Laura Quirke, one half of Dublin folk duo Lemoncello, spoke to David Hennessy about their new album.
Lemoncello, the Dublin based duo of Laura Quirke and Claire Kinsella, released their second album, Perfect Place, recently and followed it with latest single, Tomorrow Nostalgia.
The duo had already given a taste of the new record with single Articulate Animal. This was preceded by Meet Me Halfway.
Co-produced by Ruth O’Mahony Brady (Lisa O’Neill, Gorillaz) at her studio in Cabinteely, Dublin, Perfect Place evolved from the band’s folk roots of their critically acclaimed 2024 self-titled debut but their sound has evolved considerably.
Lemoncello were nominated for Best Folk Song and Best Emerging Folk Act at last year’s RTE Folk Awards.
Their sound is a mix of Irish and folk roots with influences of indie pop, jazz and contemporary classical music.
They have opened for and collaborated for artists like Lisa O’Neill, Glen Hansard and Cormac Begley.
The Donegal/ Carlow duo launched their sophomore album in both Liverpool and London while also playing some dates around the UK in support of Joshua Burnside.
They will also be playing UK festivals like Deer Shed and WOMAD before they come back over here on their Ireland and UK tour in September/ October.
Laura Quirke, from Killoughternane in Carlow, took time to chat to The Irish World about the new album.
You must be delighted with the reaction to the music you have already put out with songs like Meet Me Halfway and Articulate Animal going down well..
“Yeah, it’s hard to tell because we haven’t really been touring yet but people have been so receptive.
“Everyone’s been so nice.
“We did the four shows supporting Ye Vagabonds recently and there is definitely a difference between the old songs and the new songs especially Meet Me Halfway. People really like that song and afterwards, even when it wasn’t out yet, people were saying, ‘When are you releasing that?’ And, ‘How can we listen to that?’
“It’s really cool.
“You don’t expect that, especially with new music.”
It certainly seems like there has been an evolution from your debut album to this new record, has that been natural?
“Yeah, the evolution feels natural.
“We’re just trying to keep ourselves excited about making music.
“I think with the first album, you’re learning how to write songs, learning how to make a record, all of those things at the same time.
“So this record, we could be a lot more intentional about how we went about it.
“We had quite a clear idea of the sound from before we even went into Ruth and then Ruth really, really got the vision and she really understood how to expand on that.”
You and Claire met in university and have been making music together as Lemoncello since at least 2018, is that right?
“Yeah, we were friends and we just started playing music together.
“I had some songs.
“Claire had played a lot in orchestras and ensembles and stuff.
“Her family are very into traditional music.
“Her granny was an amazing fiddle player.
“All her family play traditional music, classical music. It’s everywhere in her family.
“I think that it was just very natural for her to play music whereas I came from more of a family of storytellers and sharing songs in a communal setting, and I think that that combination was kind of cool.
“In college we just kind of busked to make a few bob and did some open mics and stuff.
“That’s where the band name came from.
“We didn’t have a name for the open mic and some Italians just came into the bar and they had some limoncello with them.
“They just named us Lemoncello on the blackboard and that was kind of it.
“We kind of regret the name since because it just doesn’t really describe the music at all but we were named that name, we didn’t choose it for ourselves so we just kept it.
“I’ve gotten used to it now and it means its own thing.
“That was a really exciting time.
“There was lots of amazing musicians in Maynooth and it was a great place to start the band.
“We started doing it a bit more ‘seriously’ from 2018 onwards but serious in very big quotation marks.
“But we definitely started thinking about it more as a means to live and as a priority in our lives from that time onwards and it stayed that way.”
If you started getting ‘serious’ in 2018, what effect did the pandemic have on you?
“In terms of shows and maybe a music career, it was a spanner in the works but for creativity, I found it to be an important time.
“I’m quite a social person so I think the solitude of the pandemic was really good for me for writing and I sort of found that I found a way to say what I wanted to say in that time. I had more time to look inward maybe.
“I think that it was really important for the growth of the song writing.
“But at the same time, it was devastating.
“You didn’t know whether you were going to ever be able to play in front of people again so that was weird.”
You said you didn’t come from as musical a family as Claire..
“I did as well though.
“I mean all my brothers play.
“They’re all brilliant.
“It’s more Claire definitely came from traditional music in her family and she had classical music in her family.
“I didn’t come from a learned musical background, I came from more of everybody sitting around the fire singing Richie Kavanagh songs or passing the guitar and just telling stories, that kind of thing.
“I suppose that is maybe more of a folk music background maybe.”
Laura had some success at local Fleadhs before a different musical interest took over.
“I played tin whistle and I won something in the Carlow Fleadh one time.
“There was a time where I was into that kind of music but once I got a guitar in my hands and I started writing songs, I went a little bit of a different way, but it’s always going to be there.
“When you live in Ireland, it’s just in your in your blood.”
Was it never going to be anything but music for you?
“Yeah, I think so although lately, I’ve been considering other options because it’s hard to sustain a music career and keep your integrity with it because we have to compromise a lot now with the way that maybe a commercialised career is going.
“I’m kind of entertaining being able to continue doing the art in our own way without having to put the financial burden on it.
“But I don’t think I’d ever wanted to do anything else really.”
What would you say are the themes of Perfect Place?
“Time is in there.
“We didn’t really realise what Perfect Place was about until we got to the end and we put the track list together.
“Then it became very clear that it was about the acceptance of life being really precarious and unstable and what insecurity and instability and precariousness can do to relationships, and maybe how connection in this day and age is complicated and tricky.
“They’re the things that come into it but I think without knowing it, I’m constantly talking about time and the lack of it.
“There’s a diary entry I have from when I was like 10 which is just talking about how busy I am and how I don’t have time for anything.
