Jimmy Rainsford: “The return to normalcy has felt painfully slow, but suddenly like in the UK things accelerate and you’re back in an arena.”

From the way he was lashing into his kit at Croke Park, you’d never have guessed that a year ago Jimmy Rainsford was barely able to lift a drumstick.

“I got Covid quite badly,” he confides. “The transmissible part lasted a couple of weeks, but I had Long Covid on and off for two months, which was nasty. The scariest part, though, was the thought of my elderly parents living in rural Ireland and not being able to see anybody. My happiest moment of the year so far was them getting the vaccine.”

The end game now being to get back to Athy, hug his folks and have a pint in Anderson’s.

“Absolutely! Part of what we wanted do with this album is reassure our fans and say, ‘Everything’s cool, we’re coming back and so is normal life.’”

As well as marking his personal recovery from Covid, the James Corden appearance was the first gainful employment that most of the Picture This crew have had in over eighteen months.

“We’re lucky in the sense that we write our own songs and had some money coming in, but not playing live meant we weren’t able to pay our crew who make the magic happen. It really angered me early on during lockdown when the message from certain politicians was, ‘You’ll have to retrain.’ These are skilled workers who are a key part of a live music industry that contributes millions, if not billions to the Irish economy and helps export our bands and culture all over the world. These people in power are happy to turn up and be seen at events, but when things go wrong they jump ship.

“It’s more than just income, it’s a lifestyle as well,” Jimmy continues. “Even before Picture This, I was playing gigs. I’ve only ever known being a musician, so to suddenly have that taken off me was traumatic. I hadn’t played drums for a year and had almost forgotten who I was. What I hope is that when live music comes back, people will celebrate it and the crew who make it happen even more because it’s so special.”

Had things panned out differently, Picture This’ third album would have been with us in time for Christmas 2019, which would have made for better presents than socks and Y-Fronts.

“I was actually working on it backstage during our five 3Arenas in Dublin. Each song has a story attached to it like ‘I Don’t Feel The Same Way Anymore’, which Ryan sang in one take in my studio in Athy. I was lying on the floor the whole time with my headphones on and you can actually hear the floorboards creaking when I move. It was like, ‘Okay, that’s going on the album!’”

Asked about some of Ryan Hennessy’s, er, lyrical eccentricities, Jimmy laughs and says, “Ryan’s the kind of guy who’ll sit in the room quietly when he’s writing a song. Then he’ll play you the verse and the chorus and you’re like, ‘Where did that come from?!’ An example of that is ‘Addict Of Magic’, which was done with us all standing around a live mic together in London. Ryan’s very good at coming up with stuff on the spot and you can hear us laughing and reacting to it. He’s laughing as well as he’s singing and, again, that’s the take we used because it felt so real.”

Is it fair to say that Jimmy is the sensible one and Ryan the loose canon?

“Ryan doesn’t give a shit, he just calls it as it is,” his friend agrees. “He’s very good at pushing the right buttons and making people pay attention whereas I’m the safe pair of hands. But I always encourage him to go outside the box a little bit and offend people if they want to be offended. Having things in a song that a lot of people think but won’t say is always so much fun!”

And therein lies the difference between Picture This and the legion of squeaky clean pop hopefuls who exorcise any semblance of danger from their music. Jimmy and Ryan got to weigh up the competition the other night when they went to Brits.

“It was amazing being in the O2 Arena at an actual event with no social distancing,” he enthuses. “I thought there might be a kind of weird feeling in the air but it felt so right and natural. It was mostly NHS workers in the crowd, so the majority of people had been vaccinated. It was Olivia Rodrigo’s first UK performance; she sung live and was super-impressive. Our first major night out this year had been a few weeks earlier with Lewis Capaldi who’s fucking mad.”

In a good way?

“Yeah, totally,” Jimmy nods. “The return to normalcy has felt painfully slow, but suddenly like in the UK things accelerate and you’re back in an arena. Hopefully the same thing will happen here.”

• You can read the full Picture This cover story online tomorrow (July 6).