COUNTDOWN TO ELECTRIC PICNIC: Corner Boy talk their much-awaited return with new EP

It’s been three years since Wexford outfit Corner Boy released their last EP, True North, packed with thundering folk anthems. So where have they been since then? “We’ve gone out into the wilderness, really,” explains frontman Mick, “We needed to find out what we’re really about, what exact music we want to write, and what music we want associated with us as musicians.” 
Leaning over a picnic table as we chat on the patio at Bray’s Harbour Bar, he’s got a lot to say about the band’s upcoming EP, and you can tell he’s glad to be back. What he calls the band’s journey “into the wilderness” (an apt metaphor considering the compass rose on the cover of their last EP) will soon come to an end as they plan to release new material at the end of the year, though Mick promises it’s going to break the mould for what audiences have come to expect from Corner Boy. “I think for us, a lot of people are going to be, I wouldn’t say shocked,” he muses, “but, our sound has really changed drastically from our last record, and we’re really excited about it, because we finally feel that we’re writing music that represents us fully as a band.”
Corner Boy first came on the scene not long after the rebirth of folk music in the 2010s led by Mumford and Sons and the Lumineers. While the more commercialised new brands of folk-pop have become a topic of contention among folk musicians and critics, Mick takes a more optimistic approach. “I think it’s almost like a gateway drug,” he laughs. “It’s like, okay, you listen to Mumford and Sons now, you might feel like you need to go listen to Laura Marling. A person might start getting into acoustic music a bit more, and then get into something more cerebral, like Punch Brothers. It pulls in younger people and shows them, this is what folk music sounds like.”
For Corner Boy, folk music is rooted in the traditional Irish ballads, with harmonies and stomping choruses that lie somewhere in an unknown territory between Irish trad and modern Americana, though this new EP branches out from those roots a bit. “We grew up playing in pubs, singing ballads, playing acoustic sessions, and now we’ve discovered synths and electric instruments. I know that’s a fairly common transition for bands, you start to progress, and you’re playing bigger stages, you start doing international tours, and you want to match the bigness of the sound with where you’re playing.”
With a set coming up at Electric Picnic’s Salty Dog, they’re set for bigger stages than the one at the Harbour Bar. Still, the real highlight of playing at the Picnic comes with sharing the stage, and there’s a long list of acts of Mick's must-sees for the weekend. “I’ll definitely go and see Otherkin, they’re absolute animals. Their shows are great, and they’re writing some real stompers. It’s really great to see guitar music and guitar acts coming back. All the Wexicans who are playing as well, Wolff, the Oselots, Frankenstein Bolts. Hudson Taylor, they’ve got a great ear for folk pop. I’d love to go see the xx, and I want to go see Father John Misty, but not in a musical sense, more of a comedy sense. You can write that.”
But for the best festival moments, according to Mick anyway, you might have to break the rules. “The last time we played, we were on a spoken word stage in Mindfield, right by the main stage at Electric Picnic. So I got a bit brazen and anyway, I went through the area by the 2FM road caster. I was just trying not to be seen by anyone, I kept going up and kept going up to the main stage, and we had these solid-gold artist passes, we could go anywhere we wanted. Bjork was up there with her fifteen or so musicians. I could see security guards left and right, but I just walked straight up. I walked and I walked and I walked and I was up the ramp like, any moment now somebody’s gonna call me or grab me back. But I made it all the way up, and it was the middle of a Bjork song where she had everyone in the crowd, thousands of people, they all had their phones lit up. So there was all this nervous tension, nervous tension that I was gonna get caught, and then I made it up to the stage and I just saw this sea of lights, and Bjork standing there with this light shining down on her. It was a really surreal moment to be up there, it was just like, fuck. This is really special. So generally, walking into places where you shouldn’t. And nobody said anything to me, I stood there for three songs, it was great. I think it’s cause Bjork has like twenty musicians onstage, they probably just thought I was with her, so I got away with it.”