A bright future from the dark
Dublin indie rocker Kynsy’s debut EP is making waves
There might be dark tones in her music but the future looks very bright for Dublin indie rocker, Kynsy. The four songs on the 23-year-old’s debut EP, Things That Don’t Exist, don’t so much whet the appetite as leave one demanding an album and quickly.
Her first two singles, Cold Blue Light and Happiness Isn’t A Fixed State, have quickly picked up airplay on influential radio shows on RTÉ and BBC, while NME commented that if Julian Casablancas of The Strokes – one of Kynsy’s heroes – had written the latter track he ‘would be riding on the coat-tails of (it) for years’.
‘I feel like my music is a combination of lots of different genres. Lyrically, it can be quite dark at times but I’m sometimes poking fun in a post-modernist kind of way,’ she says.
On a very strong opening salvo, Cold Blue Light might just be the standout. In the lyrics we hear about Eddie, a lairy, lecherous type that one would be happy to avoid at any stage. She refuses pointedly to reveal the inspiration for the character, who is based on a ‘famous actor’ she came across during a night out.
‘Eddie is a fictional character but he is based on a real-life person,’ she says. ‘I went to a party ... two years ago... There were a few famous actors there and I can’t tell you who! You think for some reason that people like that are going to be sound but then me and my friend overheard them being really racist towards people from Pakistan.
‘When I was writing the song about a month later, that incident came into my mind and I ended up writing about it. ’
Further speculation would lead to future litigation, so we leave it there and continue to speak further about her influences.
‘Growing up, I did like The Strokes and few more obscure bands like The Witches and The Chills,’ she says. ‘I also love David Bowie, St Vincent, Joni Mitchell and Conor O’Brien from Villagers; it’s a real combination.’
If she listened to her dad’s musical efforts she is not saying. Her father, Steve Lindsey, was the bass player in influential Seventies Liverpool art rockers Deaf School. He is now a successful music publisher. Her mum is playwright and Mail columnist Fiona Looney.
Kynsy, which is a contraction of her name Ciara Lindsey, says growing up in a house with parents as creatives was a definite help when she decided she wanted to be a musician and songwriter.
‘It’s always been music. I’d been doing musical theatre and taking singing lessons since I was a little kid,’ she says.
‘I have been clear in my head since I was maybe 13 that I wanted to be a songwriter. When I said I wanted to do music they were very much like “follow your dream”. Mum used to work in Hot Press so she has a bit of a music industry background. It is good to grow up in a house where creativity is a big part of things.’
She joined her first band when she was only 13 and was a member of Dublin noise-pop quartet The Spines who gigged for three years or so around the capital.
‘We played KnockanStockan and the Grand Social and places like that. We opened for Fontaines too,’ she says of the days before D.C. was added to the name of the Irish indie rockers.
‘They were about 19 and I was 17 and a fifth year in school. They would have been second years in college.’
Kynsy followed them to the now-famous BIMM soon after.
‘I was very interested in music production since I was a teenager and dabbled with making demos when I was about 16,’ she says.
‘Going to BIMM really helped. I finished there in 2019. It’s a place where a lot of like-minded people have been able to meet each other. It’s not tutors saying, “oh you guys should be in a band together”. I think it was the same way back in the day when people went to art college and met people and formed bands.’
Kynsy – like many graduates you find in places like BIMM and Ballyfermot Rock School – is imbued with admirable confidence in her own abilities.
‘I can’t play drums but I can play guitar, bass and piano. I demo everything myself and bring it to the others in my band,’ she says
‘I know there is a great benefit in collaboration, it depends on the songs or project.
‘The goal is to have my own studio too one day. I’d like to have as much control as I can over what I do.’
With any luck, soon everyone will be keen on Kynsy.
Kynsy’s EP Things That Don’t Exist is out now.
‘I’d been doing musical theatre and taking singing lessons since I was a kid’