Lemoncello: "That’s one of the things I get from music – being more in tune with life"

As we meet on a Monday evening less than two weeks before their debut album release, Lemoncello’s Claire Kinsella and Laura Quirke are happy to wax lyrical about Adrianne Lenker’s incredible performance the night before in Vicar Street.

“It was magic,” Laura says. “It was just about the songs and everyone was listening to every word. To be able to just sit there and sing the songs and that be all anyone wants in the room...” Is amazing, I agree.

“I’ve never seen a gig like it,” Claire adds. “There were so many unique elements to it.”

Bringing it back to the hugely talented duo sitting in front of me, I ask how they’re feeling in the run up to their debut album release, Lemoncello.

“Stressed,” Laura smiles.

Having recently signed to Claddagh Records, Claire admits it’s hard letting go of the reins.

“We’re so used to doing all the jobs, it can be hard to delegate work, because we care about how it all comes together. It has to match how much care you put into the music.”

Laura nods in agreement. “I directed most of the videos, so I’d be really particular about how everything comes out. It’s really hard not to micromanage everything.”

Having formed the group in university almost ten years ago, Claire and Laura are visibly buzzing with excitement to be finally releasing their debut album.

“We absolutely love it,” Laura enthuses. “It feels like we’ve finally gotten our own sound together.”

“It took longer than we both wanted,” Claire asserts. “but I think it really needed that maturity and perspective to understand what it was we wanted to represent. That’s why we put it out as self-titled.”

The time taken to grow and delve deeper has paid off ten-fold. Lemoncello have delivered a stunning debut album full of exquisite harmonies, captivating lyrics and astute observations, perfectly capturing their evolution as a group. Better still, at the heart of it all lies a beautiful friendship between two great artists.

While they met studying music, academia had very little to do with forming Lemoncello.

“I’d nearly be hesitant to say that we met in college,” Claire says. “It’s nothing to do with (puts on a formal English accent) ‘the university’. We could have met in Spar, you know?”

Throughout the interview Claire and Laura finish each other’s sentences in a way only old friends can.

“I invited Claire over for tea and then we started playing songs together. I’d never heard the cello played on its own before, so I dared to ask if she’d bring over the cello next time.”

She then asked Claire to perform with her in public.

“I asked her to do this open mic night with me and she was like, ‘I’ve never done anything like that before, I play in orchestras’...”

“...It’s not gonna work!” Claire adds laughing. “I had never met anyone like Laura. I think we were really taking a punt on each other.”

For Laura, it was the people they met in Maynooth that had the greatest influence on their formation.

“There were lots of musicians around: the Alfi heads, Alannah Thornburgh, the guys in Hatchlings… It was a really exciting time in Maynooth.”

Musicians Cathal Farrelly and Franny and Rob O’Donnell’s open mic night at The Loft was at the centre of the scene.

“It was very much a feeling of, everyone’s better than us, so we really need to try here,” Claire recalls. “It was an open mic but it was well curated. Franny’s dad is Gerry O’Donnell – he did sound for The Frames for years, he’s an amazing engineer.”

In need of a band name, they happened on ‘Lemoncello’ by chance when a group of Italian guys came into The Loft with bottles of limoncello in hand.

“Maybe we’ve kept it because we have an attachment to that time,” Laura considers. “I like the fact that we were given it, like being given your own name.”

Are there particular roles they’ve adopted in the group?

“We have different strengths,” Claire says. “I’d be more like the practical day to day side of organisation,” Claire says.

“I’m more dreaming and scheming,” Laura chimes in laughing.

“I’d be more immediate in seeing what we need to do now, whereas Laura’s like, ‘Let’s make some grand plans’, more the dreamer side of it, and both of those are really important. We’re very different people!”

“I don’t think it would have worked if we were the same,” Laura says. “But our values are very similar. When it comes down to making big decisions, we’re very much on the same page.”

Lemoncello. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

Their love for music was central to their bond. Claire grew up in Donegal in a family steeped in traditional music.

“Dad put us into classical music so that we’d really understand all the elements of music and be able to apply it.”

At first, Claire couldn’t see how she could apply those skills to a more contemporary style of music.

“Getting encouragement from Laura was how I managed to get up on stage,” Claire says. “I never would have done it by myself.”

Being self-taught, Laura was coming at music from a very different perspective.

“I was so amazed at Claire’s musicality and how proficient she was,” Laura recalls. “She could fill in the blanks for me. That balance is still there!”

Claire didn’t know much about writing songs.

“In the classical world, you’re really studying someone else’s stuff. People can make it their own in some sense, but you really are following a blueprint and there’s a real standard associated with that.”

Artists as varied as Simon and Garfunkel, The Strokes, The Mamas and the Papas, Leonard Cohen, Marvin Gaye and Red Hot Chili Peppers played a part in informing their musicality.

“My eldest sister Meabh introduced me to Fionn Regan and Regina Spektor. Those two artists really hooked me into a sense of yearning,” Claire recalls.

With no older siblings to mould her tastes, Laura listened to the radio incessantly at home in Borris, Co Carlow.

“I was just listening to pop songs the whole time,” Laura recalls. “I picked up words so quickly, I had all the hooks. I was a complete sponge for all that stuff.”

