Photo Credit: Patricio Cassinoni

Irish Alternative pop quartet Soda Blonde have recently released their sophomore album ‘Dream Big’. This album is an impressive follow-up to the band’s acclaimed debut and I sat down to discuss the album and dissect its themes and wonderful musical elements with the band’s Adam O’Regan.

“ It’s been about a year since we started writing it. We gave ourselves six months to write it and record it and then you’re waiting around for a while, but we really worked hard on it. I’m really proud of it. So it’s been really nice. Everyone has responded really positively to it and yeah, it’s been great.”

Following two successful introductory EPs (2019’s “Terrible Hands” and 2020’s “Isolation Content”), Soda Blonde released their debut album, ‘Small Talk’, in 2021. The LP was subsequently nominated for RTÉ’s Choice Music Prize for Album of the Year and received rave reviews. We discussed the pressure that comes with releasing and creating the follow-up to such a successful and highly praised album.

“Yeah, I mean, only within ourselves. It’s important that we feel we’re always doing work that we’re proud of, and we definitely were very proud of ‘Small Talk’. We knew that we had something to live up to I suppose. There was a minute where you go, how are we going to do this, but very quickly, we just got into the studio and we started writing and you just have to leave the past in the past and focus on trying to make good stuff. We are always trying to challenge ourselves and always trying to push ourselves and very quickly, it just became its own thing, and we knew what path we were on.”

‘Bad Machine’ was the first single released from the album. It gave us a wonderful glimpse of what musical treats the album contained. With biting guitar and an indie edge, it was the perfect introduction to this era of Soda Blonde. The thrilling angular, scratch guitar element cuts through the pop soundscape and injects an eerie tone throughout. I wondered if the guitar was the element that sparked the song’s formation. 

“Oh, well, I’ve got two answers to that question. The first one is it didn’t start with the guitar. It started with a piece of.. like a chord progression and a vocal that Faye had been working on. She’ll never come to us with a song unless the lyrics are finished and the structure is complete. So sometimes it can be a bit frustrating for us because we want to start working on music and she’ll have a verse or a chorus and we’d be like, please play it for us and she won’t do it. This one occasion she sang this little piece on the guitar that she was working on. It was very, very different to what you hear now and she had no lyrics she just had the melody and kind of like an acoustic, almost like a country ballad sort of thing. So we started working on the music right away. That’s the first part of my answer. Then the second part of the answer is that I was very interested, making this album to try and bring more guitar into the record. I’m a guitar player. I don’t think I’m a guitar player first necessarily, but I’ve certainly been playing guitar the longest in my life. When I started the band, I was playing guitar and I wanted to bring a bit more aggression or a bit more kind of bite into the record. So I started trying to find different sounds and this was the first occasion when we were working on the music for this song that I stumbled across this sound and it was really exciting. So the music found itself before any of the lyrics did and we built this big broad-shouldered kind of electro-rock song, whatever you want to call it. Then there was the process of trying to figure out what the song is about. That was fun. It was definitely a sidestep, you know. It’s very different from the first record but we liked that about it. It’s a palate cleanser.“

When it comes to recording and creating their music Soda Blonde do everything themselves. We discussed the journey the songs on the album went through before the final version was released in the album.

“Yeah, they always go through different stages. Well, they always start off differently, on this record we didn’t have so many. So many of the songs go through such a journey, I think ‘Midnight Show’ is the only one that we took a little bit of time going through. We actually went into the studio and made the whole album and that one just wasn’t right and so we came back to it but this album, everything happened fairly fluidly. You know, it wasn’t too much going back and forth like there was with the first album.”

Title track, ‘Dream Big’ is a musical delight. Soft soundscapes which are created by a warm expressive bass, rich drum beats and Faye’s elegant vocals produce an exciting cinematic atmosphere that has strong indie undertones accomplished through the use of synths and hazy guitar. The band manage to brilliantly layer and create lush textures within this track making it a joy to listen to. O’Regan explained how they created this gem of a tune. 

