Hudson Taylor: Overcoming sibling rivalry and battling anti-South Dublin attitudes
Hudson Taylor have a new album on the way, and a forthcoming gig at Cyprus Avenue, Cork.
One of the worst sins a pop star can commit is to be posh. This was a lesson acoustic duo Hudson Taylor learned the hard way early in their career. Brothers Harry and Alfie Hudson-Taylor had grown up in exclusive Sandymount and Monkstown in South Dublin. And so people leaped to conclusions about silver spoons and privileged lives. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
“I had a lot of imposter syndrome growing up,” says Harry. “My parents were self-employed. You would have little blasts of financial stuff. And sometimes you would be absolutely broke. And you're living in the middle of south County Dublin, where most people are quite well off. You get tarnished with that around the rest of the country. ‘Oh these boys from South Dublin’.”
Harry (29) is in Berlin, where he made his permanent home during the pandemic. He and Alfie (28) are preparing to release their balmy and thoughtful fourth album. Searching For The Answers is a gorgeous serving of old-school acoustic pop. And a very agreeable showcase for the siblings’ glossy harmonies and their classic songwriting, steeped in the early 1970s, and artists such as James Taylor and Simon and Garfunkel.
Yet while the record, which they will debut on an upcoming tour of Ireland, sounds effortlessly chilled-out, it arrives after a tempestuous period. There was the pandemic, obviously. But also the natural tensions that bubble up when two people – even brothers – are joined at the creative hip for a decade or more.
They apparently acknowledge things have not always been rosy between them in the video to recent single Hold Out Hope. The lilting tune is accompanied by images of the siblings covered in bruises and bandages. “Better days will come,” they sing. Those battered faces suggest they’ve been through difficult times and are looking forward to a change in fortunes.
“For many years, publicly, if we did interviews, we very much downplayed any personal enmity,” says Harry. “Even in our blurbs, we’d say, ‘oh these lads are great – they’re always so happy together’. Maybe the music also suggested this happy-go-lucky thing.”
The truth is more complicated, he says – and as Hold Out Home appears to hint. “We are family members. We have our different communication styles. The thing that has always helped is that, no matter what is going on behind the scenes, as soon as we get on stage together or in the studio, any of that stuff evaporates. Any little bickering or fights or natural sibling stuff, it miraculously disappears. It’s a really beautiful thing. We have different styles. Some stuff is being healed mostly through music. It’s the music doing the speaking for us sometimes.”
The idea of Hudson Taylor as two posh Dublin southsiders who’ve had an easy journey through music has proved difficult to shake. In fact, Harry and Alfie have had come through a lot of reversals in their career – and were actually about to put music on the back burner when a major label record deal, with Polydor, came to end.
“In 2016, we left Polydor. We had planned to take time off. We planned to do one more gig and leave it for a few years. We ended up play at the ISPCC Childline concert [at 3Arena in Dublin]. The two of us went on just before Hozier. And we were like, ‘Let’s take some time off after this’. And that particular gig, the heads from Rubyworks, the record label, saw it. And they were interested."
The brothers, feeling they had nothing to lose, took a meeting with the label.
“We had terminated the contract with the other people. So it was like, ‘Oh cool, let’s give it a go’. In a sense we transitioned seamlessly. We were very lucky again with that. It did mean that we didn’t stop for a minute. We didn’t have a break. In our mid-20s, we didn’t reflect on what was going on. But the relationship with Rubyworks has been lovely. They’ve been so supportive and easy to get on with.”
Harry and Alfie’s parents are from the UK and moved to Ireland with a view to bringing up their family there. “Our mom's from London and our dad’s from Yorkshire. And they moved to Ireland when we were kids. I have grandparents from Leitrim. My parents, in the early '90s, were like, we could bring our kids up in London. Or we could move to this nice area. So they sold up and moved to Ireland. And I’m so happy they did.”
Searching For The Answers is an upbeat record that will leave you feeling better about the world. But there is that dark side – those lyrics about holding out for hope in difficult times. So it’s a sugar-coated pill with a bitter centre. And that is perhaps a reflection of the brothers and their complicated relationship. Far from a drawback, though, that dynamic is what drives Hudson Taylor, Harry feels.
“We’re very different. And that's great. We can tolerate those differences and not be steamrolled into being this shiny pop thing. You want that contrast. We wouldn’t be who we were as a band without that. Nobody is really surprised that brothers aren’t the exact same. Where we share similarities is that we’ve got similar music tastes. And similar goals. And that’s the stuff that matters. When you’re aligned like that, nice things can happen.”
- Searching For The Answers is released Friday June 3. Hudson Taylor play Cyprus Avenue, Cork, on Wednesday, June 15
