Start Listening To: THEATRE

A Limerick band tracing emotion through slow-burning songs that build like stories and settle somewhere between clarity and dream.

Theatre are a band from Limerick making music that sits somewhere between shoegaze, folk and grunge. Their single ‘The Fall’ was one of the first moments where everything properly came together, written early on in a shed and shaped by a difficult time that fed directly into the song. Since then, they’ve kept that same approach, writing instinctively and letting songs grow over time while focusing more on structure and atmosphere. We caught up with the band to talk about how they write, where their ideas come from, and what’s next.

For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?

Hello! We’re Theatre, we’re from Limerick in Ireland. We write music inspired by shoegaze, folk, grunge and a whole bunch of other things for good measure.

‘The Fall’ feels incredibly vivid and personal. Can you tell us more about how the single was written?

We wrote The Fall 2 years ago in Sean’s grandads shed which was our practice space at the time. It was one our first original songs and it was the first that made us all feel something simultaneously as we pieced it together. At the time I (Maeve) was going through some emotional turmoil, and those feelings pretty much fell into the song as it formed.

You’ve described the song as coming out of a very dark time. How do you approach turning something painful into something that feels almost beautiful or immersive?

It’s not always intentional, a lot of the time the meaning behind a song will reveal itself after some time, especially once you’ve gigged it over and over. Lyrics are always like that, I (Maeve) will write them in the room and then sometimes weeks after I’ll be able to reflect on them with clarity. Other times it’s more evident that we’re channelling something specific, we have a lot of joint experiences as a band, socially and professionally, so we often share sadness, frustration or joy.

Maeve, your vocals really sit at the centre of everything. How do you think about delivery and emotion when recording, especially on something as intense as ‘The Fall’?

We hardly had any studio experience when we started doing demos for The Fall so I had never really thought about how to capture anything during recording. But I don’t find it too difficult to put myself back in the moment of the song or I try to picture being on stage too, it’s a kind of happy place for me I suppose.

The idea of a “changeling-like person” in the track is really striking. Where does that imagery come from, and how important is storytelling in your songwriting?

Storytelling has always been at the forefront of the lyrics in Theatre. Before I (Maeve) started writing lyrics I was writing more novel like stories growing up. It’s something that just finds me naturally, and I think I view my real life experiences through the goggles of that kid who writes stories.The flow of a plot finds itself within our music too, Dara and Oscar often write structures that have a beginning, middle and an end or conclusion. The image of a Wendigo crept into my head when we first started to conceptualise the song visually, it’s about a real person and time in my life but looking back on it, it feels surreal.

You mentioned that this was the first song where everything fully clicked conceptually. Did that moment change how you approached writing as a band going forward?

Absolutely. We established a creative flow after that and we realised that we had so much in us, songs were just pouring out whenever we got in the room together. So we really focussed on paying attention to our work ethic as a team, making sure that we were optimising our time when it came to writing. It sounds a bit sterile saying that, but we were all in college at the time and working part time jobs on top of that so we had to work hard at squeezing structured rehearsals and writing sessions between everything.

You’ve already been picked up by BMG / Echo Records and premiered on BBC Radio 6 Music. Has that early attention shifted your perspective at all, or are you trying to keep things grounded?

It more so feels like a lovely reward, we’ve been sitting on these songs for a long time and waiting to release for a while so it’s nice for people to react and reach out. At the end of the day we’re always looking forward though and planning for whatever is on the horizon.

Coming out of Limerick, you’re part of a wider Irish wave that’s been gaining serious momentum. How connected do you feel to that scene, and has it shaped you in any way?

I think we all feel differently towards it. Some of us in the band are very connected to it and some of us not so much, but despite that we’ve always had so much support, whether that’s from the Limerick music community or the Dublin community that we have been adopted by. There’s a strong sense of comradery, and looking after each other is very important.

You’ve supported bands like English Teacher and Shame already. What have you taken from those live experiences at this stage?

We loved those experiences, not only is it amazing to open up for band that you admire collectively, but playing those bigger venues gave us the space for our sound to really carry, it felt right.

There’s something quite trance-like about how your songs unfold. Do you think about pacing and dynamics in a cinematic way when arranging tracks?

Yes!! We love watching films together and we’re all movie nuts. A wise man once told us as well that watching films together as a band can be one of the most important extensions of your rehearsal time. It helps to have conversations about visuals and how they interact with your music, and this built a foundation for us to start thinking about music videos.

With more music on the way, are you building towards a bigger body of work already, or taking things release by release for now?

We’re not sure exactly what the future holds but all we know is that we’re just getting started.

What do you love right now?

Making music videos!! We’ve had so much fun recently marrying our music with a visual world

What do you hate right now?

We hate the unjust state of the world!

Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s still important to you?

Maeve - Marvin Gaye, What’s going On

A lot of the albums that myself and my mum would listen to really stick with me. I spent a lot of time in the back of a car growing up, and my mum had a great collection of CDs that she would throw on. For me that album will always remind me of where I come from and how I learned to sing, belting away in the car! Soul music will always make me think of home.

When someone hears your music for the first time, what do you hope sticks with them?

Just that we hope it helps! In whatever way it can to get you where you need to go, to help you sleep, to help you feel good about yourself, to help you feel something