Apologies to the driver of the grey Audi who nearly crashed into the ticket barrier when she realised who they were, but with their new album called Parked Car Conversations, Drury Street Car Park seemed like the ideal place to take Picture This for their latest Hot Press cover shoot.

Back home for a few days after a period of extended exile in London, Ryan Hennessy, Jimmy Rainsford, Owen Cardiff and Cliff Deane are in fine fettle after making an all killer, zero filler record that will further enhance their reputation at home and hopefully woo the UK and US masses. Maybe it’s my sewer of a mind and own past nefarious behaviour, but for me the phrase ‘Parked Car Conversations’ conjures up images of illicit trysts and frenzied backseat sex.

Was that what Ryan had in mind when he wrote the song that ended up giving the album its title?

“Possibly,” he grins. “I describe it as being about makeups and breakups – and everything that entails. We’re from a rural town where there’s not much transport and everybody drives, so all sorts would have been got up to in ours cars, including stuff that fogged the windows!”

The Parked Car Conversations track that’s likely to be talked about most by fans – and journalists – is ‘Song To Myself’, which includes such cut to the bone couplets as: “I wish that people would like me more/ I wish I wasn’t so insecure/ I wish I could have thoughts that were my own/ And I wish I didn’t compare myself like this/ And I know it’s bad for mental health/ I wish I wasn’t so scared of being alone.”

Originally a series of “Dear diary” voice memos that Ryan recorded for personal rather than public consumption, they became a song when by mistake he played them to Jimmy who was like, “Fuck, what’s that?!” “It was just the context of what Ryan was talking about and saying,” Mr. Rainsford recalls.

“I’d never heard a song literally to yourself, reflecting on your own personality. A major reason I’m in a band with Ryan is that I find him intriguing, as I think other people, our fans especially, do. I wouldn’t go as far as saying I bullied him into it but there was strong encouragement.”

How much of what’s in ‘Song To Myself’ did Jimmy already know?

“Most of it, but I’d never heard him express it as raw-ly as that. The more raw and personal you are, the more people are going to relate to it and this is Ryan completely with his guard down.”

Asked when he started keeping his audio journal, Ryan says: “Around three or four years ago. It’s the most uncomfortable I’ve ever felt releasing a song. I’ve written relationship songs that are super-vulnerable and real, but they’re not wholly about me. This is and there’s no being able to take it back, it’s out there now.”

We regularly hear how being on the album/promo/tour treadmill impacts negatively on artists’ mental health, but for Ryan being in Picture This has been a godsend.

“It’s helped me in a big way,” he nods. “I think the boys would agree that I’m a totally different person now compared to when the band started. I’m way stronger, way more resilient, way more confident. I’m still not the most outgoing of people, but I’m more outgoing than I was. It’s given me a lot of strength to take on the pressure and use it as a tailwind instead of a headwind.”

What I love about Ryan’s writing is that halfway through a nice bouncy pop song he’ll suddenly throw a lyric in like: “Don’t ask me to remember a time where you and I were not together/ ‘Cause I would rather sever arteries than lose them as our tether”, as he does on Parked Car Conversation’s ‘Lion’s Den’. I imagine this causes frequent “What the fuck?!” moments among the rest of the band.

“Yes!” Jimmy shoots back. “I like that, though. It’s important to never try and curb Ryan’s lyrics and, indeed, to encourage that sort of authenticity and openness in his writing.”

Twenty twenty-two was a landmark year for Picture This career-wise with the chaps signing to LME Worldwide, the same LA and London-based management company that looks after the A-List likes of Anastacia, Beverley Knight, Dido and Gabrielle.

“That’s been life-changing, actually,” Ryan says. “It’s why outside of Ireland things are really starting to take off. That’s important because the success we’ve had here is something we want to replicate in as many other territories as we can. That sort of international management is an important step in that direction.”

I’m going to ask Mr. Hennessy a few personal questions, starting with, “When did you first fall in love?” “I thought I was in love a few times when I was younger, but looking back I wasn’t,” he says. “They were more deep, deep connections. I’d say my first time properly falling in love was about three years ago.

“I fall in love very hard, easily and fast – and fall out of it the same way. I’ve always been obsessed with love. Love is my favourite thing in the world, as you can tell from our music.”

Is he currently in love?

“Yep, I am.” Which is the correct answer!

Talking a while back to Robert Del Naja from Massive Attack, he shared with me the horror of being mid-shag and one of his own songs suddenly popping up on Spotify shuffle. “I knew that at a crucial moment I was going to stop and go, ‘That fucking snare! And the arrangement, it’s brutal,’” the man who might also be Banksy confided.

