Never underestimate the power of pop. Though she can’t quite pinpoint it, Anna McCarthy’s musical ‘Road to Damascus’ moment occured at some point on an extensive trip around the world when there wasn’t an instrument in sight. Hailing from Schull, West Cork, studying in Galway, and fully turned on to songwriting and playing by PJ Harvey, she’d been performing in heavier bands until herself and her boyfriend decided to spin around the globe for six months. And now, melodies were flooding her head, simple and sweet, backed by glorious imagined harmonies.
“I was so inspired by the trip,” McCarthy recalls of her time flitting from Thailand to Oceania, and over to the West Coast of the US to drive 4,000 miles across America. “I had so many ideas for songs that I could barely keep up with them myself. Suddenly I started writing these feelgood, simple pop songs. I didn’t even have a guitar with me. These were literally just a collection of melodies in my head. Every now and then I’d record them on to my phone. Write down or e-mail myself the lyrics. When I got home I finally picked up a guitar and they seemed to work really well. I’ve tried to keep that idea of songwriting up. I never try to force it.”
Other influences and inspirations were less exotic. When she really thinks about it, the West Cork girl can trace her love for golden melodies back to car journeys to Cork City with her parents.
“This is really embarrassing!” she laughs. “We had this ‘60s mixtape. My dad had bought a tractor and someone had left the tape in it. There was one side with The Zombies’ ‘She’s Not There’ on it. Then when you turned it over, the farmer who'd owned the tractor had recorded himself singing the song! Maybe that’s where that comes from...”
Further, less bizarre, education came when she headed for the City of the Tribes and picked up a job in the Róisín Dubh.
“Suddenly you meet all these people with so many different musical tastes and everyone was willing to share with me. I used to sneak in to use the computer and steal all their music!”
If the songs that would become Dott’s (band name? they have a weak spot for polka dots, natch) fell together easily abroad, the group came together in similarly effortless fashion once home. A going concern since the start of 2012, they seemed to arrive fully formed. Even their first show in the Galway Arts Centre – “a BYOB party in an arts gallery” – sold-out before the first act played. Their first Dublin appearance, on a Sweeney’s bill also featuring The Strypes, went a little less smoothly.
“Oh god, that was was our worst gig ever! The Strypes went on before us and they’re like... teenage boys. They played for well over an hour and they’d given us these drink tokens.
We thought, ‘Oh sure they’re only on for half an hour’ but it went on for much longer than expected, so we drank too much! We were so new and so green at the time. One of those ones you want to forget.”
Dott, today comprising bassist Laura Finnegan, drummer Tony Higgins, latest addition Evan White and alumni member Miriam Donohue, had well and truly gotten their act together by the time they took to the Late Late Show stage. A big moment.
“My mom will be like ‘my daughter’s in a band’ and people will go, ‘oh right, has she been on The Late Late Show?’ And now she can say 'yes!' It was brilliant but also a really, really scary experience. I was nearly afraid to tell people until we were actually in the studio. I kept thinking, ‘Somebody’s going to say that they’re only joking, it’s not actually happening’.”
Another ‘someone please pinch me, I might be dreaming’ moment followed the release of their 2012 Button EP, a fine showcase for their lo-fi indie meets classic pop collision. An e-mail arrived, out of the blue, from Ryan of respected US label Graveface Records.
“I did say to him, ‘Where did you hear about us?’ and he just said a friend had passed it on. It was literally: ‘We can’t stop listening to your EP. If you ever want to do anything in the States, let us know.’ We’d no plans for a follow-up EP release at that stage so he was like, ‘Can I just re-release the EP on seven inch?’ That went ahead, and then when we were recording the album, he really wanted to put that out as well. So it’s been a really, really easy and natural process.”
That sun-drenched, infectious album, Swoon, was laid down over two freezing cold January weeks with producer Fiachra McCarthy (“no relation!”) in a Galway rehearsal space. Well received thus far, it finds Dott finishing the year by making good on the excited promises the press made on their behalf at the start of 2013.
As for 2014? Another EP is in the works, and that great landmass across the Atlantic is calling. “A big American road trip,” Anna concludes. She’ll pack her six-string this time.
Swoon gets a live airing on December 26 when they play the Roisin Dubh, Galway