September Girls’ debut a curse and a blessing

After the demise of the idiosyncratic alt-pop band Talulah Does The Hula a few years ago, Paula Cullen, Caoimhe Derwin, Lauren Kerchner and Jessie Ward found themselves at a crossroads.

But the four women didn’t wait around for long. “It was a good opportunity to rip things up and start again,” says Lauren. So they added Sarah Grimes on drums and formed September Girls in 2011 — the name is taken from a Big Star song, ‘September Gurls’.

“We took inspiration from garage music at the start of September Girls because it was what we were listening to at the time,” Derwin says. “The garage band mentality appealed to me because it’s less precious. Your recordings don’t have to be crystal clear, with really loud vocals like the production of pop music, which I was getting a bit sick of.”