Has anything similar happened to Ryan?”

“Our song ‘Jane’ is about an ex-girlfriend of mine – her name’s not Jane, I changed it – who texted me one day to tell me she’d been shagging all morning with this guy who just wanted to listen to Picture This all the time, which she’d found very off-putting,” he laughs.

“Little did that guy know!”

Parked Car Conversations was recorded on Giske, a remote Norwegian island, which is surrounded by fjords and mountains on one side and the frothing North Atlantic ocean on the other. It’s seven hundred or so inhabitants include former musicians Ante and Lars Giskeødegård who in 2005 had the Field Of Dreams-style idea of opening a recording studio there. After some lean years, their Ocean Sound setup has started welcoming such major names as Arcade Fire, Sigrid, A-ha, Swedish House Mafia and Ane Brun.

Picture This. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

“It’s got a real edge of the world feel,” Jimmy says. “We wanted to be able to go somewhere, be together and live and breathe the album for a couple of weeks. The last two albums have been done on the fly in dressing-rooms and tour buses, so we wanted to be able to immerse ourselves in the recording like we did on the first record. The idea of this remote island in Norway with just a recording studio on it sounded heavenly, and it was.”

So, if you wanted to record at six o’clock in the morning in your y-fronts, you could.

“Yeah, everything’s live and ready to record all the time,” Ryan takes over. “We all slept in the same bedroom and eat together – it was very communal.”

Where was the nearest civilisation? “There was a little village about twenty minutes away,” Cliff says.

“It was May so the sun didn’t set till midnight, which helped with recording because you didn’t feel like, ‘It’s got dark, time to knock off for the day.’ There was a cool bioluminescence in the lake where we fished and cooked whatever we caught for dinner. There were loads of seals and seabirds divebombing us, it was wild!”

Picture This are all currently resident in London where they’ve been known to have a beer or three with the likes of Nell Mescal and Maverick Sabre.

Has Ryan experienced the sort of casual racism and microaggressions living there that Grian Chattan has spoken to us about?

“I’m a fucking recluse so I don’t have too many interactions with people,” he says. “I wouldn’t call it racism but I remember going into a Tesco Express one day, asking, ‘Those pallets you’ve got down the lane, can I have ‘em for the bed I’m making?’ and yer’ man looking at me like I was a complete gurrier. Every time I’ve gone in since I get that sense of, ‘Oh, here’s that fucking Paddy back looking for pallets!’”

Talking last year to Brendan O’Connor on his RTÉ Radio 1 show, Ryan revealed how Shane Meadows’ classic 2006 film, This Is England, blew his teenage mind.

“Yeah, that was a life-changing movie for me,” he reflects. “It got me into a subculture that has influenced me so much, especially when it comes to style – I’m a closeted mod and a bit of a skinhead as well. Because of This Is England, I got into Fred Perry and Ben Sherman, The Smiths, Oasis… I love the tribalism, which is just like football – blind loyalty to something no matter what.”

Did he manage to blag a ticket for Liam Gallagher and John Squire in the 3Olympia?

“No, I’m raging ‘cause I missed it,” Ryan rues. “I absolutely love the album and saw Liam in a fishmongers in London the morning it was released. I don’t know what he was getting, lobster probably! Anyway, I was there with my manager, shaking like a leaf and trying to pluck up courage to approach him – which sadly I didn’t.”

Promo duties elsewhere may have prevented him catching Liam ‘n’ John, but Ryan will be telling whoever puts his diary together to “Feck right off!” if they try and schedule anything for Tuesday, June 25 when Johnny “Fucking” Marr plays the Dreamland in Athy.

“We’re going to have to go,” he insists. “It’s this really old ballroom where back in the day Johnny Cash played.

“The whole ‘Made In Athy’ thing is so cool. My dream is for Mani to come over as well and for me to join them on stage and do a song together.” The ball’s in your court, Johnny.

Returning to matters sartorial, how did Ryan’s friends – and enemies! – in Athy react when he started dressing flamboyantly in his mid-teens?

“Not well,” he grimaces. “I got in a load of fucking rows over the years with people who just couldn’t handle it. I never cared, though, because for me the expression outweighed the backlash. When I was with the group of mates I played football with, they’d be walking down the streets in tracksuits and I’d be in leather trousers, a leopard-skin print top and my hair cut all weirdly. My mates found it quite funny and entertaining but some of the other lads in Athy gave me serious stick for it. But, like I say, I didn’t give a fuck.”

No longer content to just be a consumer, Ryan has designed a ring for Irish jewellers Réalta and the chessboard jersey currently sported by his childhood football team, Clonmullion FC.

What position did Ryan play in when he was with them?