“I even drew a little chart of how busy I was and I was off the charts.”
What was a 10-year-old you so busy with though?
“Apparently I had to wrap my brother’s present for Christmas and I had to do a few jobs around the house.
“I think I was just overwhelmed, just always a bit overwhelmed by life.”
Where does the song Meet Me Halfway come from?
“The last song on the album is called Perfect Place and one of the lyrics of the song is, ‘It would be nice to start off in the perfect place, but life isn’t like that’.
“That song Perfect Place just sort of encapsulates the whole album.
“With Meet Me Halfway, because the next line is, ‘Meet me anywhere else’, the acknowledgement is that this is not working where we’re at right now so let’s try to meet somewhere else.
“That would be the perfect thing if we could meet halfway but that’s not always possible but just the striving for a halfway point, the striving to meet in the middle or to find common ground- I think that that’s what that song is about.
“But I suppose the songs come from the problems.
“It doesn’t mean they solve them but they frame it and sometimes I think that that can be helpful, for me anyway, just to sort of frame the thing.”
Would you describe this album as perhaps giving the questions rather than seeking to give the answers?
“Yeah, absolutely.
“There are no answers but the questions themselves bring you places.
“When I listened back to Perfect Place for the first time with Claire’s cello on it, I had paper and pen with me. I’m always scribbling.
“I drew this image here.”
Laura shows us an image of two people hanging from opposite ends of a bar or plank. A similar image has been incorporated into the artwork.
“This was the first drawing that made it towards the album cover.
“We’re balancing each other but we’re also very precariously hanging in the sky and clinging on for dear life but if one person falls off, then the other person falls off so there’s a sense of keeping each other going or keeping each other moving and even if it is precarious that we depend on each other to stay going.”
It says something you and Claire’s relationship, doesn’t it? You complement each other well..
“Yeah, for sure.
“We’re really different but, I would say, very compatible with our differences.
“I think it takes a lot to give this much time to a project over the years and we’ve really managed to do that pretty well without completely killing each other, which is always good.
“We spend more time together than any couple do, than either of our partners get to spend with us.”
Where did the song Articulate Animal come from?
“I think maybe that song is about the fact that we don’t always know the right thing to say but that we maybe feel the right thing. We have a sense of intuition and that’s the animal instinct in us.
“I think that that’s what the song is about.
“There’s a line in it, ‘Do not listen to the words I say, listen only to the tone of them. The tone is closer to what the heart wants to say’.
“Because I think that sometimes we don’t have the language exactly but our emotions can be very felt through the tone of our voice.
“I think as well because it’s at the beginning of the album, it’s kind of a bit of a disclaimer like, ‘Lads, don’t take any of this too seriously. It’s only musing about life and it’s just what we felt but we’re not setting this in stone or anything’.”
Articulate Animal came with an interesting video also, you often make your own videos, don’t you?
“Actually Saoirse Johnston Gaffey directed this time and she’s incredible.
“I did have a bit of a concept going in of the unleashing of the layers of clothes and coming in with all the layers.
“I suppose that’s kind of what Articulate Animal is about as well as trying to get to the heart of things, trying to get to the emotional centre.
“It was just a mad day.
“There was also a little karate class that was coming in before and after so we had to be very, very quick in filming it and all the karate mams and all the karate kids in their little costumes were waiting for us to clear up this absolute bombshell of clothes that was all over the gym.
“That was funny.
“That was a really cathartic video to make.
“I think the videos are always fun.
“It’s a nice way to reconnect creatively with the song in a time that’s quite commercial and where you lose track of that a little bit because you’ve so much admin work to do and promo work to do.
“It’s nice to be able to connect to creativity as well within the music video world.”
Sonically who are your big influences? I ask because your sounds is so unique..
“They’re so wide.
“There’s hundreds of people and bands, and also books and films.
“So much influences the music.
“With this record when I listen back, there’s a good bit of Arthur Russell influence maybe in some of it.
“Joni Mitchell is always a huge influence for me and the kind of wildly varied career and music that she’s made.
“Joanna Newsom’s records, especially Have One on Me.
“Aldous Harding.
“But if you’re to go back, my mother listened to The Woman’s Heart record over and over again with Dolores Keane and all the amazing women singers in Ireland who I think have such soulful voices.
“And then I’ve been listening to a lot of ambient music, a lot of experimental music and went to a festival in Utrecht last year with my friends and there was all sorts of mad stuff at that.
“It’s so hard to know (what influences).
“Life and music just passes through you and then you’re expressing stuff but it’s hard to know which stuff is sticking.”
You launched your album both in both London and Liverpool and tour the UK later this year, have you always found a receptive audience in the UK?
“Yeah, the crowds are great.
“They’re listening audiences and it’s just nice.
“Ireland’s so small so it’s really nice to get a bit of adventure in and go elsewhere.
“Really looking forward to it.
“Some of the venues are beautiful, like EartH theatre in Hackney and doing Brunel Social Club in Leeds.
“All the greats have passed these venues so it’s quite exciting to be playing in them.
“And playing to new audiences, that’s the exciting thing because different things happen in the room every time.”
Has there been a highlight of your journey so far? Is it your award nominations or some of the stages you have played?
“I think making this album together was the highlight.
“I would write a song and record it and send it to Claire and wait for what she would put on it arrangement wise and get that back.
“The conversation between the two of us creatively, I think that was the highlight of what we’ve done so far.
“It was a real joy.
“I mean all the shows are great and it’s amazing to get to play for audiences.
“We’ve had some amazing shows but at the heart of it, that’s what keeps you coming back.”
Perfect Place is out now.
Lemoncello play the UK festival Deer Shed and WOMAD in July.
Lemoncello tour Ireland and UK in September.
For more information, click here.
