The Whileaways: “When you’re one of those voices, you’re locked into this thing together that’s just your human instrument”

“He was pretty much an anonymous guy on the internet that got in touch,” says Nicola Joyce of The Whileaways.

There are a dozen ways the story could go from there, most of them bad. This is the exception. The guy in question is Brian Brinkerhoff, a California-based music publisher who once worked for Disney.

“So, obviously we thought this was a complete spoof!” continues Joyce. “He’s actually a really genuine, well-respected guy who has remained under the radar.”

After asking the band to lay down backing vocals for Nashville songwriter Heather Little, Brinkerhoff offered to executive produce their folk-flecked fifth LP, When You Are Falling.

He gave them the time and resources to record at Black Mountain Studio in Dundalk without watching the clock.

“We felt really spoiled,” says bandmate Noriana Kennedy. For Joyce, “It was way beyond what we’d probably normally allow ourselves because you’re just so used to being frugal.”

It’s fitting, then, that When You Are Falling is about carrying people through hard times. Kennedy’s title track began as a lullaby for her children and grew into a song about having someone there “when you’re vulnerable, when you are falling I think a lot of the songs kind of lean into that idea of support and comfort and people around you.”

Her ‘Hold You With Me’ was written after a young girl was knocked off her bike and killed by a truck near their homes. Kennedy had been detoured off the same road that day.

“There was a young girl killed on the road not far from where we were, and I remember writing the song at that time,” she says. “I just couldn’t help but feel for the family. It was easy to write it then, and to kind of mean it for other people in my life as well.”

The band first sang it live at a Songs for Palestine night in Galway. Noelie McDonnell, who wrote ‘New War’ as Russia invaded Ukraine, puts it simply.

“The music is there to kind of support you and help you and everything,” he says. “Certain songs and bands have been important to me at certain times, and helped me get through whatever it is I was going through. Maybe there’s something in here that’ll help people through something, you know?”

The three met through Galway’s session scene. In 2012 Joyce and McDonnell, now married, went to Australia as the band for Kennedy’s solo tour, and their debut followed a year later. Between albums, they also perform Leonard Cohen’s songs with singer Pauline Scanlon in the touring show Bird On The Wire.

They write separately, but never without each other in mind.

“When you’re one of those voices, you’re locked into this thing together that’s just your human instrument,” says McDonnell of their harmonies. “Totally, that vocal element, and we also love each other’s songs. Like whenever [Noriana] comes with a song, I’m like, ‘That’s fucking cracker, yeah, we’re keeping it.’”

“I’ll write a song just to please Nic!” laughs Kennedy.

They have that effect on others too. Lara Luxardi, a Galway-based Italian artist, heard the album before anyone outside the band and sent back six images, each with a note on how she got there. The one they chose for the cover shows a girl alone on a rock at sea, with as much of it below the waterline as above.

“She said she could feel a melancholy off it, but she could also feel a brightness off us having met us,” says Kennedy.

“To hear her say it,” adds Joyce, “kind of made us cry a little bit.”

• When You Are Falling is out now. The Whileaways play the Sugar Club, Dublin on October 26.