Gurriers are huddled into a corner of Dublin pub The Lord Edward, reflecting on their first ever show. It’s been four years since their inception and riotous debut gig at Dublin venue Workman’s, but the band have steadily built a devoted following – even prompting an email from Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland.
“I assumed the email was fake,” bassist Charlie McCarthy laughs, though the 83-year-old politician is known for supporting the arts. “He said the set was fantastic and told us to keep going,” drummer Pierce O’Callaghan tells NME, whilst frontman Dan Hoff grins: “I was about to pack it in until he said that.”
When NME speaks to Gurriers in June, they’re now a week away from their gig at the President’s residence, Áras an Uachtaráin – a world away from Workman’s. Now, the ambitious “noise-gaze” quintet are unleashing their simmering, cathartic debut album ‘Come and See’ this September, with their new single ‘No More Photos’ out today (August 22).
When Hoff, O’Callaghan, McCarthy and guitarists Mark MacCormack and Ben O’Neill weren’t jumping around a marquee full of statespeople, Gurriers were busy building up a devoted live following. It’s ironic, given that the band had around 20 months of existence before they had the chance to perform at all.
“We’d been working for years on the material,” O’Callaghan recalls. “We lost our jobs during Covid and had more time to spend thinking about the band. It became prominent in our lives.”
“There’s self belief here. We’ve been hungry for this since day one” – Pierce O’Callaghan
“Everything was different at that time,” Hoff says. “We wrote for the four walls you were stuck in. That show was the first chance to expand beyond that, so we gave it everything.”
That first live show was crucial to the longevity of the band in a country where “there’s no infrastructure to support the music scene,” as Hoff later muses. “You have to stand out so much to get noticed,” says O’Neill. “It’s about writing great original tunes, but your live set also has to be rock solid or you’ll be ignored”.
Since then, Gurriers have supported Fat Dog, Goat Girl and shoegaze heroes Slowdive. “Christian [Savill] came to see us at Reading a few years ago and kept in contact with us,” says MacCormack. “We met the band properly later in Poland, and they saw us and asked if we’d support them in Ireland.
“We said we’d check our calendars,” he laughs. “You have to be cheeky sometimes and back yourselves. It helps to be a bit mad, too.”
“How can you expect other people to buy into your band if you don’t?” O’Callaghan adds. “There’s self belief here. We’ve been hungry for this since day one.”
Even in a cost-of-living crisis in a country where artists can’t afford to rent, Gurriers are determined to keep going: “We don’t make a lot of money,” MacCormack says matter-of-factly, and later telling NME over the phone that “most of us are living with our parents and some of us are on the dole.” But despite these harsh conditions, it was nabbing a televised slot at Other Voices festival which “made us believe we were onto something special”.
For their debut album, Gurriers worked with producer Alex Greaves (Bdrmm, YOWL) in his Leeds studio to harness their magnetic energy with techno, disco, hip-hop and other soundscapes. Kylie Minogue (“Mark loves her music”), Tom Waits, LCD Soundsystem and Death Grips are all referenced inspirations.
“Alex was the perfect person for us, because he wasn’t afraid to say when we weren’t being good enough,” Hoff tells NME. “He knew when we could do better. We took on his criticism because he wants to make a great album at the end of the day.”
The title track, according to Hoff, is about “my partner’s dreams and how reality is distorted. The rest of the album is about the zeitgeist, and disillusionment at the state of the times.
“During Covid, everyone was glued to their screens,” he adds. “The George Floyd murder and protests happened, the far-right movement in Ireland was growing. It felt like everything was starting to collapse. I couldn’t do anything except scream into a microphone for a while.”
Meanwhile, tongue-in-cheek single ‘Approachable’ was inspired by Justin Barrett of Ireland’s fascist National Party, and the sowing of division online: “My face will be all over your television / Orwellian rebellion / I want to be Machiavellian / Let’s unite to create division”.
“I always want the album to speak universally,” Hoff continues. “‘Approachable’ is about the far-right in Ireland but the UK has a massive problem with that as well.”
“With Kneecap for example, there’s a lot of disillusionment with young people in the UK post-Brexit,” O’Callaghan says, noting the Belfast trio’s recent debut record ‘Fine Art’. “The message behind the album wasn’t just ‘Fuck the Brits, but it resonated here.”
Gurriers were due to perform at SXSW 2024 in Texas, but the news that US military and defence contractor RTX Corporation – who supply weapons to Israel – were “super sponsors” led to over 80 acts boycotting. Both the military and RTX have since been dropped as sponsors for 2025.
“We hoped it would send a message,” Hoff explains. “What the movement needed at SXSW was for bigger names like The Black Keys to say they weren’t playing, but instead it was Irish acts and smaller bands pulling out.”
“It was important that the Irish bands all did it together,” O’Callaghan nods proudly. “What we had to do is incomparable to the atrocities facing the Palestinian people. It was incredibly disappointing of course, but at least we knew we were doing the right thing.”
But bumps in the road aren’t holding Gurriers back from finally unveiling their debut album. “We’ve waited long enough to release it and we didn’t want to do it tentatively,” O’Callaghan nods.
“The album is a statement of intent: this is what we want to do,” O’Neill adds. “We’re not fucking around.”
Gurriers’ debut LP ‘Come and See’ is out September 13th via No Filter.
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