That Petrol Emotion
Having called time on his Republic Of Loose career, Cormac ‘Bres’ Breslin is learning to love music again alongside his sister Orla in new venture Cars Love Girls. words Dave Hanratty
Dave Hanratty, 27 Mar 2012
For Cormac Breslin, alias Bres, former citizen of the Republic Of Loose, when it comes to your passion in life it’s pretty simple: With no risk, there’s no reward. Having found himself physically and emotionally burnt out by his exploits in the Loose, Bres made the tough decision to walk away from one of the country’s most beloved acts. While such a move might provoke haunting doubts to creep in, he didn’t give it a second thought.
“I was done,” he says, matter-of-factly, his face entirely free of any hint of regret. “I was completely and utterly done with that set-up and that structure. The relationships I had in the band were over, fully over. It was an insanely depressing and stressful time for me personally. I don’t think it manifested itself too badly but I kind of compartmentalised it and said, ‘This is a shit section of my life so let’s try and move away from it’.”
Rather than drown in doom and gloom, Bres opted for a more therapeutic approach, revisiting the sights and sounds of his youth, immersing himself in everything from the rhythmic lustre of New Edition to the bittersweet innocence of the films of the late, great director John Hughes.
The nostalgia trip played a huge part in sculpting the identity of new project Cars Love Girls, but while debut album Skip School is very much informed by a yearning for a time when music was all about gloss and shimmer, its embryonic state was formed some time ago.
“Some of these tracks were ones I’d given to Mik [Pyro, ROL frontman] as instrumentals,” recalls Bres. “That’s how it would work with the pop singles in the Loose. I would write the instrumental to ‘Comeback Girl’ and I’d give it to Mik finished and he’d do the vocal. That was the relationship I had with him for six years. Some of these tunes I had given to Mik and he hadn’t done anything with them. So when I left the band I had a bunch of ideas that I was going to try and finish myself. I just thought it would be unfortunate if those songs didn’t get finished. And once you’ve got two or three you write the rest of it in that vein, to keep that thread going.”
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