Ones to watch: Small Church to play first headliner gig in Limerick

WHEN Limerick quartet Small Church started making music during the pandemic, they felt they were in a “little cocoon” as they spent time writing and playing together. A cocoon they’re about to step out of with their first headliner gig in Dolan’s.

After meeting in college, vocalist and guitarist Andreea Mocanu, keyboardist Seán Horgan, bassist Killian Moran and drummer Paddy Critchley collided to make music together. The four Limerick School of Art and Design  alumni usually “start quiet, then get loud.”

Speaking of creating music during Covid, Seán recalls: “It kind of gave us a chance to focus on writing and stuff without feeling we had to have something polished for a gig, because there were no gigs, so we were just like in a little cocoon, writing and playing together.”

WATCH: Limerick's favourite dead poets share new duet with Laura Duff

The Limerick quartet blend elements of Grunge and Shoegaze, an unusual subgenre of indie and alternative rock that focuses on creating an ethereal mixture of obscured vocals, guitar distortion and different effects.

When asked to describe their music, the vocalist and the keyboardist go back and forth, and their exchanges make for a rather interesting tennis-like conversation. Often, they finish each other’s sentences.

“It starts quiet, then it gets loud,” they both agree. According to Small Church, their sound is dynamic, grunge and melodic.
Why are they called Small Church? “We got tricked into picking this,” smiles Seán.

“We got bamboozled by Killian. We were thinking of band names, and we were like ‘oh it can't be anything too cringy’. And he was like, what about Small Church? That had some sort of ring to it, it’s definitely been the best so far, because we had woeful names before,” says Andreea.

“He got us all to agree. And then he revealed to us afterwards that the name Small Church is just the English for his name, because his name in Irish just means small church. So he named the band after himself,” laughs Seán.

At the moment, the four friends are recording their debut EP. “We’re hoping to have tracks released for a launch that we're doing in the Commercial on July 28,” says Seán.  Andreea continues: “Recording is just a really long process. I don't know. I feel like for other musicians it's like so easy, but for us it's just like so hard for some reason. Maybe it's a secret though, so…”

She says: “We’ve been in the process of recording for well over a year.  It's really difficult to get it right. But we're almost there and there's a couple things coming in, so hopefully people can look out for that.”

Speaking of their creative process, Seán explains: “Killian generally will come with a baseline that he's excited about, so we kinda want to build it up. Then, Andrea and myself would be the main melody makers. And quite often what I do will act as kind of like a counterpoint to what Andrea is doing. We have two melodies going at once, which is kind of unusual.”

Andreea writes the lyrics. “When I'm writing lyrics, it's just more so like my emotional state of mind, which is so cringy to say,” she giggles.

Seán says: “What it sounds like to me is that you weaponise vulnerability.”

Andreea wants to tackle themes that a young woman would experience in her twenties. “You get your heart broken, you feel all these emotions, and like you have all these mental issues going on.”

Even though their music is not out just yet, Small Church have been making notable appearances on the Limerick music scene.
“The music scene in Limerick is really big, it’s like booming at the minute.  People who are within the music scene support each other, and it brings in a good crowd,” notes Andreea.

You won’t have to wait much longer as Small Church will be releasing songs in July. And the first one will be A Young Man’s Life.
“It   builds up with the whole dynamic thing we were talking about earlier. It gets from like really quiet to like really loud. I’m pretty much talking for the first two verses, and then when it gets like the last bit, I'm just screaming,” Andreea explains.

Small Church will be playing their first headliner in Dolan’s this Friday, June 30.