Dan Hoff, frontman of Gurriers, spoke to David Hennessy about the band’s second album which is released this week.
Gurriers released their second album Nobody’s Coming To Save You last week.
It is the anticipated follow up to their phenomenally successful 2024 debut Come And See.
Fans have already got a taste of the album with singles like title track Nobody’s Coming to Save You, Nothing Happens Twice, Party Lines and Pins.
The band will mark the release with a UK and European headline tour this autumn which includes shows at London’s Electric Brixton and two major Dublin shows at Vicar Street and 3Olympia Theatre.
The band played the recent Electric Picnic and Kneecap’s big show at Crystal Palace Park in June which also featured The Mary Wallopers and more acts.
Having formed in the pandemic, Gurriers announced themselves with tracks like Approachable that quickly saw them playing on Jools Holland.
Gurriers is made up of Dan Hoff (vocals), Ben O’Neill (guitar), Mark MacCormack (guitar), Charlie McCarthy (bass) and Pierce Callaghan (drummer).
Formed in Dublin, the band is now mostly based in Manchester with only Dan Hoff remaining living in Dublin.
Frontman Dan Hoff took time out from the band’s American tour to chat to the Irish World about the new album.
You must be excited to be releasing your second album..
“Yeah, feels really good, really exciting.
“I am really interested to see how people are going to feel about some of the songs because the singles are still quite loud and heavy and fast but the rest of the album’s a little bit softer and more emotional so I’m intrigued to see how people are going to react to it.”
How different does it feel from Come and See. I have heard you say for that you were thinking of playing those songs in small rooms and so you were writing for the environment you were expecting to play them in but as the stages have grown, the sound has also grown. Does it feel like a real evolution?
“Yeah, it’s definitely evolution.
“It definitely feels like a maturity as well as a band because obviously the first album didn’t have Charlie (McCarthy, bass) on it and this one does. We almost feel like a completely new band in that aspect.
“But we definitely feel like we’ve evolved so much that we can look at it in a different way.
“The first album was us playing in our garage making loud music and now this one’s a bit more fancy gear and fancy instruments.”
Of course when you were writing your early track Approachable you did not foresee playing it on Jools Holland but now so much has changed..
“Yeah, there is that actually because you’ve done it before.
“We don’t want to write Approachable 2.
“We want to write something that you can sit with a little bit longer and a bit more- again, the word mature, not saying Approachable was an immature song but it’s a bit more in your face but you do write things for bigger rooms, for certain crowds and I think they’re subconscious things.
“I don’t know if we’d sit down and be like, ‘Oh, we’re going to write it for..’.
“A lot of it is reverse engineered or subconscious.
“But we still try and write heavy rock songs but make them a little bit more accessible like Nothing Happens Twice.”
Let’s talk about the song Nothing Happens Twice. Where did that track come from?
“It’s a bit of a stream of consciousness.
“I think at the time I was writing it, there was a lot of stuff happening around the world.
“I like to write my lyrics almost in an Adam Curtis documentary style way and just kind of slowly pan to each part of the world and its issues.
“This one had a lot of different interpretations even in the room.
“Charlie had an interpretation that it kind of sounded like the dead internet theory where everything online is just loads of bots talking to each other and I was like, ‘Yeah, it could be about that if you want it to be’ but it’s also kind of scatterbrain.
“I feel I’m very scattered in my mind.
“I’m thinking about 100 things at the same time all the time and it kind of comes off as that because you can see it’s a stream of consciousness.
“I’m talking about certain things happening in the world but then I’m also talking about ‘my education wasn’t good enough’ and ‘I f**ked up’ or ‘I did this’ or ‘I did that’ so I quite like that.
“It feels like it’s a little bit of a window into my mind in that sense.
“I got the idea from a review of Waiting for Godot where a woman said, ‘It’s a play where nothing happens and nothing happens twice’.
“I just was blown away by such a beautiful poetic thing to say.
“I added one or two lines from Waiting for Godot into the song.”
Your lyrics can often be specific and yet universal in that you may be writing about Dublin but want people in other places to resonate..
“Yeah, I don’t know if it was an intentional thing.
