Wooden art

Time To Bleed, a stunning five track EP that began life in a muddy field in Mungret, Co. Limerick via a few years of fear and loathing in the Middle East will be released on the illustrious Regal Recordings label this month, home to everyone’s favourite space poppers The Beta Band. While they have already been gigging around London and are soon to embark on UK support tours to Alfie and Minuteman, Woodstar brought it all back home with a special pre-release show upstairs in Costellos last month - a fabulously atmospheric and lively bar in their native city of Limerick. Even though they did not exist before summer 2000, they still ran through a whopping nineteen songs over two separate acoustic and electric sets, all of which were fully realised, gorgeously crafted and immaculately executed

Fin Chambers, the lead vocalist and chief songwriter of Woodstar, is relaxing over a pint of plain the day after the Costellos show, reminiscing about his early days on the Limerick music scene. “I used to play music in Limerick with Alan Sheehan but it came to a stage where I got disillusioned. I just got fed up of it that I went off to the Middle East to teach in Abu Dhabi for five or six years. It was quite a lonely time.”

“So I began writing songs like ‘These Scars’ and ‘Sorry Skin’ (both on the debut EP) and emailed them over and back to Alan, so we were writing over the internet waiting for a band, basically. In the meantime, the boys built a studio in Mungret. I came home with the songs I’d written and played them for Doug Muuray , Ciaran Calvert and Ronan Considine. I knew then that was the band, so I jacked in the job when I got back to the Middle East and came straight home. Then we entered the hotpress/Bacardi competition. Our second gig was the local heat in Dolan’s and our fifth gig was the final in Dublin. I couldn’t believe that we’d won it.”

The lads certainly didn’t rest on their laurels and immediately busied themselves by selecting thirteen London industry types to send material to. Matt Edwards of Hero Music (publishing wing of XL) contacted them on the very day he received the Woodstar package. Edwards got on a plane and went to see the boys play in McGregors of Ellen Street, Limerick. The next day he joined them in their self-styled studio and offered them a publishing deal. ”We didn’t really want to go straight into a publishing deal without some sort of sign of a record deal,” Fin recalls. “So he shopped us around London and hooked us up with a guy called Dan Keeling who is A&R with EMI/Parlophone and is the guy who found Coldplay. We met him in Dublin after the U2 gig last year and he offered us an EP deal.”

A month later, they found themselves in Parr Street, Liverpool recording with Ben Hillier who is best known for producing Elbow’s Mercury Music Prize nominated album Asleep At The Back. Hillier was so overwhelmed by the quality of some of their own recordings that he suggested leaving them on the EP as they were.

The final results are bold, brilliant and beautiful. Woodstar’s blend of lush dream pop infused with stark and sometimes disturbing lyrical imagery is already extremely distinctive. What’s more, they never pandered to the expected tactic of moving to either Dublin or London. “We made a conscious decision from the start not to go to Dublin,” Fin explains. “There are too many bands there and it is kind of difficult coming from down the country to be accepted immediately. In London, we found that there is no agenda. We were just a band from the west of Ireland playing music that wasn’t necessarily Irish and could be from anywhere and we were accepted immediately. I think you can get fossilized staying in Ireland, and I’d love us to be heard by as many people as possible, but while it was certainly no harm to get the kudos from London before doing Dublin, we are going to stay in Limerick for the forseeable future. There is a wonderful thing going on in Limerick and all the expertise that you need is there.”

Already, Woodstar have proved themselves to be a highly accomplished outfit on their debut release. Coupled with such a unque sound, Fin’s songs are naked, honest and provocative. The titles alone (‘World War in a Bed’, ‘These Scars’) hint at dark and often grisly subject matter.

Tune in and get inspired.