Despite some of the evidence to the contrary in these pre-packaged times, music is still a living, breathing, organic force that springs out of old-fashioned ideas like friendship and loving what you do. Take the County Tipperary trio of Aoife Cleary, Lucy Coady and Karla Brazel for instance, otherwise known as Fair Verona. Aoife explains their beginnings: “We were friends from early childhood so we just hung out with each other. We started a band out of that. I began playing guitar a couple of years ago, then Karla picked up the bass and Lucy started on the drums. It came together from that. We all had the same influences as well.

In keeping with the DIY ethic that had inspired so many of those influences, the trio found their own way musically.
“We’re mostly self-taught”, resumes Aoife. “We had a few lessons but apart from that we did it ourselves. We realised that no-one else was doing it. We’d always listened to stuff like The Breeders. It happened naturally that we formed a band”.
Nor did they follow the route of so many others by playing covers around various dodgy dives before developing their own material.
“I was writing poems when I was younger but I’d never put them to music. Then we formed the band and started writing immediately, we never did covers or anything like that. That wasn’t our scene”.
This kind of confidence, however, took a little while to develop, as Aoife remembers.
“At first I was really nervous, just the thought of getting up on stage and singing and playing would make me feel like throwing up. Bit by bit we got going, we did open mic nights. Eventually we did our first gig and played about five songs but it went down really well. It wasn’t until people started saying you should do this and you should do that that we realised people actually liked what we were doing”.
What they are doing is encapsulated perfectly on the band’s six track demo that is currently doing the rounds. A hugely impressive, spirited affair, it brings to mind the late great days of American alternative guitar music that finally blossomed into the mainstream with Nevermind.
“A lot of people say that we sound American”, she agrees. “I do like the Throwing Muses and The Breeders were a huge influence. That’s where a lot of people get the post punk thing from but whatever they want to take from the music, that’s fine”.
Was it hard not to become overwhelmed by those influences?
“It was but the big thing was the female thing. People would say that we were good for girls but I just want to be good ,full-stop. It’s still really male orientated so it’s hard to get along”.
A ridiculous state of affairs to be sure and one that it’s hard to believe still exists, especially among bands and audiences of Fair Verona’s age. Indeed, it’s the feminine qualities that give their demo its upper hand, especially the edgy but luscious melodies and vocal harmonies.
“I didn’t want to be a PMS, screaming, ‘fuck men!’ sort of a band. I wanted to do something different because a lot of female bands are like that, angry all the time. I didn’t want that. I like a really heavy sound mixed with melodic harmonies, but with heavy guitars and clanging bass rather than the lighter guitar music and heavier vocals”.
It also means that, beneath the apparent light touch of songs like ‘Pretty Shaken’, Aoife is able to disguise a darker, more shocking side.
“That’s starting to happen, I didn’t even notice. I don’t want to be too obvious in my lyrics, that’s the worst it can be. People can take whatever they want to take for themselves. Some people have said that they can’t believe I’ve said something or that it’s really good that I have the guts to sing something else but that’s up to them”.

For more information visit www.fairverona.com