The Cork ‘experimental no-wave bitch-punk’ five-piece mark themselves as ones to watch.
The Cork band I Dreamed I Dream’s debut EP Why Say a Lot? is just four songs long, but features a breadth of music and styles that suggest a band already moving beyond a narrow starter base.
“The EP is a challenge to every teenage girl in Ireland: I dare you to start a band. I absolutely dare you.”
Elle O’Leary Kelleher
Kicking off with the sean-nós-inspired opener ‘214’ , named after a bus route in Cork, I Dreamed I Dream go to a dark place immediately.
“I could cut your langer off, and carve my name into your balls,” goes the lyrical retort to the “cheating youngfella” who meets a blazing vehicular end on the aforementioned commuter bus.
“We’re going gigging girlies,” is the line that has a potential iconic status on the two-minute noise-rock blast and “misogyny-haunted” ‘Tintin Haircut’ that immediately follows.
The band’s debut single ‘Apparition’, introduces eighties-shoegaze indebted dynamics and matches peers who are also mining the same post-punk adjacent well in the process, as vocalist/bassist Claire Aherne takes charge of the song.
The final track ‘The Bass’ underlines the band’s humour throughout, with a surreal song about the all-consuming power of low-end.
All in all, an EP brimming with charm, chops and memorable tunes from the new Cork band.
I Dreamed I Dream are Julie Landers [ vocalist/drummer ], Elle O’Leary Kelleher [guitarist], Claire Aherne [bass, vocals], Laura Dineen [guitar] and Niamh Hayes [synth].
The EP was recorded with Brian Casey at Clonakilty’s Wavefield Studios.
About I Dreamed I Dream
“Smoking areas, red green rooms, heady heavy gigs and a house that’s all hallways – these are the places I met the lads and grew to know them over time and tunes”, says drummer/vocalist Julie Landers.
“I remember walking through town after a gig in [Cork’s] Poor Relation with Elle [O’Leary Kelleher, guitarist], and we had a very animated conversation about the music we loved and wanted to make, that crescendoed into the question – ‘do we wanna start a band ourselves?’.”
“Every gig we play, no matter the location, we always try to bring the same energy and scare a few heads,” says Hayes. “I love that, no matter what setting you put us in, whether it be a West Cork pub with carvery dinners and the match on behind us, or in an art gallery on Culture Night, we will show our teeth,” adds Dineen.
“We’ve played some gigs where the audience definitely wasn’t expecting us to sound like… y’know… that,” observes Aherne. “You’d nearly bottle that shock and feed off it, it’s hilarious. To get an audience to feel anything is an achievement, and the fact it’s overarchingly a feeling of horror and mild disgust is nearly better. We’re not here to be palatable, or soft, or small.”
“I love playing music with my pals, and I just want us to show it off to other people, what we’ve got,” affirms Dineen. “I want young people in Cork to see the likes of us, alongside [bands like] Pebbledash, Mossy, Pretty Happy and Messyng, and say ‘Y’know what? I’ll have a bang off that and see what happens’.”
“I want people to know that noise is not reserved for boys,” says Aherne. “Rage is a good thing. Rage and heartbreak can coexist – rage, and heartbreak, and fear, and pride, and peace, and more fear on top of the first lot, can be the building blocks of a beautiful thing – embrace it. The purpose of this EP was to express ourselves for the first time. If people want to join in, ye know where to find us now.”
“I want young ones to listen, and know that the right people will love the bones of you, and together you can make songs that speak to ye all stepping into yourselves and just making noise,” says Landers.
Concludes O’Leary Kelleher: “The EP is a challenge to every teenage girl in Ireland: I dare you to start a band. I absolutely dare you.”
