On Our Radar Q&A : CABL - "Shoegaze itself is a really Irish genre and we're well proud to be Irish"

How did you guys meet?

Ben: We all met in BIMM in 2018. We were studying different things but had some classes together and met that way.

Luke: Ava was performing for an assessment, and we decided to have a whack at one of her originals. It went off from there, it was a college project that got us started.

Ben: I suppose BIMM has its pros and cons, like everywhere. It’s a great way to meet likeminded people. If we hadn’t gone to BIMM, we wouldn’t be a band!

Where does the folk influence come from on your new EP, See You In A Year And A Half?

 Eoghan: We have broad influences, and we try to show as many off as we can. I love Junior Brother and we all share a love for Big Thief. We wanted to blend all of that together with the noisy ambient stuff - we felt it was the next place to go.

Luke: Hearing Irish music now, people are doing crazy shit by mixing in a bit of trad. Bands like Lifts are mixing punk and noise with trad - it makes it Irish and makes it new, which is really cool. Shoegaze itself is a really Irish genre and we’re well proud to be Irish.

Your lyrics deal with heavy subject matter - how does that come about?

Ava: The songs were all written at different times. What I love about writing music is that I can come back to a song a year later and still find something I relate to. There’s a story in all of them. One of my favourites, Shoelaces, is all storytelling. I suppose that’s quite an Irish thing too.

Luke: Ava’s lyrics are about loss and relationships, which are reflected in the music itself. The way we use pedals and write our songs brings the sound from something sweet to something disgusting, it’s all very tension based.

Listen to CABL's latest single B.1. below.