New music on the double from Cork band Iris

Of all of the things to have come from the city as the post-covid era begins in earnest, a core group of earnest, likeable and utterly unassuming indie-pop and adjacent noisemaking emanating from the city’s small venues was one that your world-weary scribe wasn’t quite anticipating - but he’s been more than happy to be proven wrong by dream-poppers Mossy, and the polished pop of The Cliffords, for two examples that have put in the hard yards and cultivated dedicated local followings in a relatively short time.

Cork five-piece Iris betray a similar charm early on - unpretentious guitar-pop with a grá for reverb and jangles, possessed of the naiveté, hope and drama of young artists with their whole lives and discographies ahead of them. Debut double A-side single (remember those?) ‘Double’ made its way into the world last month, and for now, having come together in secondary school in Glanmire during the crisis, the band is standing back and taking the fact in.

“It's weird,” says vocalist Lucy Dolan. “I feel like we never thought we'd actually... if you told us, like, when we were in school, we probably never thought we'd actually have music out.”

“It was definitely a strange one because we've all grown up together, and we've been doing music since we were 12 or 13, so to finally have something out with our name on it, that's something as a collective that we all worked on, and put out, it's really fulfilling,” adds the band’s bassist Zoe Callanan.

The pair of tunes that comprise the release, ‘Oh Boy’ and ‘Bitter’, speak to a young band gaining confidence in itself - which might well happen out of necessity, when five musicians - including four distinct vocalists - are pulling together to mark their respective marks on ideas being exchanged in the practice space.

“It's always like... an idea is brought forward, and then it's always onto a group jam,” says Callanan. “The song when it's first brought forward, and the finished song, once everyone's put their own touch on it, is always a completely different song, once we kind of have the harmonies in, and all that kind of stuff.

“It just all meshes together when we're in the rehearsal room, like, there's never really something that's planned. It always just kind of comes out to somewhere and it just works or it doesn't work.”

While the band has been working away as individuals on music since they were kids, the band came together in 2020, while they were still in school - any relative auld music fogey reading this will remember their first forays into playing in a band or making music, and nearly wondering about the differences there must have been for the covid generation, without the ability to do the things others have taken for granted, like jamming in a rehearsal space, or the slog of small-venue gigs.

“We were lucky in a way, because we actually started in the middle of covid,” says Dolan. “I suppose it was handy and all, like. It was a shame, I suppose, that we couldn't go out and gig, but it gave us time to practice, discover a sound and mess around with lots of stuff ourselves. We had time on our side.”

“We were very, very lucky in that sense as well, which I feel like a lot of bands weren't, in regards to covid, but we had the time on our side in the height of a lockdown,” adds Callanan. “But then we started writing our own tunes as the lockdowns were being lifted. So like our first gig, there were no restrictions or anything, mask-wearing was literally gone. So we got very lucky in the sense that when the music scene came back full-force, we blended right in and just pushed ourselves out there with it.”

With both time and timing being on their side, the band has emerged into a changing Cork scene, one where venues are still in a relative dearth, and the community has largely had to set about building its own supports and infrastructure around the city.

“The first thing about the Cork music scene is, as a community, it's super supportive,” says Dolan. “I feel like everyone who we've met, they almost just want to be your friend, give you advice, they're there to help. They're not there to race against you. Everyone's there, they've all got your back.”

“A big challenge for bands of our size is jumping venue capacities,” adds Callinan. “So when you look at Fredz, it's 80-capacity, then you're going to the Spailpín, which is 150 capacity, and you're getting your own sound engineer. Then the next jump to that is Cyprus Avenue, which is 500 capacity.

“So you're either kind of cramming a lot of people, and trying to fit as many people as you can into a small venue, or you're not filling out a big venue. I think venue and capacity is like a very big issue for Cork bands.”

Having notched up appearances at UC’s Battle of the Bands and Echo columnist Stevie G’s ‘This is the New School’ series of gigs, as well as supports for peers like Pebbledash and Kane’s Basement, the band is gearing up for its first headline date - Bank Holiday Sunday June 4, upstairs at Fred Zeppelin’s - a post-covid crucible for the city’s emerging generation of young musicians.

Callanan tries to sum up what gig-goers can expect from the band’s big night, joined on stage by The Hold and This, That and The Other.

“I'm so sorry to have to use this word, that will be going in the paper, but 'silly'. We don't really take ourselves too seriously, so there will be some antics going on, and we like to make a fool of ourselves, in the best way possible.”

Iris’ debut headline show happens at Fred Zeppelin’s on Bank Holiday Sunday June 4, with support from This, That and the Other, and The Hold. Kickoff at 9pm, tickets €5 from https://www.eventbrite.com/e/iris-live-fred-zeppelins-tickets-638010896767.

Follow Iris on Instagram at @iris.cork; stream their debut release ‘Double’ across streaming services and watch the video for ‘Bitter’ on YouTube.