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SOUND PILLOW TALK Emboldened by faith in themselv
es and their sexuality, Pillow Queens are no longer lying ‘in waiting’, they have arrived. words Danny Wilson photo Faolán Carey Pillow Queens are happy to be out of the house. As we sit unpacking their dizzying ascent from fundraisers for neglected dogs to packed European stadia, Sarah Corcoran (Vocals, Guitar, Bass) and Rachel Lyons (Drums) are in agreement that it’s nice to be talking to somebody new for the first time in a few months. Frankly, the pleasure is mutual, as Corcoran and Lyons aren’t short on stories. That’s what happens when you spend the last four years taking every gig that comes your way, especially when the gigs keep getting bigger and bigger. “We did the tour with Soak,” says Corcoran, just running through the flurry of activity that has followed the 2019 release of their EP State of the State, “as soon as we got off the tour we did every festival under the sun. After that, we did two dates with Two Door Cinema Club. The next day we flew to New York, came back – we all went to work for five days – then we flew to L.A. From L.A., we flew back to Dublin – slept for six hours – and then flew to Iceland. This is what life was like pre-pandemic. We were wrecked, but we were buzzin!” Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Before they were jetsetters, Pillow Queens were would-be Globetrotters. “I was working in the Irish Film Institute, I’d finished my masters and I was trying to get a start as a filmmaker,” explains Corcoran. “I was working away and we had set up an all-girls basketball team. We were doing it in an attempt to be social without just going to pubs but we’d always end up in the pub anyway. On this one particular day, Pamela [Connolly – Vocals, Guitar, Bass], who is also in the band and set up the basketball team, invited Cathy, [McGuinness – Guitar]. Cathy was very competitive and I was like, “Who is this, stepping on my basketball game, I’m going to have to kill her. After that, we went for our usual drinks and got talking about music and Pamela said Cathy is a great guitarist and maybe we should jam.” “She’d been trying to get Pamela to start a band for years,” adds Lyons. “Years!” echos a wide-eyed Corcoran. “She just kept saying no to me,” she continues, “I’d heard her music and I loved her voice and I loved her songwriting so I was always like, let’s do this! Cathy, of course, was like ‘no I don’t play guitar anymore, I don’t want to do it.’ Pamela and I moved in together that summer and I kept pressuring her.” “She doesn’t take well to pressure,” proffers Lyons in what is quickly being established as a characteristic, sage and direct interjection. “No, she does not,” concurs Corcoran with a smile. “But, when Cathy came into the mix I think [Pamela] began to feel that this could actually be a workable thing. So, she persuaded Cathy to jam. From there we were like alright, we’ve got three gay women in a band, we need to get a fourth. Of course, we thought, ‘Oh my god, Rachel can play drums!” “She hasn’t in years but she can!” jokes Lyons. “I remember one of our first meetings,” Corcoran continues, “we had to be like, ‘Rachel, so do you think you’d like to be like in the band?’ and as soon as she said, ‘em, I think so yeah’, we were immediately like, ‘that’s great because we’ve our first gig booked in two weeks!’” It makes sense that even the earliest conversations surrounding the band were focused on live performance, Pillow Queens’ have built an enviable cult off the back of their relentless gigging. “To me, that’s the best part of being in a band,” says Corcoran on the life of a touring band. “Releasing music is just a way to get it out there to people so they can experience it with you live. When people start singing songs back to you and stuff it’s like, cool now you’re in the band too. It really does feel that way. Like there is, dare I say it, a community. When you’ve got people singing words back to you that you wrote about sad things that happened in your heart and suddenly somebody else is sharing in that, it’s just so lovely.” “You kind of disassociate from [the experiences] a little bit in those moments. I remember something I read where Grian from the Fontaines said how he could feel himself disassociating from the person on the first album and how that was difficult. I actually find it really rewarding; it’s like you’re getting over something. I’ve gone through this thing that meant so much to me that I wrote a song about it. Now I’m able to just get over it and share it with an audience like, fuck it, it’s your problem now.” As arresting as Corcoran’s descriptions of her relationship with the band’s listenership are, it’s just as striking when she and Lyons speak on particulars of the atmosphere within the band. The pair mention in passing that even 54