“I think that we were just letting our imagination run wild and we were just having a lot of fun and we were feeling very free. We were feeling very trusting of one another. We went into this writing retreat for about two weeks, called The Beekeepers Daithí [Ó Drónaí] owns it and we just had this beautiful environment surrounded by woodlands and it sounds a bit corny, but we just got lost in the music and that song in particular. On the first album, we recorded everything in our bedrooms and in our living rooms and part of the limitation of that was we actually recorded every drum separately because in order to get the sound that we were looking for, we had to record every drum separately, and then I would mix it together. That worked out but it slightly inhibited our drummer, Dylan, we’ve got one of the best drummers in the country, and I’m not afraid to say that. So it was really exciting making this album, we had the freedom to be in the recording studio and we were able to record Dylan properly. So there’s a moment in the album where the song takes off, and he’s doing all this amazing drumming and it’s so exciting to have that playfulness on the album, you know. I think that if there’s one thing that I really hope comes across, it’s the playfulness and the fun that we were having”

‘Space Baby’ is a lush little ditty and memorable moment on the album. It’s catchy, sweet and filled with the melodious goodness we love from Soda Blonde. With warm guitar and striking lyrics, it’s a clever expression of Soda Blonde’s unique songcraft and musicianship and fits flush with the other tracks on the album while holding its own sense of identity. In fact, all the songs do. We discussed the selection process for the songs.

“Oh, it’s funny, I think that every writer will tell you like, this might be some sort of inside confession. But I would say that most writers kind of make sense of the work when they look back, you know, when we’re making the stuff we’re just making this stuff and then it comes to the point where it’s like, Okay, we have these other songs. What does this all mean together? How does this all sit together? How do we make this feel cohesive? So yeah, it definitely wasn’t the case that there was some sort of preconceived method to what we were trying to do you know, but I’m really pleased that you feel that it runs that way and that it feels cohesive, because we’re an albums band, we love albums. I know albums are not necessarily the “in vogue” thing and people are on Spotify now just listening to songs, but we want to make albums, you know. So I’m pleased that it feels like it.”

Within ‘Dream Big’ the listener gets a sense that the band are growing into themselves. However, there is a residue of self-doubt through many tracks. Within the lyrics of ‘Midnight Show’ Faye expresses “I just wanted to sing / But I’m not good enough, am I?”. We discussed how the band navigated the themes within this album.

“Yeah, I mean, we’re all 30/31 now and myself and Faye just got married, not to each other though and so we’re definitely arriving at this point in our lives that we are maturing in certain senses. But there is a constant push and pull with self-doubt. We kind of look back over everything and we try to make sense of what it all all means together. We’ve spoken a little bit about what ‘Dream Big’ means and I think we’ve given a few right answers, a few right kind of explanations and a few wrong explanations. But for me, I’ve been thinking about it a bit recently.

You know, ever since we were like 14 or 15. We’ve wanted to be in a band, and we’ve wanted to make albums and we’ve wanted to tour the world and we’ve wanted to win Grammys and play on stages to thousands and thousands of people and we’ve done lots of great things together in our time in the music industry, but the music industry has just changed so, so much in the last 10 years since we’ve been playing together. There’s I think 100,000 songs being uploaded to Spotify every single day. That’s 100,000 artists, just like us who have the same dream as us. Who all think that they have what it takes and all feel they have something to say and something to offer. 100,000 artists that go to bed every single night agonising over their art and waking up every day thinking what do I have to do to make this work? What do I have to do to achieve my dream? I think that the dream needs to be redefined you know, in 2023/2024, whatever it is, what does it mean to be an artist these days, you know? And that’s what we’ve been trying to figure out. That struggle, I think is where we’re at right now in our lives. Struggle is maybe the wrong word because I feel like we’ve maybe arrived at some sort of spiritual space where the meaning is derived in the creation of it and the being together. So that’s a bit of a roundabout way of answering your question, but that’s what it means to me anyway.”

