Pillow Queens reign with new album and biggest headline show to date
Pillow Queens' new album is out April 19 on Royal Mountain Records. They support Snow Patrol at Thomond Park, Limerick, on July 13 and headline Iveagh Gardens, Dublin, on July 14. Picture: Mark McGuinness
Go big or go home. That’s one of the things you can say the Pillow Queens must have taken as a motto. The four-piece from Dublin release their third album on Friday, April 19. It was produced by Collin Pastore — who’s worked with Lucy Dacus and her ‘other’ band boygenius in recent years — at Analogue Catalogue in Newry, which is 100% female-owned and home to vintage equipment and amps, some belonging to New Order.
Pillow Queens are supporting Snow Patrol at the 26,000-capacity Thomond Park on July 13 and, a day later, play their biggest headline show to date at Dublin’s Iveagh Gardens. It’s what every band should aim for — taking the next step up with every album.
“It'll get stale if you're not ambitious,” declares bassist Sarah Corcoran, “if you're just trying to play the same sort of shows again and again and not make them more interesting and not make it a bit scary. Like, playing Iveagh Gardens is terrifying.”
Pillow Queens have been going for about eight years, with early playful, esoteric songs like ‘Rats’ mostly left behind for a cleaner, smoother sound and anthemic singalongs. Both their albums to date, 2020’s (“definitely more of a patchwork”, says Corcoran) and 2022’s , have been nominated for the Choice Prize and earned plaudits from the UK to the US.
There’s a real confidence that oozes across their third record. As singer/guitarist Pam Connolly, who writes the majority of the lyrics, announces on the opening song ‘February 8th’: “Let’s go play some rock and roll music.” She says: “There was a lot of growing to get to this point, into the vibe and the maturity of the music, but if this was our first album, we’d be, ‘Wow, God, those guys are really hitting the ground running’.” Corcoran adds that the plan was to “have an album that we're going to be proud of in 20 years’ time”.
Pillow Queens is also all of their full-time jobs now. “It's the first time that we actually had time to sit back and do a job in music, if you will, like a Monday to Friday, nine to five, go in, be creative, throw stuff at the wall, mix things up, and then come up with songs,” says Connolly.
Is that different from the start? “It's different insofar as the band has just become way more demanding,” replies Corcoran. “It wouldn't be possible to be doing much else, if anything else. There's no way we could dedicate ourselves to anything else and do Pillow Queens as wholeheartedly as we currently do it. Whether or not it's a financially sustainable project is another thing,” she says, amid nervous laughter.
It also changed the way the four-piece looked at writing and rehearsing. While they came up with the songs in a windowless space in Dublin, they decamped to an artists’ retreat, the Beekeepers, in Clare and then Analogue Catalogue, flying Pastore over for a month to work on the album. They got on great, barbecuing in the evening and bonding over bottles of wine.
While is Pillow Queens at their biggest, it’s also their most vulnerable. There was a breakup during the writing of the album that they all experienced a little bit together. Connolly explains of such inspiration that it can be difficult to revisit such feelings, to go back and put yourself into that space again when you’re almost out of it: “The last thing you want to do when you're going through a breakup is like, 'Well, gotta write a song'.”
It’s about trying to write through the pain. “Whereas it's great stuff to use to get you creative, at the same time, it's a hard one to work through when it's particularly heavy.”
Amid the change of locations, and the passing of time, she’s managed to come out the other side, and find some kind of resolve. “So now the song (‘The Bar’s Closed’) isn't as stormy and dark. To me.”
Another influence, throughout Pillow Queens’ albums, is religion. The title itself nods to it, while on the single ‘Like a Lesson’, Connolly sings that “I tried to talk to God, but he says sort yourself out”. Corcoran explains: “I think we do talk about religion a lot, just because I think it comes up in our day-to-day… I think you can't escape it. I think even if you're actively avoiding engaging with religion, and the Church and everything else, it just is there and it's just ingrained.”
- is out April 19 on Royal Mountain Records. They support Snow Patrol at Thomond Park, Limerick, on July 13 and headline Iveagh Gardens, Dublin, on July 14
