Blonde ambition to play Cavan
Soda Blonde headline Cavan Arts Festival this Saturday
It’s a genuine coup for Cavan Arts Festival to have Soda Blonde to top the billing this weekend.
A measure of just how good it was to get the indie four piece on board can be gleaned from the band’s sparse summer schedule - four gigs in Holland, a lot on the All Together Now Festival in Waterford and... Cavan this Saturday.
And that’s it for one of the most in demand Irish bands of the moment.
They are fresh from a sell-out tour last December to promote their critically acclaimed second album and completed their first European tour in January. It turns out the Dublin four piece were only too happy to venture west up the N3 for the Townhall Arts Centre show.
“Cavan has a very big place in our hearts,” begins guitarist Adam O’Regan tentatively, like he’s aware it sounds like he’s only plámásing us. But no he doubles down on it.
“It’s kind of like one of our spiritual homes.
“A friend of ours has a holiday home in Cavan and when we started up Soda Blonde we had all these demos that Faye had been working on.
“And we decided we wanted to start seriously recording our new album.
“We went into our friend’s home - there was no wifi, no TV, and we locked ourselves away during a very cold, snowy winter. We actually ended up writing fifty per cent, I would say, of our first album Small Talk in this house looking out over the snowy fields.”
Soda Blonde’s friend is Daniel Smith, whose band Gypsies on the Autobahn also played Cavan Arts Festival five years ago. Daniel’s wee brother is better known as Dublin rapper Kojaque. The Smiths’ parents hail from Cavan and they still have a house in Crosskeys where Gypsies also recorded tracks for their album.
“We set up shop in that house and recorded loads of our music,” recalls Adam, “so when the guys [from Cavan Arts Festival] asked us to come down and play, it was a no-brainer, because it’s our spiritual home.”
Their celebrated second album, Dream Big is a beautifully composed work. Live studio performances of songs like Midnight Show and the raucous Bad Machine reflect a remarkable precision in performance while retaining that frisson of energy. This tightness is a result of playing together since 2008 under their previous iteration, Little Green Cars.
And then there’s the richness of frontwoman Faye O’Rourke’s voice.
“Our live show has always been such a big thing for us,” Adam muses.
“It might sound a bit corny but our fans give us so much, from a live perspective.
“It’s essential for Faye - she really lets herself go when she’s performing live. And when she’s singing she gets to this vulnerable space and they really lift her up. She taps into it and it makes for a very different experience each time we play live.”
The reason for the touring hiatus just when they are at the peak of their powers is a “very big show” pencilled in for July in the National Concert Hall.
“We are playing our album from start to finish with a 75 piece orchestra, and making a concert film, and a live album around it. That’s taking up all of our time and energy at the moment.
“It’s going to be a career highlight, a bucket list situation,” he says of playing with the Irish National Symphony Orchestra.
There’s no surprise that a film capturing the show is central to the project given how intrinsic their visuals are to the band.
Click on any of Soda Blonde’s videos and you will lose the day as you feel compelled to chain smoke all of them.
The week the Celt speaks to Adam, they have just released a new video for their song Why Die for Danzig? The title borrows a quote by Marcel Déat, a French writer who argued on the eve of WW2 in favour of a policy of appeasing Hitler.
“It’s a question that’s more and more pertinent now and in the context of history as we know it unfolded - it’s a question that when you ask it again, it answers itself - Why Die For Danzig?
“Because Nazi Germany,” explains Adam.
The video emerged from an uncomfortable experience the band endured earlier this year.
Soda Blonde had been due to perform at the SXSW festival in Austin Texas earlier this year, a major platform on which to showcase their talents globally.
“The day before we were supposed to fly off we learned that the US military were a super sponsor of the festival for the first year ever, and there were weapons manufacturers exhibiting warfare innovations at the festival,” Adam says, still incredulous, and carefully searching for the right words. “So, with what was going on at the time in Gaza it just felt... inappropriate and antithetical to the idea of mixing military into that.”
Their decision to pull out caused the predictable news stories and equally predictable criticism.
Feeling like they had been “through the ringer”, and with an unexpected week off to reflect on the experience, they made the most of the time.
“We had this song from our new album, Why Die For Danzig that we had been singing How many bullets do you have to sell?’ from the top of our lungs every night. We were like, we should do something with this song, because it speaks of this moment so poignantly.”
Faye had the germ of an idea of a commercial photoshoot to introduce a narrative that gradually turns grotesque.
Adam, who modestly describes himself as “a wannabe director”, ran with the idea to shoot a typically visually arresting video, and all done in just 48hours.
“It was an exhilarating experience,” says Adam. “We went back to doing what we do best and try to turn it into art.”
To see Soda Blonde at their best and in their spiritual home, head to the Townhall Arts Centre, Cavan Town on Saturday, May 18. Tickets €30 from TownhallArtsCentre.ie and support comes from rising stars Soft Launch (featuring Cavan’s own Josh McClorey) who released their wonderful debut single Cartwheels earlier this year.