There is a lot that goes into releasing music from the actual writing to the imagery, music videos and promotions. The band take control of all aspects of their music and image and I wondered how O’Regan navigates content creation with music creation in this world which requires everyone to be on the pulse when it comes to social media. 

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“Yeah, it’s really hard especially because we care so much about our songs and about our production and how we present everything. We put a lot of thought into our artwork and our music videos and all of that takes a lot of work, you know, every single aspect of it. You also have to be on TikTok and make 20 second videos and put them out every day and it’s kind of never-ending the amount of output that you have to have and that is hard, you know, because it’s not really enough anymore, to just make like a great song or 12 great songs or the best video like doesn’t matter how good it is. You have to play in this arena of being a content creator and it’s something that I wrestle with a bit because I feel like artists aren’t really content creators. They’re culture creators but they’re not valued as such really. So I feel there needs to be a bit of a revolution around. We’ll see if we can get there.”

The dreamy 1970’s -esque ‘Going Out’ brings the album to a lush lulling end. With pristine keys, mellow beats and spacious guitar between supple bass, the track is soft and seductive and wraps your mind in a warm soothing tone. I wondered what sparked the decision to end the album on this song.

“I’d love to be able to say that we wrote that song to be at the end of the album, but it’s kind of like a song suddenly comes along in the process and you go, that’s the opening of the album or a song comes on and you go, it’s called ‘Dream Big’, and that’s the name of the album, we’re gonna call the album Dream Big or the song comes along and in the case of ‘Going Out’ like this, never has ever happened before in our life making music together. We were set up in the room together and we were playing and I started playing this guitar part Dylan joined in and Donagh joined in and we were just kind of jamming and then Faye started singing and the whole song, we put the phone down to record it and everything came out just improvised, like the lyrics and everything just flowed through her. I don’t know that I believe in God but if you’re channelling something I mean, definitely there was some spirit going through us when that song came out. We played for about seven or eight minutes and then you kind of go wow, that was really magical. Should we chop that down. It’s a bit too long, seven minutes is really long. But it just felt perfect and it did feel right. I think after it was finished, we were like okay,  we’re gonna end the album with that. But you know, where did that come from? I mean, I don’t know. It’s just, we’re lucky to have been present in the room when God walked in. I don’t know, I can’t, we can’t take credit for some of these things that happened and they just kind of come and then the music tells you what to do. “

Soda Blonde are touring the UK and Ireland to celebrate the album and the band are buzzing to get to play these new songs live.

“Now we have to go through the process of learning how to play them all again, but I think it’s gonna be really fun album to play live. I think we can already tell that it’s going to be a good energy in the room”

So what have Soda Blonde got planned for their next step for world domination…. 

“Yeah, good question. Well, we want to get out and tour the album. We haven’t been able to tour outside of Ireland yet. Obviously, we brought out our first album during Covid. So we still have that kind of restless hangover. We’re going to Europe in January for five dates around Europe and we’re hoping to get to America we’d love to play SXSW and some of the festivals over there. We will probably start thinking about making another album pretty soon, because that’s our favorite thing to do. But the album’s just breathing now and we just want people to spend a bit of time with it, and let the audience digest the music and I feel like it’s still going to develop a little bit you know, in the next while.”

‘Dream Big’ is an album to cherish. Soda Blonde take life’s challenges and relatable themes and channel them into well-crafted tunes that act as anthems to navigating life experiences. There are songs within the album filled with lush instrumentation to dance carefree to; with pop melodies and earworm tones that are so sweet to the ears you can’t help but sing along. Also, there are meaningful eloquent lyrics, intricate instrumentation, grand production and cinematic masterpieces all contained within this 11-song treasure trove. Soda Blonde are growing with each release and ‘Dream Big’ is just a keyhole glimpse into the musical masterpieces this band can produce.

Stream ‘Dream Big’ below

Author: Danu