Making a stand without losing their perspective

Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell

In little over a year, Turnstiles have gone from house gigs for close friends to packing out every venue they play. The Galway-based punk five-piece have racked up tens of thousands of Spotify streams, earned bookings for major Irish festivals and recorded tracks in Dublin’s Windmill Lane Studios.

Their inaugural living room performances, captured on shaky phone cameras with thumb-covered microphones, perhaps pointed to bigger things right away. Even with drowned out audio, it was clear from the start that Turnstiles a sound, a style and an energy that was entirely their own.

The band’s latest single, a minute and fifty-five seconds of thrashing guitars and pulsating drums, is appropriately titled I Don’t Care. Much like the three singles that preceded it, the song thoughtfully toes the line between politics and emotion.

The lyrics aren’t preachy or instructive but they do a good job of convincing the listener that, despite their disillusionment, the band do care about the voice and message that they put forward. Coming in at under two minutes, it is another fast, noisy release.

“It was a decision that we made very early on in the band [to keep the songs short],” recalls bass player Jake Tiernan. Myself and [lead singer] Callum went to see a band called Touts.

“Inhaler was the support act at the time and they did five songs in about half an hour. We thought alright, that’s a decent set. But then Touts came out and within forty-five minutes, they did maybe twenty songs. We decided that that is the way to go. It’s about the live aspect… Our songs are definitely written to be performed live – that’s what’s in our head when we write them.

“With playing live, I think shorter tends to be better, especially when you’re a new band. If we had a seven-minute song with three guitar solos, people could just be like ‘Who do these people think they are?’ You have to kind of earn the right to be self-indulgent.”

The new single is the product of a day’s recording in one of Ireland’s most iconic studios with sound engineer Cian Synott. While Jake is quick to credit Cian’s impact on the mix, the manner in which the song was recorded proves that it’s a sound set to be replicated at future gigs.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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