Indie-rocking Raglans take road to Monroe’s

Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – tribunegroove@live.ie

Dublin based indie rock quartet the Raglans come to Monroe’s Live on Thursday next, December 17. The band –named after Patrick Kavanagh’s poem, Raglan Road – are Stephen Kelly on lead vocals and guitar, lead guitarist Sean O’Brien, Rhos Horan on bass and drummer Conn Ó Ruanaidh. When Rhos takes the call, he’s packing for their European tour, which takes in Belgium, Germany and Holland.

“I think we’re sailing at 8.20 in the morning; up early!” he says. “We’re getting the Eurotunnel, then driving from France to Amsterdam. A long day!”

Looking back over 2015, what has been Rhos’s highlight as a Raglan?

“There have been loads of highlights. It was pretty nuts for us. We got to go to Australia and play a festival called Soundwaves with loads of bands we grew up listening to. It’s kind of a metal festival, massive, with lots of big bands. There was Soundgarden, Incubus, Slipknot.”

The Raglans’ sound isn’t as a hard-rocking as these bands, but they still won some fans at Soundwaves.

“We were the first band opening up on the stage every day,” Rhos says. “We were expecting not many people to be there, but there was a good crowd. Half of them knew who we were. We were the softest band there, if you know what I mean – we’re not big metal heads. We didn’t really know how we’d go down, but there was a great reaction.”

The Raglans released their debut self-titled album in 2014 and have been touring doggedly since. Recently, they took the somewhat unusual step of releasing three new songs as YouTube videos. Why did they choose that route?

“We just wanted to do something different,” Rhos says. “We all thought videos and live tracks would go better than just throwing out an EP. It just sticks in people’s brains. We hadn’t released any new music in a while and we wanted to do something special. It seemed more interesting.”

The songs for YouTube were shot by Finn Keenan, who has worked with The Raglans on all their videos to date.

“We found a big abandoned warehouse in Howth,” Rhos says. “We snuck in and shot it all in one day. It was a lot of fun. We got up at 8, went and found the place, threw in all our gear and then set up. We had to do that for each song, lug all the gear around the warehouse. But it was fine.”

The Raglans’ toe-tapping tunes are driven by bass and drums supplied by Rhos and Conn. Rhos enjoys the partnership between the duo.

“Me and Con have been playing together since we were 13,” he says. “We got our instruments at the same time. For Christmas, I think. I got a bass, he got drums. Anytime we play together we know telepathically what each other is thinking. It’s great, it’s super easy to play with him.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.