Tell us about yourself!

Hi, I’m Conor. Unstuck is Andrew (guitar/vox), me (bass/vox), and Dean (drums). For some songs, Andrew and I will swap bass and guitar, but that’s our usual setup. We’re all in our mid-twenties and have been friends since secondary school, where we met in Wexford. Dean is working in construction and he’s a film buff. Andrew is in the communications/writing field, he’s a great cook and a wicked boules player. I went back to college to do a psychology degree that I’ll finish this year. I’ve an interest in creatures with wings, and Carly Rae Jepsen.

In terms of music, we like a lot of different stuff from loads of genres, but our taste is mostly shared. The real keystone bands for us are XTC, The Beach Boys, and Built to Spill. We like a lot of poppier-sounding guitar music but we’re also really into weirder or heavier stuff. We like Unwound, Ovlov, and Metallica’s ‘Death Magnetic’ (get on it). Outside of music, Unstuck are big fans of Tekken, particularly Tekken 5 on PS2 which we unashamedly play for multi-hour sessions on occasion. We also love quiz shows and puzzles. Between us, I’d wager we’ve seen every single aired episode of The Chase. Long car journeys will always be filled with riddles and trivia challenges.

What does being a musician(s) mean to you?

It’s really cool getting to create stuff with your best friends and being part of a community of creative people in Ireland. Writing songs and sharing them with people is just amazing fun and I think we’d all be a bit lost without that. There are tons of great Irish artists that are very inspiring. We’ve both played with and seen some deadly bands gigging around in the last year. At the time of writing this, our most recent gig was with His Father’s Voice in Limerick. They are fantastic, you must see them play. We’ve also got a gig coming up with Onion Boys which I can’t wait for. Johnny Dublin and I have been friends since childhood, and they are great craic. But yeah, the meaning comes from sharing and connecting.

What events led up to pursuing music? Did something snap or was it a gradual progression? Where do you find inspiration? Is there a place? An emotion? A cultural event? A mixture of many things at once?

We all played in bands as teenagers that never lasted long and ended up dissolving. No one cried, we sucked. Around 2018, Andrew and I were living together. He’d started playing a lot more and joined a band with a group of our friends called Stupid Son (check ’em out). Some of the stuff he was creating alone in his bedroom was very hook-y and didn’t fit the abrasive style of that band. This eventually resulted in him asking Dean and I if we wanted to form a band. Yes of course was the answer and that was the start of Unstuck. The lockdowns prevented us from getting started and it wasn’t until the summer of last year that we played our first gig.

We’ve been writing together since and I think I can speak for all of us in saying that inspiration can come from many places. Lyrically the songs are more concerned with the internal world, or the emotional reaction to things happening at the more local, interpersonal level.

Can you tell me how you approach your work? Do you follow a particular system or just jump right in?

Occasionally, but not very often, we’ll be messing around getting set up and we’ll jam out an interesting idea that will get fully fleshed out and become a song. Much more often it starts with Andrew or me writing something alone at home first. No matter how it is initiated though, every song must meet Dean. That’s when the full band interprets, arranges, and warps the track into its final form. The collaborative piece at the end makes the final songs more interesting.

What do you aim for people to feel or acknowledge when viewing / listening to your work?

Andrew said once, “I want to make music that I would enjoy listening to”. It seems obvious but it makes a big difference to keep that in mind when we’re creating. All three of us want to feel excited about the work when it’s finished so if the listener can feel excitement or get true enjoyment from the music, that’s class. We just care about the songs being good. If we’re writing with sincerity and we’re content with the quality of the output, our job is done.

Why not say some words on your latest release? Or give us the scoop on some unreleased work?!

‘Ointment? EP’ is our debut EP and it’s out on August 4th. It was recorded in Trim, Co. Meath, with Oisín Walsh of Spearside who did a super job mixing it for us. It’s five songs we’ve been playing since gig #1 that we hope will inform the listener about who we are as a band. There’s a good range of what we do on there. You get some of our fuzzier side, some of our quirkier side, and a mix of both vocals. There’s also a visual story tied into the release. Our dear friend and collaborator Flag Acid has been a huge part of Unstuck since the beginning and has helped bring our vision to life with his talent. We owe him a lot of credit. We have a lot more music to show and will be releasing more in the next year, after this EP.

Have you got any plans for the future?

We will be back in the studio recording more music this month. We’re very excited and looking forward to sharing those songs, as mentioned, over the next year. I can tell you it’s more than a few tracks and they will show different sides to us as a band as well as revealing more of the direction in which we’re growing. We’ve been enjoying playing our first gigs outside of Dublin in Wexford, Limerick, and Cork and we’ll hopefully get over to Galway soon. We’re keen on meeting new artists and bands and seeing the great things happening around the country with music. Next summer we hope to get some more showcases and music festivals under the belt. We also have a batch of songs we’re very, very happy with. We’re saving these for next summer to hopefully record the big one…