The Fynches: "That’s what we’re interested in – a live feel. That’s what gets us going"

West Cork has always served as a meeting point for creatives, non-conformists and international perspectives – so it should come as no major surprise that this jagged stretch of coast, out on the edge of Europe, would be home to a band like The Fynches.

With a rich folk-rock sound shaped by ‘60s/’70s greats from both sides of the Atlantic (including The Band, who they recently celebrated with special tribute sets at Electric Picnic and DeBarra’s) the group have carved out their own unique presence in Irish music – driven by a fierce DIY ethos, as well as a tangible sense of joy, and a welcome touch of eccentricity, in their songcraft.

At the core of The Fynches is the creative connection between Co. Wicklow-raised brothers Ferdia and Oisín Walsh-Peelo – the former having initially made his mark as the star of John Carney’s hit 2016 film Sing Street, before landing similarly musical roles in the Academy Award-winning CODA, and, most recently, the star-studded Four Letters of Love.

Oisín, meanwhile, has been immersed in the homegrown music scene for years, both as a solo artist, and as a musician touring and recording with the likes of Villagers, Hudson Taylor and Bombay Bicycle Club.

The Fynches. Credit: Adrian O'Connell

At the time of our conversation, the pair are busy as ever – in the run-up to their self-titled debut album as The Fynches, and in the middle of the workshop phase of the new Irish musical The House Must Win, based on Mick Flannery’s Evening Train. Oisín is the production’s associate music director, while Ferdia plays Luther, one of the brothers at the centre of the story.

Ferdia notes that, for him, acting and music “always seem to come hand-in-hand”.

“When I’m working on a film, it always just turns out in some way that I end up singing, or playing guitar,” he laughs. “It just happens!

“When I started playing in the band, I noticed that I approached performing in a slightly different way than other people fronting bands would,” he adds. “I’d assume a role or something, in a different way. What I bring to it probably falls more in line with what I do as an actor – in terms of telling a story, and delivering it.”

Nearly a decade on from its release, Sing Street, its cast and its songs continue to enjoy a cult international following, with a staged musical adaptation having also been produced in recent years.

“Some of the Sing Street fans are pretty hardcore, and will travel over from Japan and stuff,” says Oisín.

“But that being said, the people who are really big fans of The Fynches, who are coming back to our shows, aren’t really ‘Ferdia acting fans’,” Ferida points out. “I actually thought there’d be more! But it’s quite cool – it’s a very new audience that’s discovered The Fynches.”

The band’s debut album, they tell me, “has been a long time coming”, featuring songs the brothers penned together over the course of around 10 years. But it was also shaped by more recent developments, including expanding The Fynches into a six-piece outfit – rounded out by Camryn Teehan, Fionn O’Neill, Julia-Maria and Dylan O’hEochaidh.

“That had a huge impact on what the album became,” Oisín claims. “Just because, all of a sudden, we could have a much larger sound – and that actually really suited the music we’d been writing for a long time. We even came back to older songs that we’d kind of written off, because they were too hard to realise when it was a smaller outfit.”

Experimenting in their own home studio was similarly crucial when it came to crafting their sound, with the band working out of Oisín’s base in West Cork. But as Ferdia notes, that DIY approach grew largely out of necessity.

“We just wanted to be able to make it happen, to be honest,” he elaborates. “It’s hard to get the right deal these days. We would love for someone to give us loads of money, and put us in a great state-of-the-art studio to make an amazing album with Ethan Johns… But one step at a time!”

“We’ve also been a bit unwavering, in the way we want to do things,” Oisín adds. “We could’ve just done everything cheaper, and with a lot less work, if we didn’t want to, say, record the band live so often – and that meant us building our home studio, so we could facilitate that. So we’re doing everything very DIY – but we’re not choosing the path of least resistance here!”

Having grown up in a house soundtracked by “classic American songwriters”, the brothers were always drawn to “the analogue, live band aesthetic, in a big way,” Oisín says.

“We’ve never done anything to click,” he continues. “It’s always the band playing in the room. And that’s what we’re interested in – a live feel. That’s what gets us going.”

With those international influences in the mix, Ferdia acknowledges that, “if we were applying a cultural identity to our music, it probably wouldn’t be Irish.”

“Which is weird, because we went to Irish language schools, and I was in an Irish language band called Mo Hat Mo Gheansaí with my older brother,” says Oisín. “So we were steeped in more direct Irish culture for a long time. But The Fynches’ music is pretty free.”

“It’s interesting – we’re working with Mick Flannery at the moment, and you could say the same thing about him,” Ferdia remarks. “There’s something about his music that’s really Irish, but it’s also not at all.”

As Ferdia points out, “There’s a lot of pressure when you’re releasing music, to be authentic about who you are, and where you come from, and your culture.”

“But we feel that this music is the most authentically us,” he says. “Because when we were making it, writing together, we were never thinking about an audience, in any way. We were making it purely for fun and joy, and creative expression.”

For both brothers, getting their hands on The Fynches on vinyl for the first time felt like the culmination of all those years of musical exploration and hard graft.

“Hearing the test pressings was a big one,” Ferdia reflects. “It was a big undertaking, and it just feels incredibly rewarding when you’ve got the vinyl in your hands. It was like, ‘God, we did this all...’”

The Fynches is out now. See full details of The Fynches’ November tour – coming to Limerick, West Cork, Cork City, Galway, Dublin, Belfast, Listowel and Derry – at thefynches.com/tour