Indie rockers Third Smoke to play Citóg showcase

Hailing from Dundalk, Third Smoke play the Citóg new music showcase in the city’s Róisín Dubh on Wednesday, March 8.

The indie-rock band are Hugh Donnellan, Joe O’Connor, Niall Clarke, Tim Shearwood and Chris Rocks. You might think the latter is a stage name, but you’d be mistaken.

“It sounds fake but that’s his real name!” says lead singer Hugh.

Although Third Smoke first formed in 2011, they took an eighteen-month interlude in that period before returning in 2014.

“We’re mates, but we took that break to think about how we were going to write songs, why are we writing songs,” Hugh says. “Then we came back and said ‘right, we’re going to give this a good lash’. It’s the last two and a half years that we’ve been properly going for it.”

All five members of Third Smoke play a part in writing songs, and Hugh says they are ‘very self-critical as an entity’.  They aim to avoid being ‘samey’, and strived to achieve this by all of them being able to play several instruments.

“We wanted to be multi-instrumentalists and play whatever was required for any given song,” Hugh says. “Piano, different percussion, loads of harmonies – that flexibility was something we decided we’d need, as opposed to ‘this is what you do for every song’. There were no rules, so that freed up the process.”

While the idea of swapping instruments is great, it sounds like it might lead to a slightly chaotic live show. This, it turns out, might well be a reason to see Third Smoke in action.

“Being honest, with our show we’re trying to push a little bit of chaos,” Hugh confirms. “On a lot of songs, people have to swap positions, adjust mics. So, while that’s happening, people who aren’t swapping are playing music and ramping it up. It kind of keeps a flow of energy the whole time, there’s always movement and change.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.