Home and away

Although the formula wobbled a bit in the mid-’90s, it has usually been the rule of thumb that American music has more of an influence on Europe than vice versa.

One band to buck the trend has been Dreamchild. The duo behind it – brother and sister Carthage and Claire Carroll – may come from Sligo but it was only when the pair moved to the US that things really began to take off. As Carthage explains, this was as much to do with a different approach to music in the States as anything else.
“I think it’s entirely different,” he says. “A lot of the time over there you’ll go to a club or a bar for a gig and it will be sold out, even though nobody knows anything about the band. People are much more interested, more curious. Over here people will go and see bands they know much more. In America, the scene was much more embracing for a band like us who was starting; it gave us a much better shot at getting something out of it.”
Although the pair did eventually move home, they still find their time torn between the two countries. “We’re still based over there quite a lot. Claire played a show in Portland last night which I couldn’t make it out to. It’s cool; if we’re not able to play together she can go out and play an unplugged live set. We’re here and there at the same time. We haven’t really started gigging here yet because we’ve been busy in America. We’ll go over there for the summer and then start playing properly here in the autumn as a full band.”
This live action comes in support of their debut album, A Different World, a classy pop-rock collection that digs a little deeper than most, probably a reflection of their roots. Not that the pair have exactly been giving the album the hard sell.
“We took a kind of lax approach to our album release,” says Carthage. “When I was in other bands and you released a single or whatever, it was horrible. You’d do whatever publicity you could get your hands on. I didn’t really enjoy a lot of that, I found I was stressed all the time. This time we decided to do it on our terms, release the album and see how it goes. Bit by bit we’ll start gigging and the rest. I suppose it’s less commercially driven. Major labels wouldn’t entertain that kind of approach, but that’s the benefit of being independent. I’m enjoying it a hell of a lot more. Hopefully it will be a bit of a slow burn as opposed to doing a six week campaign and then nothing’s heard of it again.”
Having been away, does Carthage – whose fairly disparaging opinions on the music industry are well documented on A Different World – notice a change in the domestic scene?
“Big time. There’s a new revolution of independents, which is great. It does a lot for music, we’re not all condemned to listen to the next Pop Idol person. I think people are less concerned about who you’re signed to; now it’s more about putting a record together and releasing it. That makes it really great for us to release the album ourselves now. In America, albums also get passed around from person to person to person. It’s an interesting kind of dynamic, it’s very different to the corporate driven publicity machine.”
How much, I wonder, is this new Irish wave making a dent in the US? There has, after all, always been an American fascination with all things Irish.
“There is. It was weird, I was in San Francisco and I turned on the TV and Damien Rice was on Letterman. It was very surreal because you wouldn’t normally associate an Irish independent act with something like that. It was really refreshing and certainly very positive. There’s still that fascination and it’s better than being the stranger. It’s harder to be Irish and do well in Ireland than it is to be Irish and do well
elsewhere.”

A Different World is out now on Dreambuggy