Folk with modern spin from The Young Folk

Celebrating the release of the excellent First Sign of Morning, The Young Folk come to Róisín Dubh on Saturday, May 7. The Dublin-based group recorded the album at Orphan Studios in Inchicore and it was produced by Gavin Glass.

The Young Folk’s Anthony Furey has known Glass for over 10 years. Recording can be trying, even stressful at times – did it place any pressure on their friendship?

“No there, was no pressure,” Anthony says. “It was very comfortable in the studio. Because we knew him so well, we were allowed to say what we wanted, he was allowed to say what he wanted. There was no pressure at all.

“We started around this time last year, and it would’ve got done a lot sooner if we weren’t so busy. We were one of the lucky bands to be extremely busy last year. So it took us about nine months to get it finished, to have the hard copies in our hands.”

Were there any bands or particular records that The Young Folk were trying to emulate?

“It was more based around film soundtracks,” Anthony says. “Like Blade Runner and The Chemical Brothers (who did the music for Saoirse Ronan’s Hanna). They were more the influences on the album. There were different synth sounds, different guitar sounds that were in 1970s American films, or Japanese films. There weren’t any particular bands. We all have our own influences, but we didn’t really bring those here.”

Anthony has said The Young Folk wanted the songs to ‘stand alone acoustically before we started working on them as a band’. Does he feel they achieved that?

“I think we have, yeah,” he says. “We do a play a lot of acoustic shows, and the majority of those songs are part of those, as well as the full band shows. We do take one or two new directions when we play acoustically, with vocals and stuff like that.

“For a song to go from acoustic to a full band, towards a different genre, I think we’ve achieved that. And more, maybe. Which was pretty much down to ourselves and Gav. We were pretty hard on ourselves in the studio. I think you should be, though – it’s a job, and you have to treat it as a job. You have to be proud of it a year or two down the line.”

The songs on First Sign of Morning are filled with characters. A woman called Mrs Grimes makes an appearance and there are songs with titles like Olivia Leaves and Ode to Sedemunder. Would novels or stories have an influence on Anthony’s songwriting?

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.