Tucked inside a sales space in a comfortable Peckham pub, drinks in hand, NewDad speak calmly about issues that will usually stay inside a band’s interior circle: from overcoming protracted intervals of artistic pressure to rising pains and nervousness. It’s solely when bassist Cara Joshi’s cellphone begins to vibrate that the desk all of the sudden feels on edge. “Shit,” she says with a glance of amused mischief, pushing her pint to the aspect. “My Addison Lee [cab] is ready outdoors. What ought to I do?!”
As a measure of NewDad’s present day-to-day routine, this second of harmless, wide-eyed panic feels illuminating. Having lately signed with Atlantic [Ed Sheeran, Fred Again..], the Galway four-piece – Joshi, guitarists Julie Dawson and Sean O’Dowd, and drummer Fiachra Parslow – are nonetheless adjusting to the perks that include being a serious label act: indulging in each swanky dinner, social gathering and pre-booked taxi trip that’s organized for them.
The way in which wherein NewDad’s music untangles the trivia of main life modifications has received them the hearts of a younger, devoted following to whom they’re someplace between mates and emergent rock heroes – awe-inspiring and aspirational, but additionally accessible. The band’s imaginative and prescient for his or her remarkably confident debut ‘Madra’ (out January 26) is the results of pushing themselves to new and uncomfortable limits. As O’Dowd places it: “With this new album, we have now one thing that may stand the take a look at of time.”
Having beforehand self-released their music, being supplied in depth assets to finish ‘Madra’ appears like a completely deserved step-up for probably the most distinct new bands of latest years. The place their EPs (2021’s ‘Waves’ and its follow-up ‘Banshee’) leaned right into a gauzy indie-pop sound, their debut pairs sudden modifications in tempo with duelling guitars and Pixies-like bursts of dissonance, and in addition finds house for moments of textured shoegaze (‘Sickly Candy’, ‘Nosebleed’). It’s a blazing show of ability and bravura.
“We had gone so far as we may utterly on our personal,” says Parslow. “However this album feels streets forward of something we’ve carried out earlier than. We might have been given funding and higher tools, however the fundamentals of our work? They’re the very same.”
“With this new album, we have now one thing that may stand the take a look at of time” – Sean O’Dowd
Including to the intimacy of the file is the best way it was made: throughout a two-week interval on the legendary Rockfield Studios, Monmouth – which has beforehand performed host to Queen and Oasis – the band watched zombie movies, performed board video games and shared wine whereas penning songs. “Just lately, I used to be listening to our early discography and I used to be like, ‘I don’t know who that’s.’ It was virtually like an out of physique expertise,” says Dawson. “However with ‘Madra’, I understood the place I used to be going with the songwriting. I do know her.”
Teenage insecurities cohere into real emotional readability throughout ‘Madra’. By the ninth track, ‘In My Head’, Dawson is mendacity awake, detailing her panic assaults with startling intimacy: “I’m buried underneath blankets / Descending into insanity / And there’s no escape from the ideas burned in my mind.” This disquieting lyrical edge is just additional emphasised by the file’s darkish and bewitching visible id. For his or her NME Cowl shoot, the band selected to journey to the eerie-looking Wistman’s Wooden in Dartmoor, over 200 miles from their London base; the traditional forest’s identify is believed to have come from the dialect phrase ‘wisht’, that means pixie-led or haunted. A real dedication to the aesthetic, you can say.
“We’re not cool. We’re not good. However we make actually good music,” says Dawson, earlier than happening to clarify how the band had been afforded the chance to work with Alan Moulder, who has produced data for a few of NewDad’s personal private heroes: from Journey to My Bloody Valentine. “Generally it’s onerous to be happy with the stuff you create, however these songs sound fucking superb.”
NewDad’s burgeoning confidence in themselves is testomony to their scope as musicians; the shyness they often exude once they speak seems to be in opposition with the wilful experimentation of their materials. They’re voracious pop followers, too, having beforehand launched a canopy of Charli XCX’s ‘ILY2’, alongside remodeling ‘Angel’, PinkPantheress’ contribution to the Barbie soundtrack.
This type of genre-traversing, they are saying, has been the results of necessity: whereas the much-celebrated rise of Irish post-punk bands lately – The Homicide Capital, Gurriers, ‘Dogrel’-era Fontaines D.C. – has been “inspiring”, NewDad really feel as if critics have grouped them in with these acts primarily based on their geographical location, moderately than their sound. They had been primarily outlined by the skin world earlier than they might turn into what the band they wished to be.
“It’s one thing that I’ve observed occurring, particularly being from England,” says the south London-raised Joshi, who joined NewDad in March 2022 after her bandmates moved to the capital. “It’s an honour to be related to these bands as we love them, however our vibe is so totally different. I’m unsure why it even must be stated that we’re from the identical place,” Parslow provides.
