’s happening in Ireland right now, but it’s always been happening – it’s just that you’re looking now,” Lynch says. “There’s almost a fetishisation [of being Irish], it’s kind of othering. You wouldn’t really say that about bands from England. I do find that frustrating, but I also get it because I don’t know about lots of places in the UK.”

‘Salt Of The Lee’, though, is strong enough a record that it could grab the attention it deserves, whether the world was focusing on Ireland or not. Its closing track ‘Dungarvan Bay’, a moving exploration of grief that was started one week after the death of a close friend, is some of Lynch’s best songwriting yet. She returned to it a year later with a new perspective on loss.

“I don’t think you move on from grief, it just becomes a part of you,” she begins. “I’m devastated he passed away, and I think of him every day, but you can’t change those things in your life, and you do have an option of what you do about it. I didn’t want this song to be that version of grief that’s super devastating and all-consuming. There were parts of it that were really beautiful – as friends, we went camping in Dungarvan for a week, and we had some really great nights out. I wanted it to reflect this growth of it still being there, but changed”.

I will move to DIY and their interview from June. Cliffords say how they always get labelled as a ‘great Irish band’, and there has to be this distinction or restriction. They want to be known as a great band, period. Also, it is interesting how they note people maybe only connected or knew about them through fellow Irish groups like Fontaines D.C. However, Cliffords have been working hard to get their music out there, so it is high time people paid attention – and paid them their dues:

“Theirs wasn’t a path that included any secret shortcut to stardom, though. The band spent 18 months playing around Cork before breaking their way out of the city walls and into the wider Irish - and now also British - music scene. “I think I sent an email to different UK and US college radio stations every day trying to get them to play our music,” chuckles Locon, “and then we eventually got onto a Spotify playlist, and spent pretty much every day last summer meeting with industry people, which just felt like all the work had been worth it.”

Obviously, none of this would be possible if the tunes themselves weren’t truly brilliant. Debut EP ‘Strawberry Scented’ unveiled Cliffords’ ability to mix catchy arena-rock choruses (‘Sleeping With Ghosts’) with softly sung yet powerfully heartbreaking lyricism (‘Shattered Glass’) - a formula Iona first landed on as a way to untangle her thoughts.

“I wrote my first lyrics when I was about six in my bedroom,” she remembers, “but the only music I listened to was Taio Cruz on ‘Now 77’, so all the lyrics were like ‘we’re going out tonight girls’ or ‘we’re in the club’. But then, as a teenager, I loved dodie, and now my icons are Adrianne Lenker and CMAT – they’re just the most amazing storytellers – so I guess I try to write like them, but in my own voice.”

Now, sitting on this bustling Brighton street and drinking coffee to heal their sore heads, the band are gearing up to release their second EP, ‘Salt of the Lee’ - a collection of four songs designed to, in Locon’s words, “really announce ourselves.”

“We were consciously writing an EP this time,” he continues, “it’s got a bit more grit, it’s dirtier, it’s more focused on the band we want to be.” Iona nods: “I was less particular about lyrics this time, too. I want people to make up their own minds on the stories instead of me spelling out exactly what’s going on.”

Side by side, these two EPs - though separated by only 13 months - evidence enormous growth. Anthemic lead single ‘Bittersweet’, replete with grungy guitar lines and soaring trumpet details, contrasts beautifully with lyrical folk ballad ‘Dungarvan Bay’. Elsewhere, ‘My Favourite Monster’ tells the tale of a local villain through social analysis and boisterous choruses, while Iona’s self-proclaimed favourite ‘R&H Hall’ opens with an emotional piano line before exploding open into a folk-rock ode to their beloved Ireland.

Indeed, their Irishness is at the very heart of the band, musically and spiritually, and Iona beams with pride when talking about growing up in Cork: “Irish culture is all around you, it’s in your DNA. We learn the language in school; the music and literature and history is everywhere; even when you grow up, you see trad music sessions in pubs that anyone can join in with. You’re taught to be proud of your culture, and it’s only now we’re starting to appreciate it.”

