On Our Radar: Fizzy Orange on their origins, inspirations and more

How did Fizzy Orange come to be?

We actually started as ‘Pleasure Dome’ in 2016. Our drummer Rioghan and bassist Cian were already in a band, who shall not be named! Kevin and Jack went down to see Cian and Rioghan play a gig in some park in Clontarf. After a brief conversation and a few tins, we organised a jam in Rioghan’s house, asked the lads to leave the band they were in (quite dramatic) and the rest is history. Our good buddy Eoin joined us about a year later, playing percussion, saxophone and synth leads. We jammed away for a few years before releasing our first single, ‘Tell Me What You Want’, in 2020. We changed names as there were about fifty Frankie Goes To Hollywood cover bands with the same name. Hopefully Fanta or Club Orange will sponsor us some day!

Who are the main sonic inspirations behind your music?

We’re all into different types of music but we take big inspiration from bands/artists like Ween, Connan Mockasin, Hall & Oates, Roy Ayers, The Isley Brothers, Erykah Badu, Lou Reed, The Durutti Column, MBV, Jaco Pastorius, Sun Ra, Junior Byles, Paul Brady, The Beatles (of course) and The Beach Boys. At the moment we’re loving Paul McCartney’s solo albums. Thin Lizzy and The Boomtown Rats are our go-to for lyrics. Our most recent tracks have been influenced massively by Northern Soul too. A lot of bands tend to pick a sound and flog it to death, but we like to make what sounds good to us. That’s probably our greatest strength - we’re not really tied to a genre.

What are the main themes within your material?

We’ve been pushing ourselves to be a bit more creative with our lyrics. We just got back from a two-week recording session in Leitrim, writing songs about male sex workers, cowboys, religion, the Christian Brothers schools, the Irish music scene, relationships, and the frustrations of living in Dublin. We don’t have a consistent message behind our tunes, we usually make the music before the lyrics. ‘Who’s Yizer Man?’ is a tribute to every prick you’ve ever encountered in town, but ‘Randy’s Song’ is a bit more introspective and sincere. We always like to try something new, whether that’s a reggae-inspired track, bossa nova instrumental or good old rock ‘n’ roll. We try not to take ourselves too seriously, either.

What do you hope to achieve this year?

We’ve already put two singles out and will be releasing ‘Ripples’ in June. We have an EP planned for the end of the summer, and we’re hoping to release the 10 songs recorded in Leitrim as part of our debut album before the end of 2021. As far as gigs go, it has been difficult to plan. We’re booked to play Whelan’s with our good buds Loraine Club in November with MCD. A couple of booking agents have also been in touch with us so we’re hoping for a good influx of gigs by the end of the year.

Listen below.