“Fiachra! You’re on hearth at this time,” O’Dowd tells his bandmate, laughing. Maybe that tumbler of liquid confidence is beginning to do the trick.
NewDad’s relationship with Eire is advanced and emotional. A harbour metropolis with a inhabitants of 80,000, Galway didn’t provide a lot a fertile music scene for Dawson, O’Dowd and Parslow to turn into concerned in as youngsters, however as a substitute impressed them to look past their environment in quest of alternatives to attach with different bands their age.
Going to see The Remedy at Dublin’s Malahide Fortress in June 2019 would become a lightbulb second for the trio, who had been school college students on the time: help act Simply Mustard – an acclaimed noise-rock band from Dundalk, north-east of Galway – “opened up doorways” for NewDad, says Dawson. “Watching Simply Mustard carry out was akin to an epiphany for us,” she says. “The Remedy are the very best band ever; to see some children from a equally rural a part of Eire open up for them was superb. They obtained there by way of onerous work and made us actually wish to go for it.”
“We wished to make one thing out of all of the epic Irish mythology” – Fiachra Parslow
Dawson, with the help of O’Dowd, Parslow and former bassist Áindle O’Beirn – who left the band amicably earlier than they signed their file deal – determined to e-mail Chris Ryan, who blended Simply Mustard’s 2018 debut ‘Wednesday’. He would go on to assist NewDad grasp their early do-it-yourself recordings, and has continued to work with the band since.
What they’ve realized from this relationship with Ryan is the significance of valuing long-term collaborators, in addition to retaining as a lot management as doable over their artistic selections. It’s classes like these which were reiterated to the band by the buddies and mentors they’ve linked with whereas touring: Paolo Nutini, Fontaines D.C. and Disgrace. “After we moved to London, it was fairly intense, nevertheless it’s gotten progressively tougher. It’s a chaotic place to reside after rising up in a quiet place,” begins Dawson.
“However the individuals we have now met right here have made issues somewhat simpler. All artists are in the identical boat: you’re feeling such intense highs and lows on this business, so it’s vital to have individuals round you who perceive that.” She goes on to explain Fontaines D.C’s 2022 LP ‘Skinty Fia’, which unpacked the band’s emotions of displacement and guilt towards leaving Eire, as “so stunning and relatable.”
She continues: “It spoke to anybody who’s transferring to a spot they don’t know, and the battle between loving your house and in addition being ashamed of it. I feel the best way that [Fontaines D.C. frontman] Grian [Chatten] voiced all of these large concepts was so dead-on; I actually consider he’s one among our greatest songwriters.”
The weekend previous to our chat, NewDad performed an intimate present at their hometown’s 150-capacity Róisín Dubh venue to air a number of the unreleased tracks from ‘Madra’. The album’s title interprets from Irish Gaelic to ‘canine’; a nod to how three quarters of the band spoke the language at college whereas additionally serving as a metaphor for the way “heavy emotions can comply with you round like an obedient pet,” says Dawson.
Parslow says that whereas the band don’t return to Galway typically, upholding references to the Irish language of their music, regardless of how refined, “provides a real connection to house.” He provides: “We now have an important saying in Eire: ‘Is fearr Gaeilge bhriste, ná Béarla cliste’, which implies ‘damaged Irish is healthier than intelligent English’ – extra individuals ought to take the time to talk it and encourage others to do the identical.
“I feel being over right here has made me much more linked to the language. Individuals outdoors of Eire consider the nation within the context of leprechauns and all that shite – however that’s not proper, you realize? We wished to make one thing out of all of the epic Irish mythology as a substitute.”
There’s one thing genuinely refreshing in regards to the directness with which NewDad talk their ambitions, and the way they keep true to their phrase. The art work for his or her latest single ‘Let Go’ depicts the woven St Brigid’s cross, an historic Irish image of safety that’s thought to signify peace and goodwill. They’re trustworthy and proud, a younger guitar band who really matter.
In dialog with NME, in the meantime, there could also be moments the place these 4 twenty-somethings come throughout quiet – however by no means self-conscious, or unsure. “I discover it straightforward to think about us,’ says O’Dowd. “We’ve had tough occasions and haven’t all the time obtained on with one another. However the truth that we nonetheless hold going is superb: we wish to expertise every part collectively.”
As Joshi lastly attends to the cab she has left ready outdoors, the remainder of us end our pints and trade hugs. Dawson provides a definitive mission assertion for ‘Madra’ earlier than she will get as much as depart: “I’m not a assured individual day-to-day, however I’m assured in our music,” she says. “It’s the one factor I’m certain of.” Her bandmates nod in unison: it’s true.
‘Madra’ might be launched on January 26, 2024 through Atlantic Information
Take heed to NewDad’s unique playlist to accompany The Cowl under on Spotify and right here on Apple Music
Author: Sophie Williams
Photographer: Joseph Bishop
Styling: Garments loaned by Simone Rocha
MUA: Tina Khatri
Label: Atlantic Information