“In my teenage years I was central midfield but then towards the end of my illustrious career I was right-back,” he recalls. “The shirt is a collaboration with a good friend of ours Paul Galvin the designer. Picture This are the shirt sponsors as well for Clonmullion who are run now by my dad.

“You’re an Everton fan, right?” Guilty as charged.

“We were at the Old Trafford game a few weeks ago when United beat you 2-0!” With both bleedin’ goals penalties. Grrrr!

Do they know any of the current Ireland team?

“Funnily enough, we’re playing for them tonight in their hotel,” says a delighted looking Jimmy. “We know John O’Shea really well, hence us being sorted out with tickets for the Everton game. We first met him at Electric Picnic in 2018. John came and said ‘hello’ just before we went on and we’ve had a couple of really good nights out with him. I also know Callum Robinson quite well.

“I’d love John to get the Ireland job permanently, but I think he’ll have to go and manage elsewhere before that happens. Lee Carsley’s another great shout but will probably be sticking with England.”

I was excited when I met David Bowie, but a gibbering wreck when I interviewed Seamus Coleman.

“We were exactly the same when we met John and the rest of the class of ‘92 – Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville, Nicky Butt, Paul Scholes – all at the same time,”

Ryan concurs. “I felt weak and like I was six again when they walked in. You probably know this yourself, but rock stars want to be footballers and footballers want to be rock stars.”

It’s a conversation I’ve had with everyone from Noel Gallagher and Pete Doherty to Alex James and Slash who’d trade all of their magical rock ‘n’ roll moments to tog out respectively for Man City, QPR, Bournemouth and Stoke City.

Are there any Picture This wives and/or babies?

“Owen and myself are married but no babies… yet!” Jimmy grins.

ABBA were (in)famously given windows in which to get pregnant, give birth and be ready for the next round of boosting Sweden’s foreign exports. H

ow do kids fit into the Picture This masterplan?

“We’re at that stage now where they just have to,” Ryan notes. “As much as you might want to, you can’t be four single lads on holiday forever. Responsibilities come along and you do whatever you need to do to meet them. It’s actually very exciting that the next phase of the band will be having Picture This babies around and them coming on tour with us.”

“If there’s enough of them, we’ll be able to do our own S Club Juniors,” Jimmy adds with a grin.

With so much awful stuff going on in the world, has Ryan been tempted to put the smoochy stuff on ‘hold’ and sock it to Messrs Putin, Trump and Netanyahu?

“No, I’ve never tried it,” he says. “It’d be remiss of me to do that because it wouldn’t be authentic. Obviously I care about those things, but you need to leave it to people like Lankum and Kneecap who can articulate it properly. I really admire what they do and how they carry themselves, but they shouldn’t be writing love songs about growing up in Athy, same way I shouldn’t be writing songs about Ukraine or Gaza.”

Talking as we were earlier of California, have Picture This experienced anything there recently which matches the decadence documented in their 2021 hit, ‘LA House Party’?

“Yeah, there’s been more than just one LA house party!” Jimmy admits. “Our most Hollywood moment was possibly going to Chord Overstreet’s birthday party – among other things he was in Glee – right under the Hollywood sign. The four of us started a drinking game around the table called Slaps and by the end of the night everybody had joined in.”

Slaps being what precisely?

“You pass a number round that gets longer and longer and if somebody gets it wrong, they have to knock back a drink. I remember having to pull Owen away from Jack McBrayer from 30 Rocks whose ear he was bending.”

As the chaps gaze back on the first nine years of Picture This, what are the standout moments?

“Releasing our first album was an amazing feeling,” Ryan reminisces fondly.

“You only have one first album so it can never be replicated. The fact that it was then so successful made us think, ‘God, we’ve really hit on something.’”

Over to Mr. Rainsford. “A moment that was as scary as it was exciting was being offered Live At The Marquee for the first time. We knew we had fans in Kildare and Dublin, but could we sell 5,000 tickets in Cork? When we did it felt like breaking through into another world.”

Owen’s turn. “The five nights in the 3Arena were just insane – that’s the only word for it. A more recent one is starting work on the fourth album. With the brilliant studio, producers and songs we had, it felt like stepping up to the next level.”

The last word goes to Cliff. “I was going to say the fourth album as well. Being on that island with such a wonderful crew of people and not having imposter syndrome was a brilliant feeling. Another one is walking into our first arena show at the SSE in Belfast, seeing the size of the production and realising it was for us!”

• Parked Car Conversations is out now. Picture This play St. Anne’s Park, Dublin (June 1); Ormeau Park, Belfast (8); and Virgin Media Park, Cork (15)

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