The Goo 1
Words: Éle Ní Chonbhuí DREAM BOY Keep an eye out
for Dream Boy, a shoegaze band with intimate (but not confessional) vocals and atmospheric melodies. Singer and songwriter Allie Ryan curbed her craving for boba as we discussed their upcoming EP. Tell me about your EP Drowning in Blue which comes out on June 6th and your headliner in Workman’s Cellar on the 26th of June? It’s a five song EP and ‘Eyes Closed’ is the main single we’re pushing from it. It’s a bit different to the stuff we have out while still belonging to the sonic world of DREAM BOY. Our gig in Workman’s is our first promoter-backed headline and working with Singularartists has always been such a dream of ours. We do have a few surprises in store, a bit of violin maybe, and quite a few new songs that have a Dream Pop influence. Of course, we have Pebbledash opening. I am obsessed with everything they do. We’re more excited for their set than ours. Why did you pick ‘Eyes Closed’ as your promotion track? We love playing it live, people respond so well to it. One part of it is just me playing guitar and vocals, and often people ask “what’s that keyhole one?” The kind of music we make, you don’t get people singing 44 along often. It’s so nice to hear the lyrics said back to me. Have you noticed any changes to your sound throughout this EP? In the last three months our sound has developed a bit. We’re leaning more into the Dream Pop side of things. I’ve always said we were too melodic to be fully Shoegaze. Even Lola’s bass lines are very melodic. It’s fun when people sing along or recognise a hook or something. I do think you can still say it feels very DREAM BOY. Anything, any song, anything that we’ve written, I always have a colour or a vision associated with it. So with Drowning in Blue, are the songs blue in your head? Drowning in Blue is actually a lyric from ‘Ivory.’ The word blue encompasses how I was feeling when I was writing these songs. ‘Ivory’ is about ivory in tusks. I saw this documentary when I was a kid about how they tranquilise rhinos and elephants to cut off their tusks to stop poaching. It represents feeling like something was taken from you when you would have given it up willingly. Like being in a relationship and someone’s overstepping a boundary. I loved you anyway. You didn’t have to be mean. You donated a lot of the money made from ‘Bleed’ to Jigsaw. Are you interested in combining music-as-art and music-as-aplatform? Yeah, 100%. But in a way that feels natural to us too. ‘Bleed’ was written about a very tough time in my life when I felt like I didn’t have proper mental health support. I wanted to be able to give back. To me, music and art are about community. Why do you think shoegaze is so popular at the moment in Ireland? It would be kind of crazy if really happy synth pop was coming out of Ireland right now. I always thought it was a very safe and inclusive place. I just don’t see that in the way I used to. I think you can draw parallels between now and the 90s in Ireland when Shoegaze was also popular, like a cultural moment translated into sound. I don’t know, I almost think it’s an Irish thing to make a lot of noise but to do it nicely. Drowning In Blue EP is out now. Dream Boy headline The Workmans Cellar on June 26th. Tickets: www.singularartists.ie. @dreamboy.band