The Receipts are back! We talk to the revived rock band ahead of Summerland Festival this month

For 30 years, The Receipts toyed around with the idea of a debut album. Now, 25 years after calling it a day on music, they’ve reunited and finally gotten round to releasing it. As they go from high sales figures to rave reviews to packed out shows, Hot Press talks to a band - as part of our cover story - who are reenergised, reeling from the positive response to their work, and more than ready to get onto the gigging circuit.

Much-touted, much-lauded, much-loved – The Receipts were one of Ireland’s most promising bands throughout the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Their combination of no nonsense power pop hooks and affecting lyrics meant that, at one stage, they stood a chance at becoming Ireland’s answer to Britpop.

A few weeks ago, sitting in the snug confines of the Blue Light Bar in the Dublin Mountains – a haven and a sort of second home for the band – Hot Press sat down with The Receipts to talk through their early days and what exactly happened to them.

“We were school friends from Ballinteer,” Karl McDermott, lead singer of the band, told us. “We were just local lads getting together. We weren’t very good at the start but we played a few local gigs.

“My next door neighbour had told me about this bloke up the road from me. Said: ‘He’s a drummer. Why don’t you head up to him and bring your guitar?’ So myself and James Brady – the drummer – we sort of hit it off. Then Ronan came on board.

“We knew of another local lad from Broadford, Paul ‘Max’ McDonald, who played in a band in Ballinteer house,” Ronan reminisces. “We nabbed him from them and he joined us. It was just local lads from two or three local housing estates.”

The Receipts at The Blue Light. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

The Receipts immediately set off on the gigging beat. They found themselves swimming against the current though, considering that every up-and-coming band at that period was doing covers to get by. For The Receipts though, they reasoned that they could throw together a few good tunes on their own accord. So why play someone else’s music?

“It was all our original songs, right from the get-go,” Karl nods. “We didn’t do any covers. When I met James he was writing good songs, so I said, ‘Ah, I’ll have to do better than that!’ I thought, ‘Well if I’m gonna sing, I might as well sing my own.’ So we’d write songs, the two of us. This album that we have out now is a collection of songs that we’d written from that time.”

Despite being a promising band (they gave a memorable performance on ">RTE’s Jo Maxi show all the way back in 1992) and despite having written mountains of meaningful songs, the music industry of the early ‘90s was an unforgiving place for musicians who could barely afford to breath. For The Receipts, teenage dreams gave way to reality before they could even think of properly releasing anything.

Now though, The Receipts are back. Having gigged together throughout the last few years, the band finally released their self-titled debut LP earlier in 2019. Very much keeping the rock 'n' roll flame alive, the album received rave reviews and debuted at No. 1 on the iTunes chart on the day of its release.

Now, The Receipts are set to perform at Summerland Festival in Wicklow town on August 4. It's shaping up to be one of the top gigs of the summer.

“We’ve been tightening up our own act,” says drummer James Brady, in the new Hot Press. “So when Summerland Festival came up – it triggered something in us. One of the challenges – between us having other careers and commitments – is getting to play together, so when the Festival idea was raised with us, we jumped at it."

The Receipts will play at Summerland Festival in Wicklow Town on August 4. For more details about the band go to thereceipts.ie