“I think that might have come from COVID where we were all so obsessed with everything that was happening all over the world and the world became quite small because you were hearing about places that probably didn’t make it into the news as much as you think.
“Approachable was about the rise of the Irish far right but I never wanted it just to be about the Irish far right.
“It’s a global problem and if someone at that time was listening to it in America or in Australia, India, or anywhere, they’d understand what I’m trying to say.”
I wanted to ask about the video for Nothing Happens Twice. I recognise the actress Maya O’Shea from the film Verdigris which we have featured in The Irish World. The video has an almost old school horror quality..
“Thomas James, the director, is a phenomenon, genuinely.
“I know the album’s coming out this year and everything but to be able to meet him and hang out with him this year has been one of the best things I’ve done creatively and as a friend, he’s just an amazing person.
“Watching him in his work habitat and everything, it’s just incredible.
“It’s incredible to see how much he stresses as well.
“But yeah, it’s very 1960s horror and very folk influenced.
“Maya was amazing.
“She was genuinely incredible.
“It was really, really a joy to watch her act in the video.
“We were really, really excited to have her and the whole town of Castleblaney came out.
“The whole town were coming out and helping, you’re getting to use people’s pubs and use people’s locations and stuff just as a favour was so nice and so we’re so thankful and grateful to those people.”
That 60s horror vibe extends into other videos with Nobody’s Coming to Save You and Party Lines..
“Yeah I watched the 1984 film Threads (BBC apocalyptic drama) quite recently before the making of the Nobody’s Coming to Save You music video and it really stuck with me.
“It stuck with me in the same kind of way as the movie Come and See (Soviet anti- war film from 1985) which also was a reference point and the play by Sarah Kane, Blasted, was a reference point: All very bleak and grim depictions of life and society and people in general.
“And he (Thomas) just killed it. He really did.
“He gets your idea that you have in your head and just puts it there on screen.
“He sent us over the brief for Party Lines, I was so excited.
“I couldn’t believe he was going to make this.
“He was like, ‘How crazy do you want me to go with it?’
“And I was like, ‘As crazy as you f**king want. Just do it, man. It’s better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission’.”
I am familiar with Threads, it depicts the very real effects of nuclear war with unnerving realism..
“Yeah, it’s hard to watch. It really is.”
Do you think we are getting more and more used to watching very real everyday horrors whether they are in Gaza or Ukraine while always juxtaposed with funny cat videos..
“Yeah, that’s the desensitisation of it all.
“I think probably one of the saddest things that’s happened in modern times is that the shock is gone.
“For me it’s the saddest thing.
“I remember being in school and young lads watching a video of horrible things on a computer and then showing it to me: They’re all laughing at this horrible video of someone dying and it really scared me.
“I didn’t like watching those videos and I felt like I was a weirdo or an outsider because I didn’t like watching them and I wouldn’t watch them.
“They’d try and make me watch them but I was always quite a bit more like, ‘It’s not a film, that’s a person’ and I think we forget that.
“Because it’s on camera, you don’t see the person and then that’s how we’re all desensitised.”
What made you decide to call the album Nobody’s Coming to Save You?
“I think it’s a very striking title.
“Mark kind of got the idea from his doom scrolling on Twitter one day, same kind of thing: Saw something awful and then something more mundane and the title on the very mundane thing was ‘Nobody’s Coming to Save You’.
“But it has so many interpretations.
“It can mean no one’s going to pick up that paintbrush for you and paint your painting, no one’s going to pick up the guitar and teach you how to play it from them playing it.
“But then there’s also the other side of it.
“It’s like no one’s going to protest for you, you’ve got to go out there and do it.
“There’s so many interpretations and there’s so many ways to look at it.
“It sounds like a hopeless statement but it’s also a call to action.
“I love how words can take on different meanings in sentences and I like when there’s different interpretations so I was very drawn to Nobody’s Coming to Save You because you can go down a rabbit hole of what it means.”
You mentioned protesting there. You’re touring the states now but it was in 2024 that you and many other Irish acts such as Kneecap pulled out of SXSW in protest about the military sponsorship the festival was accepting that had links to American military and therefore Israel. Obviously you have returned and played SXSW but there could have been no guarantees about that at the time so it must not have been easy..
“No, it wasn’t easy.
