On May 15, 2019, Faye O’Rourke delighted her fans with a surprise Instagram post. She said, “We are very excited to announce our new project Soda Blonde. ”
Ans who knew O’Rourke was delighted – her work with Little Green Cars was internationally acclaimed, playing gigs at Coachella and South by Southwest. Late night with Jimmy FallonAdvocates have come to support her and bandmates Adam Oregan, Donna Seaver O’Leary and Dylan Lynch under this new mysterious guise.
Their first gig at Hogan’s Basement on George’s Street was a sellout. O’Rourke’s familiar and haunting vocals paired seamlessly with the group’s commitment to a more pop sound. Success is a theme that has proven to be consistent with this group, which now boasts veteran chops in the music industry.
At this stage, O’Rourke and her bandmates had been composing songs for about 15 years, exchanged shared experiences, and used personal experience to undergo a third level of education to become proficient in the art of mining for gold. I was avoiding it.
As a teenager, O’Rourke was a “nightmare.” Her darkness followed her and still continues to some extent but now she knows she can’t let it win it started when she was 14 and really heartbroken .
“I couldn’t get over it for five years,” she says. “It was really intense. I always felt so dark. I remember feeling something very strong.
near
Faye O’Rourke is excited about his new project.Photo by Steve Humphries
The next teen reads like the kind of socially relevant pamphlets that school nurses hand out at morning assemblies.
“I was heartbroken. So were my parents,” she says. “I serve them today. But now I know I have no choice but to be myself, and that’s where I arrived.
O’Rourke and her soda-blonde bandmate (named Frank Ocean’s blonde, and “because it sounds like it’s from anywhere in Europe”), and grew up in the leafy suburbs of south Dublin. A protected background, but an understated background.
An only child, her father grew up in 1970s London and worked as a subway driver before turning to fashion, designing patterns for famous brands such as Marc Bolan and David Bowie. She still works as a freelance stencil artist. Her mother did everything from Reiki to nursing and eventually ended up in landscaping.
“I’m middle class, but I’m not a silver spoon either. Not at all,” she says. “It’s hard to say I’ve had a rough life. I definitely saw some trauma in my teens. I tended to be overly emotional and very affected by things, and in my 20s I started to feel like I’ve had a real life.” experience trauma.
video of the day
At lunchtime on Thursday, I meet her partner, actor Fionn Foley, at Hen’s Teeth Gallery, just a stone’s throw from her 8 Dublin home in O’Rourke. She has a breeze, her hair scooped up to her neck and her deep brown eyes are almost cartoonishly charming.She has a throwaway beauty like a young Kate Bush. Masu – thoughtless and bubbly. When she gets her coffee (made in Vietnam, paper straws), it opens quickly, like a daisy facing the sun.
near
Faye O’Rourke is now an industry veteran.Photo: Steve Humphries
“I always felt that being open was my currency,” she says. “I find it very easy to talk about my shortcomings, but I find it very difficult to talk about what other people have done or things like that. I think it’s a very feminine thing to share.It’s a heavy connection.”
O’Rourke punctuates her sentences with laughter. A deep, thirsty, unobtrusive call to relieve the previous load. She’s bad at interviews, she says, unconsciously saying the wrong things and saying too many right things.
Still, she’s no mystery. She answers questions with enthusiasm, often rehashing old traumas and ripping off off-the-record details to make the case for this level of positivity for a woman who’s been tied to one of her fickle industries since she was 17. It’s nice to see the seriousness and candor.
Her tenure left a scar, but it shaped and twisted a confident, mature and optimistic teenager into a devastating embodiment of self-doubt.
“When we were [Little Green] Cars, I always felt so childish. I didn’t have a lot of freedom. And I was constantly told not to talk unless I didn’t look like him or had something interesting to say. It was hard. I always went out for releases,” she says.
“It was unsustainable and very jarring because people said I was doing great and I was just miserable. That’s the great thing about this new project. wrong.”
Soda Blonde brings a promise of legacy and difference. The influence of the 1980s is clear. With hints of Annie Lennox, Fleetwood Mac and Karen Carpenter at the forefront, the group’s distinctive lyrical sensibility hones in on the “gritty kitchen-sink realism” for which they’ve earned their fame. I’m here.
For O’Rourke, it presented an opportunity for a fresh identity. Her posture when filming and performing has always tended to be androgynous, including her suit, collar and tie. But her experience was essentially a “female” experience. “I was often called ‘girl’ backstage. “Because I was the only woman, I didn’t need her name,” she says.
everyone is afraid to do or say the wrong thing
With her freshly reworked beliefs, she consciously leaned into “some kind of sexuality” when she started anew. I was looking for it.
This is not uninspired by the #MeToo movement or the recent power to reclaim sacred femininity, it is a deliberate decision to embrace her femininity. It also serves as an opportunity to project something new.
“I was in this pivotal stage when I was 25 or 26. [she is now 30] I wanted to convey a more classic sexy image, but I don’t think there’s much of it. That said, I still sometimes wake up and think about cutting off all my hair.
A fresh and essentially unbranded start comes with its own baggage – nothing seems to bother O’Rourke, but there’s a lot to be desired in today’s industry. “Everyone is afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing.”
With the threat of cancellation always beckoning, talking to an artist at the top of their game is both a joy and a freshness, releasing the pressure like an old boiler and the feeling of speaking aloud. Discuss meaning.
“There’s a lot more diversity, which is great, but I think people are very conscious of how they are perceived these days. has become more important than
It casts a shadow over art, she says, and cites why making mistakes isn’t such a bad thing.
near
Faye O’Rourke had a difficult teenage years.Photo: Steve Humphries
“The only way we learn is by making mistakes through art,” she says, raising her hands above her head and quickly dropping them to swipe the table with a masochistic gaze.
She doesn’t consider herself a role model. It’s never been on her list, she says. I feel her brows wrinkle. She is unknown to O’Rourke, but she is truly a role model for those who look up to her.
She laughs off the notion, saying that humans are deeply flawed (“This is not necessarily a bad thing”).
“Actually, Sinead O’Connor [the band were due to open for her in the Iveagh Gardens last month before tragedy struck in O’Connor’s personal life;], she is a role model. I will never know how she was so safe and confident at 18 years old. ”
After a while the restaurant got busy. We start laughing about our mistakes.
“I guess I like playing devil’s advocate,” she finally said, creating a wry smile. “It annoys people. It’s okay to admit that you don’t really know what you’re talking about. Like, that’s fine. You might come to a conclusion in a minute. Censorship too my book So bad, why take something away and pretend it’s not there?
She finished her coffee and smiled. The look on her face tells me that she’s said too much, but she believes it all, and she’s off to finish the record the band is currently making. They are not shy about their end goal.
“My dream is to go to the stratosphere,” she says. “We want to go back to America to tour and perform. We all have different ideas about what we want to do, but I want my life back. So that’s it now.” is the plan of
Soda Blondes will have a night and day festival at Castlereare on September 25th and Vicar Street on December 9th. Tickets are available at sodablonde.com.
