Reinvented Tuam band Strange Boats release debut single

Date Published: 24-Oct-2012

With toe-tapping tunes and clever lyrics, Strange Boats play Monroe’s Live on Friday next, November 2. The Tuam-based quartet release their debut single Boys Walk Faster Than Girls this weekend.

Strange Boats made their live debut earlier this year, but had already been turning heads under their previous moniker The Coonics.

“There was about a year between the last Coonics gig and the first Strange Boats gig, and that’s when all the new songs came along,” says lead singer and guitarist Darragh O’Dea. “A thought process has gone into the songs, what they were going to be about, and the structures. We took what was good about the Coonics song and took them on to the next level.”

Darragh, Rory Donnellan (lead guitar), Richie McDonagh (bass) and David ‘Flats’ Flaherty are boyhood friends and The Coonics were the first band they were in. The hooks and the attitude were there from the get-go – The Sawdoctors were so impressed that they invited the young band to open for them on their UK and Irish tour.

“We went to the Olympia,” recalls Flats. “I have the ticket stubs of every gig I’ve ever went to, and you look at them and you think ‘I’m never going to be playing there.’ Then we were in Shepherd’s Bush, and you’re backstage and the place is covered in all the bands you would’ve looked up to; they all played there. It’s a bit mad to think you’re up there as well.”

“We went from learning instruments to playing [Glasgow’s] Barrowlands,” adds Darragh. “It just went so fast without being able to look at what music we were playing or what we were sounding like, or what the songs were about.”

Some time out of mind was needed before the lads regrouped and came back as Strange Boats. Their first gig in Tuam back in August saw them play a set of brand new songs. There was a sharper sound, plus some unlikely influences – in one of Strange Boats’ songs Darragh name checks Sam Cooke. How did he hear about this overlooked soul singer?

“I’m not exactly sure how, or what the first song I heard was, but whatever it was I loved it straight away,” says Darragh. “Everyone of his songs is just an ear-pleaser, to me anyway. Then I heard ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’.”

“He had written these songs in the Fifties, and he was dead in ’64. He had all these great pop songs written pretty much before The Beatles had even come on the scene. I was like ‘how did I not know about this guy before?’ I think they’re the perfect pop songs, perfect structures, everything about them.”

Making a song sound effortless is often the trickiest thing. Strange Boats’ songs have very few frills, no wailing solos or atmospheric effects. Their songs are direct, but they stick in your head. Is this lean sound something they’ve worked on?

“It comes very naturally like that,” says Flats. “Darragh’ll come in with chords and lyrics, most of a song, Rory’ll put the magic on it.

“When the four of us go in the shed, musically, it’s easy to fill in the blanks. But we don’t sit around and go ‘there’s too much fat there, take that out.’ I don’t know – we like two-and-a-half minute songs!”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.