“It was difficult and when we were there it was quite hard to come to terms with that you’re not playing, ‘We’re in America and we’re not playing. Why the hell are we here?’
“But what we were going through is not even an iota of what Palestinians are going to and you have to put yourself into that understanding.
“That’s why we pushed and pushed and pushed against it.
“We had the governor of Texas saying that all of the Irish bands are not welcome back to Texas, and we’ve been back twice so he can wait for us to come back again next year.
“All the Irish bands basically said, ‘Look, we will only come back if you get rid of the American military sponsorship and what it stands for’, and they did so we ended up coming back.
“I’ve always been quite, I guess, deflated by politics and protests and seeing so many people go out and protest and try and look for change, and nothing ever comes from the governments.
“But it gave me a sense of hope when that protest worked.
“If you really do push hard enough, they will fall over.”
What was it like to return after that, was it triumphant to play SXSW 2025?
“Yes, every single gig we went in with a game plan to be the best band.
“The Austin Chronicle said top band at South by Southwest was us and we don’t really give a f**k about any of those things usually but because we came back we wanted to be like, ‘If we’re coming here, we’re going to make sure people remember us’.
“Because every gig we shout it out ‘Free Palestine’ and as little as that can do, it can show solidarity.
“But we wanted to go back there and prove to ourselves and prove to everyone else that we’re a good band and, ‘F**k you for having the American military there’.”
I’m sure you have seen the news over the last few days. What do you think of Macklemore being dropped from the Ed Sheeran tour for saying those words you just said, ‘Free Palestine’. There has been much backlash, isn’t it very disappointing?
“Yeah, it is disappointing especially when you have people like Ed Sheeran who have the power to say to this booking agent or the promoter, the stadium owner or whoever, ‘I’m not going to play here. I’m going to find somewhere else I can play’ because there are hundreds of other venues that he could play in.
“He could play in a field with the amount of people who want to see him, but he made his decision.
“He called it a conflict.
“It’s not a conflict.
“The second he said it was a conflict, he’s taken a side.
“His music is shite and so are his political beliefs. That’s how I feel.
“I don’t feel like you can be an artist anymore and be apolitical and have an apolitical stance.
“You can’t.
“You’re basically putting your head in the sand and you’re ignorant to what’s happening.
“And if you say, ‘Oh, I have my beliefs and they’re at home’, that means nothing.
“Your beliefs on that stage are so powerful, so powerful.
“He can say a couple of words and change people’s whole f**king lives.
“He genuinely can.
“Same with Taylor Swift.
“Same with all of these artists who don’t speak out about these things and decide to be apolitical and it pisses me off to no end.
“I’d rather he just said, ‘I side with Israel’.
“I’d be like, ‘Fair enough. You’re honest’.
“But no, you’re a chicken.
“You’re not being an artist.
“I think an artist needs to be someone who goes against the system and goes against the societal norms.
“It’s a rebellious nature being an artist.”
You also supported Kneecap at Wembley, you have played Glastonbury, you also played the recent Electric Picnic. What leaps out as a highlight of all you have done?
“Playing Paradiso in Amsterdam the very first time was probably one of the craziest things we’ve ever done.
“It was just crazy.
“It was one of the first times the crowd was just feral and you could really feel the energy off the crowd.
“And we were like, ‘Okay, yeah, this is exactly what we want to do for the rest of our lives’.
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget that gig.”
We spoke about you not expecting to be on Jools Holland, does that mean there wasn’t so much of a grand plan when you started out but you were just simply hoping to play in front of people when you were out of lockdown?
“There was that plan but there’s a guy in the band called Mark who is delusional in the best way possible.
“He was like, ‘We’re going to be the biggest band in the world and we’re going to play Glastonbury and we’re gonna play stadiums’.
“He was like, ‘If I’m doing this, I’m putting everything into it’, and I think it bounces off everyone else.
“You soak it up.
“You’re like, ‘Yeah, f**k. You think that, I think that’.
“It’s really impressive to see and for us to start kind of seeing these things come to fruition is mental.”
Nobody’s Coming To Save You is out now via Play It Again Sam.
Gurriers tour the UK from 14 October and play Electric Brixton in London on 24 October.
For more information, click her.
