Death becomes her

"Could you ring my landline?" asks Anna Murphy when I call. "My phone has this habit of pressing buttons during calls." Does she mean that she has a habit of pressing buttons during calls? "No! Why does everyone think it's me, it's not! It's the phone, it's haunted or something."

Ah yes, the old "my electronical equipment is demonically possessed" problem. An epidemic sweeping the nation. When I ask about We Should Be Dead's bummer of a moniker, it seems a ghost has pushed the 'Delete' button in Murphy's memory too.
"No-one can remember where the band name came from. It's terrible!" she laughs. "Usually we make up a different story every time. You run out of things to say. I think originally it was 'You Should Be Dead'. We thought our audience might get a bit offended!"
As it is, people don't seem to agree with the band title's sentiment and are very glad We Should Be Dead are alive and making music. They've just returned from an extremely successful tour of America and a year-long stint in Los Angeles, where they not only gained a huge following, but recorded their latest album, Dreamstate. However, despite the great reception the band enjoyed, it seems their stay in L.A. was not an easy one.
"It was really hard to adapt over there, it's so different. Irish people, and I think particularly Limerick people, are very 'no bullshit'. We like having a laugh too. But over there they didn't get us, our humour, nothing. We probably came back knowing a hell of a lot more about the industry, but that's because over there it's all business. Even at gigs, because of all the competition, it's so impersonal. You'll have six bands playing every venue and it's very 'get in, play your set, pack up your crap and get out!'"
This impersonal vibe extended to the social scene too, and the lively, fun-loving band found that the Land of the Free wasn't necessarily the Land of the Fun.
"It's really hard to make acquaintainces, and you do notice that a lot of people over there don't have friends. It's sad. You'll see them floating around at all these parties on their own. It's probably because L.A. is so vast and spread out that unless you drive everywhere you meet people once and never see them again. So we did that typical Irish thing. We met a few Irish bands and formed a mini Irish community. We needed to so that we could have some craic!"
Living in such close quarters seems to have had its difficulties too.
"Touring and being on the road, I love that. It's great fun. It's living together that's the problem! When you're working together, gigging together and living together, it all gets very claustrophobic. You feel like you're in the Big Brother house without the big cash prize at the end! You get stir-crazy and so bored."
Good thing they know how to have a wild time on the road then.
"It's amazing the stuff that seems entertaining after a few hours of driving on a completely straight road. We played games like 'Guess what colour the next car will be?'"
That We Should Be Dead crowd, eh? What crazy rock and roll kids. Murphy and the band did get to play diva at one stage at least, channeling their inner American Idol judge during auditions for a new bass-player.
"Our original bass-player left during the middle of our U.S. tour, he wanted to go a different way. He wasn't enjoying L.A. and I think we all understood that."
And it was during the audition process for a replacement that Murphy began to understand why people in L.A. have no friends; they're all bloody mad.
"God, we met some crazy people! We had some really, really old guys who were hardcore rock and roll auditioning, and then we had some young guys who were clearly spaced out on something. It was bizzare. They were such…"
Murphy pauses, clearly trying to be diplomatic.
"Characters. Let's say characters. But we did find a bass-player for the rest of our U.S. gigs, and now we're back in Limerick we've got two new guys, Aaron Corr and Garry Carroll who are awesome."
Anna is clearly glad to be home, and says the feeling is the same among all of her bandmates, though they're not exactly home for a rest.
"We've been down to Indiependence, we're shooting a video for our new single 'Breathe In' and then we have some sort of Phone application coming out where people ask us questons and we respond to them via video-link or something… I don't really understand."
Apparitions appearing in your phone and asking you deep and meaningful questions? I dunno, sounds a bit spooky to me.