Soda Blonde: 'The disparity between those at the top and middling acts is huge'
Soda Blonde have a new album on release and will tour to Cork and other centres. Picture: Patricio Cassinoni
Soda Blonde’s Faye O’Rourke was bemused by the recent furore as people struggled to buy tickets for Coldplay’s 2024 Aviva Stadium dates. The most expensive packages top out at €900, but the four shows nonetheless sold out in record time. It’s a reminder of the vast gulf in music between artists at the very top and the 99 per cent scraping by.
“I love big acts as much as the next person,” says O’Rourke, who started Soda Blonde when her previous group, Little Green Cars, disbanded in 2019. “The disparity between those at the top and even middling acts is huge. In any other career…”
She feels she has established herself as a songwriter with Little Green Cars. And yet, Soda Blonde have had to start from scratch and win over fans, journalists and radio playlisters anew. “Doing a second band, you would think you’d be climbing a ladder. Your previous work would stand to you. You have to prove yourself over and over in the music industry. It’s tough. I try not to be too cynical: I don’t think it does any good. I could point the finger and give out about 1,000 things. I think you have to accept you can use these things to your advantage or disadvantage. It’s about staying in the game. For me, it’s a vocation.”
Soda Blonde have confirmed their credentials, first with a fantastic debut album, 2021’s Small Talk. Now they’re back with a wonderful follow-up, Dream Big, which at moments suggests a more ominous Cardigans (Midnight Show) or a rainy Celtic take on the mutant pop of Caroline Polachek (WWDWD). It’s a record of big ideas, too: Soda Blonde describe it as “a reminder that life is precious, fragile, and fleeting, so we might as well dream big and hold nothing back”.
Dream Big was written while O’Rourke was coming to terms with life after Little Green Cars. Some of the material had originated in that previous project, which was co-fronted by O’Rourke and Stevie Appleby (the only member not to move forward with Soda Blonde). This time, O’Rourke had more time to think about the songs she felt she needed to write – and to approach the process from a different angle. In particular, she wanted to get outside her own head: to look outwards rather than stare inwards.
“As you know, with the previous incarnation [Little Green Cars] there was music that was kind of carried on through the past that we felt like needed to be heard. We had a lot more time spent on it.
"This one came together quickly. For me, I had been mining my emotions and my thoughts for so long – lockdown was a period where I was done with that. I found I had so much baggage to deal with. A lot of people felt that way over lockdown. They had things that life had pushed to the background a little bit – issues and things.”
With the new compositions, she decided to start with the texture of the music rather than the lyrics. It was a new way of working.
“When it came down to writing, I would usually write ballads. I would sit down with a guitar and a piano. I would be very precious over drawing a conclusion to my lyrics. With Dream Big, I was working on many soundscapes, layering many tracks before writing lyrics or finishing songs. I’d write a minute and a half of music and send that on to the guys. It was a whole new way of working for me. Which was exhilarating but horrible."
The difficulty arose when she returned to the material in the studio, surrounded by her bandmates. The lyrics were often quite raw – even self-critical (“Dancing slow/ Everything is changing, but I don’t grow,” she sings on opener Midnight Show). Now, she had to unpack those themes and finish the songs with everyone else watching.
“When you leave lyrics unfinished, coming back…is quite stressful. I was doing it in front of the guys. They were involved in that space,” she says. “There’s a lot of personal stuff on the record.”
Soda Blonde are among the most critically lauded Irish acts of their generation. But keeping the project going is still sometimes a struggle. There is a wonderful community of musicians in Ireland, she says. She wonders if they always receive the support they deserve.
“There’s cracks appearing in everything at the moment. You can see it in the obliteration of our main broadcaster. There’s always been frustration around ‘come on play a cover’ [O’Rourke was once invited to sing Bond theme Skyfall on the Late Late Show] You’d spend hours trying to work out something just to get a little airtime. Yet your music wouldn’t be playlisted. You’re not getting paid for your time. You’re not seen as anything as anything other than ‘content’. It’s been like that for so long. I’m not here to point the finger. Everybody is doing their job and trying to make their way.”
The problem, she feels, is that middling art is championed while music of real quality is overlooked. “I hate to say this, there is a mediocrity thing. And an acceptance of mediocre music and mediocre things. That can be frustrating as an artist. I’m not going to sit here and not say that I don’t think what I do is great. I think I can say that because I work with three other people who I admire massively. Being in a band gives me a bit of liberty to say that. It’s frustrating when you don’t want to play the game. You see things that are more visible – it’s purely because they are visible that they are getting the airtime.”
She hopes she doesn’t sound cynical – because she isn’t. “It’s important to say it’s not something I’m necessarily jaded over. It can be comforting as well. You’ve decided you’re doing music because it’s a vocation and you believe what you’re doing.
"There are bands in this country nobody’s ever heard of and I think they’ve written some of the greatest music of all time. But they’re not necessarily able to be social media influencers and talk about what they had for breakfast. There’s a community there. And there’s definitely massive support among other musicians that wasn’t there previously. Or maybe I was blind to it because I was in a different headspace.
"I see there’s a community of people that respect each other. If it’s not necessarily making the RTÉ 2FM playlist – if people that respect you are there and are at your gigs, that’s a good metric.”
- Dream Big is out now. Soda Blonde tour Ireland in November and December, with dates at Dolan’s Limerick; Connolly’s of Leap; Cyprus Avenue, Cork; and Vicar Street, Dublin
