‘We needed a clean break’

Faye O’Rourke on starting over with Soda Blonde and gaining confidence

Soda Blonde’s debut album Small Talk is one of the best Irish releases of the year so far. A slew of successful singles such as Small Talk, Terrible Hands and Swimming Through The Night heralded its arrival last week.

Despite that, the quartet aren’t naïve enough to believe that it will banish the memory that four of their number were in the muchloved Little Green Cars.

One of the first lines on Tiny Darkness, the opening track is ‘it takes everything to begin again’. Perhaps not surprisingly new beginnings and evaluations of past experiences are common themes in many of the songs.

‘When Little Green Cars ended it was like the infrastructure and everything around us was kind of over as well,’ singer Faye O’Rourke says.

‘We have new management and a new booking agent. That was the healthiest thing. We needed a clean break for this to have a chance of working.

‘That first song Tiny Darkness is quite full-on but I thought it had to be at the front because it’s setting you up for what the whole album is about. It is about survival and coming back to do something again.

‘I think it’s easy for people to forget that coming back to do this a second time takes an iron will. You have to prove yourself again. Artists struggle with impostor syndrome but I’m going to continue to do this regardless, which is both a good thing and a torturous thing.’

Adam O’Regan, Donagh Seaver O’Leary and Dylan Lynch joined Faye in the new band. When Soda Blonde played their earliest showcase gigs audiences were taken immediately not only by Faye’s striking new peroxide blonde hairstyle but by her willingness to become the focal point, the frontperson in the classic sense rather than the shared spotlight that she and Stevie Appleby fell under, downstage with Little Green Cars. (Stevie is now working on solo material and the visual arts.)

Faye says she enjoyed that first phase of Soda Blonde but that need to grab the attention with the new outfit has diminished as they have progressed. The blonde is gone as well.

‘I stopped with it because I just couldn’t afford it,’ she laughs.

‘Anyway, I am also in a place where I don’t want to put that kind of maintenance in with my hair. In the beginning of Soda Blonde, I manufactured a sexuality and a confidence and, of course, I had the dyed blonde hair. I had that confidence and other elements within me but never as a performer.

‘Onstage [with Little Green Cars], I used to just open my mouth and sing and otherwise keep my mouth shut. I thought that’s what my role was. I enjoyed manifesting that character then for Soda Blonde. But as time has gone on, I feel genuinely more relaxed and more confident and I’m not really interested in using that sexuality as much; we’re more of a unit now. I feel very androgynous most days.’

Faye, who is now 28, is also part of the Women In Harmony group. A fluid co-op of Irish female musicians who have recorded covers of songs such as The Cranberries’ Dreams for the Safe Ireland charity which aims to transform the response to domestic violence in this country.

Faye is foursquare behind its aims and also says that she now feels a deep connection with the other female performers she has met since becoming involved.

‘What’s nice is that it is almost a bit of a union,’ she says.

‘We’re all in touch with each other online and it’s been a great support. It has brought women together and eliminated that mirage of competition.

‘For me, I’ve made some really good friends. I always felt like a bit of an outsider. You break down the barriers and you realise everybody is as insecure and messed up as the next person.’

The last couple of years, not least because of the arrival of Covid 19, has made Faye cognisant of her place in the world both professionally and personally.

‘I feel very much more like an observer especially in the last year,’ she says.

‘I feel like there have been huge movements but it is not the time to always feel you have to express your opinion. Maybe it is the time to shut the f**k up and let somebody else have the floor. I’m an extremely liberal person and I have my opinions but for now I’m just going to try to observe.

‘I’ve been thinking about that a lot as I’ve been writing new music; what do I have to say and why do I have to say it?’

Small Talk is out now. See Sodablonde.com for tour details

COMING BACK TO DO THIS A SECOND TIME TAKES AN IRON WILL’