Slyrydes progress way beyond just cult status

Indeed, you would have to go back half a decade for the four-piece’s last Galway gig, but that changes this (Thursday) evening, when they return to the Róisín Dubh as part of A Modern Movement.

Rafto likens it to stepping onto the turf at Eamonn Deacy Park after an unfathomably lengthy layoff.

“I’m nervous again,” Rafto says.

“That’s because it’s Galway. It’s the Róisín. It’s nervous in the sense that I see the duty to get this one right. There’s a historical association with the venue. We were a Galway band.”

Reilly, the group’s guitarist, led the charge to get the album out into the world last year.

What Happens if You Get Happy had been recorded around 2020, but it lay dormant through Covid and a subsequent Slyrydes hiatus.

Time passed and circumstances changed, though the band never doubted the quality of the record.

“I think it was well received by the music press, if you want to call it that,” Rafto says.

“To be honest with you, we knew it was pretty good. It’s very un-Irish to say something like that, but we did know it was pretty good. We didn’t expect the reaction to be negative.

“[Getting back together] wasn’t very formal. We didn’t do a whole lot to go chasing things down… It’s been good but relatively stressless.

"If we were doing this having just recorded the album five years ago, I’d say we’d have an awful lot more anxiety to get playing it.

"Because so much time has passed, I don’t think we feel that pressure to be trying to plug the album.”

Thursday night is the first Slyrdes appearance on a Galway stage in several years, but last November they made pilgrimages to Dublin’s northside and North Kerry.

Rafto admits the first performance, up in the Grand Social in Dublin, had him feeling very nervous, but he was able to savour Mike the Pies in the heart of Listowel.

Rehearsing for those shows, he says, has probably been the nicest part of reforming.

“I hadn’t spent much time with the lads, particularly Mark [Comer] and Eoin, for the guts of five years,” Rafto says.

“The very first time we got back together in the same room, we were just slagging each other again and winding each other up. It wasn’t forced at all.

“Ultimately, you’re mates. That’s how we ended up forming a band. We didn’t advertise for any members or anything like that. It was all organic.

"The band was formed from hanging out and listening to the same stuff. We hadn’t done that in ages.

“Even just talking about other bands, all that kind of stuff. It was just very natural. Had that been weird, there’s probably a good chance we would’ve wrapped things up after the gigs, but it still felt pretty natural.”

At this stage, the band is trying to enjoy what comes of this second half of their time together without piling pressure on themselves.

When it all fell apart five years ago, they had been charging towards the future with the bit between their teeth. Now, there is more of a satisfaction and appreciation for what they have managed.

“There can be a competitive element to being in a band,” Rafto says.

“You want to be better than other bands and all that. I think a lot of that’s gone out of it for us now. It’s almost like a victory lap.

“We plan on recording a couple of new songs but I doubt that we’re going to put in the same effort that we did previously, when we were really hunting down record deals and stuff.”

There hasn’t yet been an occasion to sit down together in the one room and write new music, but Rafto has worked on some material in Dublin’s Darklands studio with producer Dan Doherty, with whom they recorded What Happens if You Get Happy.

His bandmates will add their own parts at a later date, as was the case with some tracks on the LP.

“That way of writing was thrust upon us,” he says.

“We didn’t choose to write that way. We had the studio time booked with Dan and we had plans to make an album, and then Covid landed.

"I think we were five tracks short or something, so we recorded everything by email and audio files. For me personally writing lyrics, I probably found that approach easier.”

On Thursday night, Slyrydes will be supported by In Athens and Animal Animal, two noisy guitar bands that fit the ethos.

Rafto takes a bit of pride in looking around at the talent and encouragement for Irish punk outfits today. It is the sort of community that thrives, because of cult bands that originally kicked things into motion.

“When we were doing our thing the first time around, the Fontaines thing was in the process of blowing up.

"But most of the bands doing what we do were in and around our age,” he says.

“Now, there’s a whole new generation of younger bands that are really good. They’re far more clued in to how things work.

“They’re all very internet-savvy, promotional-savvy and just generally good bands. It’s good to see that.

"Maybe somewhere in the footnotes of history, we played a part in that.”

​Slyrydes...back at the Róisín Dubh this week.