Why bother going to all the trouble of arranging a gig in Cork or Sligo, when you can stay in the comfortable surroundings of your home town, playing to your regular bunch of mates? Dublin’s Butterfly Explosion don’t subscribe to that train of thought. Such is their desire to spread their wings that their last gig was at the SxSW festival in Austin.
“We realized that we were attracting more attention from America than from Ireland”, says keyboardist and vocalist Sorcha Brennan. “We haven’t done a lot of gigs in Dublin. But when we look at things like MySpace or the web site, all the hits are coming from America. It just seemed that it would be a great experience and to take that step and get beyond playing in Dublin.”
Arranging the show themselves and travelling outside of the official Irish contingent, it could have all gone horribly wrong. After all, Texas is a long way to go to play a crap gig. Thankfully, it worked out well. “We got in contact with Angela Dorgan at Music Ireland and they really helped us. Where we played was full to capacity, which is great – for a small band from Ireland to go over to somewhere like that, where there are over a thousand bands and to play to a venue that was absolutely jammed was amazing. There’s no way we could do that in Dublin. There was also a great support network from the other Irish bands, that would be more high profile than us. It made us realise that it’s actually easier to organise gigs in New York than Dublin! We played three gigs there and they were all really good. You do a gig here and you invite management or record companies and they never come, but we had interest at all of our shows. We really felt like it was worth it.”
The band have done showcases before, including one in Glasgow. Is there not a danger that they become a huge feeding frenzy, with bands desperate to catch that all important industry eye? “We’re a band that’s never done anything we didn’t want to do. If we wanted to get record company interest, we’d sound like the Arctic Monkeys or the Magic Numbers. The stuff we’re doing is not like anyone else. We’re just five people (Gazz Carr, John Canavan, Peter Savage and Danny Conway complete the line-up) who had a similar taste in music and just ended up playing what we wanted to play. Maybe that’s why we’re not so well known in Dublin!”
The domestic music scene is known for being suspicious of bands that head elsewhere to make it. “There is a sense that we’re almost doing that on purpose," Sorcha says. "There was a time when I was playing every week in Dublin and it doesn’t get you anywhere. There are bands who have been playing Ireland like that for years. I feel that if you get signed in Ireland a record company are just happy to let you do alright here, whereas we found out how easy it was to get on college radio. It was worth taking the step.”
Butterfly Explosion certainly do things differently. Not many bands would admit to being influenced by the short lived ‘shoegazing’ scene of the early ‘90s (ask an older relative). Still, they’re not the only band to look to the past to move forward – although Sorcha believes their influences are different to most. “It’s kind of the darker ‘80s thing. I didn’t listen to a lot of that music when it was out, I was listening to The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel, all the stuff in my mum and dad’s record collection. I didn’t hear My Bloody Valentine until I started college.”
The three-track demo currently doing the rounds suggests that their approach is paying off, featuring waves of effects-laden guitars and doleful boy girl vocals. “We all think the same about letting the instruments speak for themselves. None of us are going to be the next star vocalists, so it suits us to concentrate on the instrumentation and the little noises that are going on.” Is it dark? “Yeah, probably. I’ve done stuff where it’s all been happy with swinging guitars, and I’d listen to a lot of music like that. When it comes to rehearsal, we’re in this windowless room and that’s how the music comes out, really loud but with a mournful tinge”.