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Sligo alt-rockers The Dead Flags are attracting attention in a very big way. But what’s with the distinctive moniker? Frontman Billy Fitzgerald explains that their name comes courtesy of super-gloomy Godspeed You! Black Emperor tune ‘The Dead Flag Blues’.

“I’m not a massive fan of them but somebody put it on a compilation for me once and I thought it was the most amazing song. Coming up with a name was really difficult and it was one that stuck with me. We couldn’t think of a better one and that was kind of the rule – if we couldn’t think of a better one then we’d stick with it.”
On their adventures, they also got to share a bill with their heroes, Belfast industrial popsters Therapy?
“The bass player in the band is the biggest Therapy? fan in the world. He was going around like, “Where are they? I can’t wait to meet them!” We were just chatting behind the stage and Andy Cairns in this big northern accent just goes “The Dead Flags – how are ye?” He recognised us! He said our name on stage later and got everybody to applaud. It was wonderful meeting them. Therapy? were just all gents.”
Fitzgerald borrows from the Lily Allen school of musical composition: that is he likes to tackle serious and depressing subject matter in a thoroughly upbeat way.
Give a few minutes of your time to The Dead Flags and you’ll notice that Fitzgerald is also quite content to dip his toe in filthy lyrical waters. Am I right to assume that he gets the odd dirty look for spouting lines like ‘That high class pussy will just leave you cold’ on stage?
“Occasionally you do...I nearly got thrown out of UCD one year I was playing there on my own! Apparently there was somebody trying to plug me out because I have this song that a lot of people think is quite sexist.”
Last year, they signalled their arrival on the scene with a storming turn at the Hard Working Class Heroes festival.
“Villagers headlined our stage,” he explains, “and every other band was quite shoe-gazey. They were all great but it was very much a case of standing there and tapping your foot. Then we came on like ‘Let’s fucking be weird and go for it‘. We put an awful lot of energy into what we do. That’s how we all naturally play, we just go around smiling and laughing all the time when we’re on stage. But we were happy that we had to win over the crowd rather than being the same as the band that were on before.
‘We played in Limerick recently to a room of 15 people. We’re nobody down there but we won over those 15 people and now we’re getting a good bit of airplay in Limerick.”