The A&R Department: Cooks But We're Chefs

Tell me about your new single, ‘Stella Maris’.

It’s a song in three parts. It starts with Síofra and Jesse, and then we go through this joyous part with Methembe. There’s a darker part at the end. The bedrock groove comes from the tri-force of Dan, Luke and Douggie. Christian plays with a lot of the orchestras in Dublin, and you can hear that coming through the melody. And in the end section, you have Dan doing some raspy stuff.

How do you create a song with nine people?

There are some songs where one of us would come in with something written out for everyone, and that’s good. But some of our best songs are when we’ve all chipped in in our own way. Like, Luke did a lot of the heavy lifting with the chord progression, and sorting out the bridge between each of the sections. But when it comes down to it, we have amazing lyrics from Jesse and Síofra, and Methembe. And the brass lads have come out with some grand stuff throughout the whole song.

Where did the name Cooks But We’re Chefs come from?

The name started as a silly nonsense thing from Christian, our trumpet player. It was a point of awkwardness for a while. But it gradually dawned on us that once you’re good, once people are having fun, the name is just a label.

What can we expect from Sports Day?

Well, we recorded it in Grouse Lodge in Westmeath. We spent five days down there and recorded four tracks. It was a great experience to wake up every day and play music. There’s definitely a lot of elements of old school hip hop throughout. These are songs we’ve been playing at gigs for quite a long time, but they’ll seem new to so many people.

Check out Sports Day on Spotify!