Irish duo Little Hours came to my attention somewhere between the Norwegian indie pop and German rock selections on my Great Escape Spotify playlist last month. Between John Doherty and Ryan Mc Closkey, some gorgeous indie-folk sounds present themselves and after discovering their debut EP, I knew theirs was a set I’d wanted to see out in Brighton.
Sitting down with both John and Ryan prior to their soundcheck, they fill me in on what’s been happening since the Little Hours EP landed them in the favourable embrace of music critics in Ireland and the UK, not to mention on the road with Kodaline.
“We’ve just come out of the studio,” Doherty says. “We’ve finished our first album. There’ll be a lot of new music coming, hopefully very soon.”
Little Hours’ popularity, especially off the back of their UK tour with Kodaline and on various festival stages since, has catapulted Doherty and Mc Closkey into the spotlight now and in a clever PR move it would seem, people are being left hanging when it comes to getting snippets of new music from the band in the lead up.
The only trace of them on Spotify or on their official YouTube channel is in their single “Tired”, a 2015 release. The band airs some frustration over this secrecy their new music is currently shrouded in, but they’re equally as excited to finally be able to share their new material in a finished, refined, album format.
“We had time to breathe and put down our ideas for songs.” Mc Closkey says of Little Hours’ venture into the full album making process. “We’d only released the EP, but we just wanted to get it right before we released something else. There’s very little music available over here, the label was really careful in not making heaps available. I think the EP is available on Bandcamp, but we just kept that up there because we wanted people to have it. We’re really excited to be releasing new music, I think it’s in the next month or two that we’re going to be putting something out. We cannot wait.”
Still relatively new on the scene in the eyes of many no doubt, Little Hours reflect on the last two years of writing and touring as they look ahead to what’s going to be quite the busy year.
“We’ve always had the same idea of what our music should sound like,” Mc Closkey says. “I don’t think it’s really changed too much from when we started. It’s been two years ago now since we started and it hasn’t really changed. I think we’re taking inspiration from Irish artists like Hozier at the moment, but I suppose it is about trying to find your own sound and set it apart. We’ve been fortunate in that I think our stuff does sound different anyway, because it’s just piano and guitar.”
Being in the studio and working on new ideas pushed both Mc Closkey and Doherty as writers, while their dynamic and musical partnership also became tighter. Creative liberties were able to be developed upon and explored over almost two months in the studio, an experience the duo says was unforgettable.
“There are moments in each song that we’re really proud of and happy with,” Doherty says. “We’ve tried to make sure that every song had a moment or had something different and we were happy with how it turned out. We feel that each song had a special moment on it.”
“We were actually able to do a few ‘risky’ songs,” Mc Closkey adds enthusiastically. “Songs that we absolutely loved, but thought that nobody was going to sign off on because it was too different or whatever. They were so good with our creative freedom, they let us do whatever they want. There are a few songs where we’re like, ‘Holy crap – they let us do that?!’ – it’s brilliant.”
“We’re so happy,” he says. “They’re the songs that really reflect where we are. There are other songs where we’re like, ‘Sure, they’re really upbeat songs,’ but there are others that we are just so proud of and they might not even be the ones that have the most success. It was seven weeks of pure, intense studio time – it was great. It went so well.”
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Find out more about Little Hours HERE.
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