“British people are only paying attention now because of bands like Fontaines DC, but it’s always been happening,” Locon adds. “Our government encourages music, they let people have fun in small rooms whether they’re good or not. In Britain, people don’t have the chance to be bad because there are no small rooms left to play, so [music] is only available to people who have had lessons in school or whatever; it’s just for upper-class kids”.

I am finishing out with an interview from CLASH. Many people assume they are just starting out and they have exploded out of nowhere. Even though they are getting big attention and this year has been their busiest, the group has been gigging and getting their name out there a long time. It is worth re-emphasising. That said, I think that next year is going to be their busiest and best so far, in terms of the gigs they play and what they accomplished:

“The group spent years playing every gig they could physically get to, and building a solid local following.

“We were the band who’d play every support slot in Cork! You could text us half an hour before the show and we’d show up and play there,” says Lynch. “We played three shows a week in one venue once.”

“We used to play at this bar called Fred’s every week, and pretty much every [time] we’d write a new song and just play it,” Lynch adds.

With plenty of familiar faces in the crowds, this was the perfect time in the band’s career to get instant feedback on their newer songs. But things have inevitably changed.

“Since you’ve released music and people outside of your immediate local scene are hearing it, you don’t have that same liberty,” says Lynch.

Wider fame has also led the band to seek more structure and discipline. Iona explains how the band have spent time in London for a focused writing week not long after the release of ‘Salt of the Lee’ (and just ahead of their debut Glastonbury appearance). This is the first time Cliffords have written in this way, although they’ve always co-written their songs, Iona says. Those songs are strikingly personal; it’s what makes Cliffords such a compelling act. But how can writing collectively produce this genuinely heartfelt emotion? Lynch puts it down to the band’s friendship and shared history.

“We all at this point live together and know the ins and outs of each other as people,” Lynch says. “We’ve all grown up in the same city; we kind of have a similar outlook or experience – my story is as much as Gav’s as it is Harry’s… we’re all living the same thing, through a different perspective but I think I know them well enough to see something that they would see.”

As Lynch explains, “There has to be individuality in the songs and you have to be telling your own story, but through a wider lens maybe.”

Writing prolifically while growing up together means the band have found themselves charting their own personal development.

“It’s like writing your own autobiography as you go along,” Lynch says, then describing her philosphy on the art (or science?) of songwriting.

“Really great songwriters practise, they write songs every day, they do lots of things in their life to get to know their inner voice and get to the point where their true self is really distilled,” she says. “I used to think it was this thing I was just good at, and I could write whenever, while now I’m much more about structure and practising — trying to write a song every day and consuming things like art and other music that will inform my writing.”

“And it becomes easier when you’re treating it more like work rather than this mad experiment that sometimes goes right! We’re seeing ourselves as musicians rather than just as a band who are having fun,” Lynch says. “We released the first EP because that was the thing to do. We didn’t really get that people would listen to it! The second EP felt more like a project.”

With their fanbase and live audiences growing, there are now higher expectations put on Cliffords. Lynch explains how she and her bandmates are trying to block out some of that pressure in order to keep true to themselves.

“Otherwise you’re trying to write songs for other people… I don’t think people actually want what they think they want,” she muses. “You should write the songs you’re going to write and they’ll enjoy them if they truly enjoy your music”.

Cliffords want to be known as a great band. The fact that they are Irish should not the focus in that sense. There have always been great bands out of Ireland. However, it is important to recognise the country and the sheer wave of talent coming from there. The Cork heroes have had a triumphant year and played incredible gigs, been award-nominated and released some terrific music. Looking ahead, and I do feel like they are going to get to some huge festivals and maybe there will be another E.P. I am excited for this band and I feel they are going to be around for many years. Anyone new to Cliffords needs to get involved…