A fairground fairytale

It reads pretty much like a fairy tale. Three years ago, Michelle Phelan had accepted that she would never sing in public again and was working towards a career as a nutritionist. Meanwhile, classically-trained Latin guitarist Pete McGrane was playing gigs anywhere he could. Then they met...

“A mate of mine said, ‘I have this friend and he’s a little bit eccentric; I think you two would be really well suited,’” Michelle beams. This is obviously a favourite topic of conversation. “So she brought me to one of his gigs as a blind date.” Presumably, it went well. “Yeah, I pretended I’d missed my bus so I could stay a little longer!” In no time they were an item.
Today, Carosel are at an exciting point in a partnership that’s both musical and personal. On the latter front, they’ve recently announced their engagement; meanwhile, with the release of their debut album Kaleidescope their summery blend of jazz, bossa nova and flamenco has been hailed as the very thing to save us from a dreary Irish summer.
Citing Karen Carpenter and Burt Bacharach among her inspirations, the 28-year-old frontwoman tells how a bad experience with a record label put her off performing for almost a decade. “It was months after we met that Pete found out that I could sing, let along that I was a performer," she recounts. "I wasn't even singing in the shower at this stage. I made him stand in the kitchen while I sang in the living room! I sang Al Green’s ‘Let’s Stay Together’ and when I was finished his little head popped around the corner going ‘Awh!’ (Clapping)”
Amazed by what he heard, McGrane immediately arranged for his band to play the song at their next gig and a surprised Michelle was cajoled by the audience into breaking her stage embargo. Everything clicked...
I ask Pete how important the performance element is for Carosel? “Oh, it’s hugely important,” he stresses. “There’s a lot more in our performance than there is on the album. We try as much as possible to play with our full band: piano, violin, percussion. It’s a bigger sound.”
Band or no band, doesn’t working with your fiancée cause problems? “You get used to it. Like when we get home, we’ll sit down and not talk about music for the night. We’ll go on holiday and not take the guitar.”
“But then again, we met at a gig," Michele interjects. "We’ve played together for two years and when we get married we’re going to have a big music party with our family and friends.”
The longer I spend with the loved-up pair, the more I wonder if they have even a hint of a dark side between them. They’re very sweet – and not just because we’ve put them in matching candy-striped shirts!
Have they? “Of course! ‘Forget Yesterday’, that’s my token sad song,” Michele laughs. With lyrics like “Once upon a time, I thought you’d be the one that I keep/Now I realise that you are just no good for me” it’s not exactly Leonard Cohen-like in its bleakness, but they can do harsh reality when the situation demands it.
Are they worried about what might happen to the music if things took a bad turn romantically?
“Well, we’re realists,” Michelle answers, without as much as a smirk. “But we’re never going to be vicious to each other, it’s never going to turn nasty, we’d find a solution...” Pete chimes in, finishing Michelle’s sentence as he so frequently and beautifully does: “..because I think the band will continue whatever happens. These songs have life.”
And just like that, they’ve gone all perfect on me again.
Well, we decided to take them out of their comfort zone for the Hot Press photo shoot, and to finds clothes that would elaborate on the tasty flashes of jazz and blues apparent on the album. Taking inspiration from the hoofers and molls of the vaudeville stage, we gussied them up in top hat and tails and the duo took to it like the proverbial ducks. For a look like this, we wanted to mix the theatrical with the understated. Tuxedos and ostrich feathers worked for the Ziegfeld Follies but to evoke 2009 rather than 1909, we added drama with ruffles, bow-ties, high-necked shirts and sharp tailoring.
All aboard the carosel, then. It should be a hell of a colourful ride! And with the gorgeous Michele, it'll be damned sexy too...

Carosel’s debut album Kaleidoscope is out on February 27 on Reekus Records