Interview: Gurriers Find Meaning in Noise with ‘Nobody’s Coming to Save You’

There is no shortage of Irish bands to get excited over these days, and Gurriers have a valid claim to sit amongst the best. Second album Nobody’s Coming to Save You expands their sound without diluting their anger and fire.

SNACK caught up with bassist Charlie McCarthy to discuss the new record, musical storytelling, and what makes a band important.

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Title track, ‘Nobody’s Coming to Save You’, kicks back at a review that labelled the band as political but having no answers. Does the breadth of criticism a band gets surprise you?

It’s a strange criticism. We’re not a political party. Do you really want your artists to start writing policy? I think that’s a terrible idea. It completely misses the point of what an artist’s role is.

I feel like the onus of an artist is to read the temperature in the room of society more broadly. That’s what an artist does when they’re at their best.

In 2022, frontman Dan Hoff talked about a song that would have to wait until the second or third album, called ‘Dead Sun’. Is that still kicking about?

I’ve heard that riff in every third soundcheck for the past two and a half years. It’s a song I still haven’t heard in full, but I’ve heard the riff so many times, and it is really cool. So that might make an appearance. Or maybe it won’t.

With ‘Drones’, there was a song we had on the road called ‘Dissolve’. We never released it and shelved it, but our favourite part of that song ended up in ‘Drones’.

Talk me through the tracklisting. Why does ‘Drones’ sit in the middle, and why does ‘Crybaby’ end the record?

We all love movies, and that was a big part of how we thought about the tracklisting: how do you treat this like a three-act movie?

‘Drones’ felt like a very obvious midpoint of the album, because it’s brooding, weird, and dramatic.

‘Crybaby’ just felt like such a good finish. We could do the big epic action sequence, but it’s cool to have that earlier and then have the consequences land in the ending.

The bass on ‘Drones’ is so murky. How did you get that sound?

There’s an amazing organ composer called Kali Malone who does really long sustained pieces. When she sits on notes for so long, you start to hear all this micro-rhythm of the notes clashing with each other.

I was trying to find a way to create sustain that still has movement. It’s G, E flat, and C for the whole song, more or less, until the midsection.

Ireland’s Basic Income for the Arts pilot is possibly coming to Scotland. Do you or anyone you know have experience with it?

A couple of my friends managed to get on the pilot, which literally changed their lives. The biggest thing was the pressure to make money off music. Dublin is a very expensive city to live in, and a basic income for artists takes so much of that pressure off.

If you are successful in getting a basic income to create art, I think you have a responsibility to everyone who didn’t get it to try your hardest at doing it.

Dan told the NME that Gurriers want to be an important band. Can you name a band that’s important right now?

Lambrini Girls. They speak to something bigger. That’s the biggest thing a band can ever be: more than the sum of its parts. It’s a place, a feeling, an understanding.

What song do you need the Glasgow audience to lose it for most?

‘Drones’. The Yanks are the only ones who’ve gotten it so far, which I think is insult enough that anyone from Scotland will take it seriously and get the pit going.

That midsection, where it drops and holds and builds back up again, feels so explosive live.So if everyone at SWG3 reads this, that’s your moment.

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Nobody’s Coming to Save You is out now, released on Play It Again Sam

Gurriers play SWG3 on 14th October

Photo credit: Steve Gullick