The combination of these different influences and styles has created a truly original sound. The album features some of the country’s finest musicians, including Lorcan Byrne (percussion/drums), Ronan Kealy, a.k.a. Junior Brother (piano), and Gareth Quinn Redmond (fiddle and synths).

“It was amazing to get those people,” Claire says. “They’re really good friends of ours.”

“That really mattered,” Laura adds. “You choose the person as well as the instrument, you know.”

Lemoncello decided to both record the album to 2-inch tape at Analogue Catalogue Studios with producer Julie McLarnon.

“Not having any screens and just listening to your gut on the recordings, that was all a really informative process,” Claire explains. “From that, we’ll go into the next project knowing so much more.”

Will they stick with analogue next time out?

“No,” they both say in unison, laughing at each other’s response.

“I’d love to do it sometime again for a very specific thing, but it was a real painstaking process,” Laura admits.

While its creation may have been a labour of love, the finished product is something they should be very proud of. I ask why they chose to include the striking ‘Mantlepiece’ – released on their first EP in 2018 – on the album.

“It was one of the first songs we ever played together. It felt like a foundational song,” Laura says.

“It’s one you understand more as the years go by,” Claire observes. “You’re like, ‘Fuck, that means something else to me now’, and that’s what a good song is.”

The standout track on the album ‘Old Friend’ covers the age-old shortcoming of taking those we love for granted. A deeply moving song about friendship, it’s a testament to the strength of Laura’s songwriting.

“Laura framed it in a universal way where people have come up to us and said, ‘Jesus that’s not spoken about but everyone has that’,” Claire adds.

The song was inspired by a kind taxi-man letting Laura off paying, when she forgot her wallet. In turn, she wrote a song for him.

Laura cites the lines: “My mother helped me up / And I barely even noticed ... But a stranger helps me up / And I send her flowers.”

“Your mother’s there toiling her whole life,” Laura says. “She’s kept awake at night worrying you might be in trouble and you don’t even call.. ”

Directed by Laura and produced by Claire, the accompanying video is equally tender. Laura’s journey into film-making began out of necessity during Covid when they had to make a video for their single ‘House Of Cards’. Having seen the video, Foggy Notions and RCC Letterkenny offered Laura a budget to make her short film, Devotion. Laura says the theme of motherhood in the film was very subconscious.

”I knew I wanted to make something about women,” Laura says. “I recorded about 16 hours of conversation and when I listened back, there was a recurring theme of time: how much time they were going to have if they had kids; or how they’re trying to spend time with their partner or family.”

Laura’s mother came into the room while she was recording dialogue with Carolyn Ingram and began to talk about a documentary she’d watched about Peig in the Blasket Islands, and how difficult it would have been to rear children there at the time.

“She said, ‘Women always come together’ and then she said, ‘People these days have dreams and ambitions about things that none of us would have ever dreamed of, but it also means that there’s so much pressure on them.”

When Laura heard her mother’s voice on the footage it struck her that the film was going to be about the connection between women of today and those who came before them.

“Women who have children and who don’t. Women who are dreaming about having children,” Laura says. “Everybody’s sacrificing something.”

As working musicians, have Lemoncello considered balancing their career with having a family?

“There’s a couple of women that we’ve met along our path who have done it but it’s in no way easy or straightforward,” Claire considers. “If that does come down the line, it’s definitely a concern and it’s like, ‘Fuck, do you just stop?’ Maybe women touring with babies will become more accommodated.

“Touring is different since Covid,” she adds. “Bands are more aware of their pace and their well-being. They’re more likely to tell someone to fuck off if they say, ‘You need to do these gigs.’”

While the rights of parents have progressed, systemic changes are desperately needed to ensure that having a family is financially viable for people in Ireland. Having written a piece for Hot Press ahead of the 2020 general election, I ask Claire what her hopes are for the next general election.

“Change is needed in Ireland. It’s so desperately stagnant,” she asserts. “I don’t want to sound completely hopeless, but it’s hard to see it. I wonder if the likes of Sinn Féin would bring about change? They’re a populist party as well, so they’re going to feed into whatever gets them the votes. They swing left to right like a pendulum a lot of the time, so I don’t really have a lot of faith in them.”

“You’re trying to choose someone that you’d actually trust and like to let into your house,” Laura adds. “Could you have a good conversation with them or would they be trying to get someone out of you?”

Coming full-circle, trust is a recurring theme on the album, as Laura explains about the song ‘Sunflower’.

“You have to give yourself the confidence to make and trust your own decisions,” she says. “Look at things around you and really feel the pain and the joy. That’s one of the things I get from music – being more in tune with life.”

The album ends with a haunting cover of the song ‘My Lagan Love’.

“The last line of Lagan, ‘Love is lord of all’ – I think that’s the message of the album in some ways,” Laura reflects. “The sacrifices you make for love, whether it’s what you love or the people you love. It’s so cliched, but that’s what it’s all about and that’s what this album has taught us.”

Lemoncello is out now on Claddagh Records. Lemoncello play Coughlan's in Cork (May 19), Wexford Arts Centre (May 23), and The Spirit Store in Dundalk (May 26). See their full list of upcoming live dates here.