In Conversation: Therapy Horse

Even with no recordings and only a handful of live gigs at the time of writing, no-gaze trio Therapy Horse are quickly establishing themselves as one of the most promising of the new wave of "quiet-loud-scary" bands haunting venues up and down Ireland. I sat down with Emily and Cormac to chat about all things DIY, nightmare gig scenarios and the creative process

So to start with, could ye tell me a little bit about who ye are and what ye do?

EMILY: We’re a three piece band, genre-wise I think there’s a bit of a blend. It started about a year ago as a songwriting project with myself and Cormac, with us dicking around in UCC FM. I had a few bits written, you (Cormac) had some ambient bits written. It was just after you (Cormac) joined Pebbledash. We were looking for a kind of dream poppy, Beach House style bits, and it turned into something much more terrifying…horrifying! Schuch joined in November or December last year, and we really became a more noisy, shoegaze band. I think we draw inspiration sonically from a lot of the current wave of noisy bands, especially Irish bands like Chalk or Nerves. Slint would be huge for us. All you shoegaze and noise rock. I think we’re a pretty emotional band as well

CORMAC: This time last year we first started writing bits together. It’s kind of in a process of change a lot of the time. It goes from quite wiry, post-punky stuff, to more in the realm of Slowdive, your much more heart-on-the-sleeve emotive Shoegaze

Do ye write everything together, or does someone come with an idea that ye all slot in on? Or do ye go into rehearsals as a blank slate?

CORMAC: I think we’ve had songs that have originated in all of those places. We have a song called Shame that we played for the first time at our last gig that originated as a demo that Emily had written herself and just recorded on podcast mics in UCCFM. That came, if not fully formed, then skeletally formed in the sense that all the vocal parts were there, the bassline that anchors that song is there. Even if the songs aren’t fully fleshed out, they definitely come to myself or Schuch or whoever with a shape that whoever didn’t originate the idea would add to. Equally, we’re not closed off to the idea of songwriting otherwise. We’ve often written songs through a process of just going into a practice space and jamming and singing over it, which I think is to our advantage as a band. It makes each of our rehearsals feel rich with possibility. We could come out of rehearsal with 75% of two songs that have come from a jam

EMILY: I also think it’s quite an egalitarian process. It’s not a case of “I’m the songwriter because I’m doing the vocals!” Schuch isn’t here now, but he’s an incredibly creative drummer, who’s written his own stuff independently and done a lot of work on our arrangements. The three of us would contribute equally, but we are all perfectionists. Each of those songs will have gone through months of “oh, will we do that faster?” or “lets take out this section and put in this one.”

Do ye like road testing songs, or do ye prefer to play a song live for the first time when it’s as close to being finished as possible?

CORMAC: I think we’ve had a process of road testing in the handful of gigs we’ve had so far. As perfectionistic as we are, I don’t think we’re reluctant to see how a song, once it gets to a certain point, fits in a set and how people respond to it live. Seeing how people react to sections of a song and then going back and refining is definitely something that we’ve done with tracks so far.

EMILY: Because a lot of our set is improvised, you can only have the songs be so concrete before that doesn’t work any more. There’s a song we tend to play last in our set called Let Me Be Clear where I just scream my head off and only have a vague idea of what I’m going to do. I would say I’m much more texture oriented as a bass player than melody oriented, I’m not thinking necessarily about how I’m gonna do eight quavers here, it’s more like “I need it to sound scary here”

What do ye think a Therapy Horse show looks like to an outsider, and how does a Therapy Horse show feel like for ye?

EMILY: Oh, that’s a really good question. I think what I want it to look like is a cathartic experience. When I think of a really good shoegaze band, often the textures and instrumentals will take precedence over the lyrics, even though lots of shoegaze bands have great lyricists. I guess I want it to be one of those gigs where the music is nearly in you. I also hope that from the outside in, it’s a bit confronting. A lot of the music does touch on themes like misogyny and abuse, so I want it to be confronting but cathartic. How it feels to be behind that is cool. I definitely feel like it’s a letting loose thing. I feel like I put a lot of myself into the performances and I hope that comes across. After our first gig, my hand had a massive bruise from how I was playing bass. I get a sense of catharsis from it too

CORMAC: It is very physical and strenuous in a good way. After that first Cork gig, the three of us had a moment when we went outside and thought “I just wanna go home!” 

EMILY: I wanna go to bed!

CORMAC: So it certainly feels like a whole body experience. Emily mentioned about the more improvisational sections of the songs. I think with my guitar playing, which relies totally on effects and manipulating feedback, that can introduce a level of unpredictability with gigs, that’s very exciting. Equally for audiences, it’s nice when we get reactions that are centred around surprise. There’s a certain satisfaction I take, as we get more gigs under our belt, when people come to see us and we do a song like Let Me Be Clear and they say “Jesus, this is even more out there than the last time”

Is there a particular style or atmosphere of gig that you’d really love to play, and what would be your nightmare gig?

EMILY: I really love this. There’s this noise rock band called Mr.Phylzzz that keeps playing shows in libraries, I think they just show up. It’s so funny. They sing about how the library is cool. Something like that would be the dream! I love venues like Dali and Pharmacia though. Pharmacia in Limerick was my first introduction to live music. I was in a really terrible band as a teenager, but we were very lucky to be asked to open for Anna’s Anchor in Pharmacia before it was done up. It was just a big black box of a room. I love that really interesting and open minded crowd somewhere like that brings. They know they’re gonna get something weird. I can’t think of anywhere in particular for a nightmare gig, but anywhere with a dudebro crowd. I’m really big on our gigs being a positive place for women, and you definitely feel less like you’re being dissected onstage when you have a good ratio of women to men. Anything too testosterone filled, with people just hitting each other, just drives me mad. It’s not my vibe. Oh, and the bluesdad thing! Watch me get myself cancelled!

CORMAC: That would be awful, and very against the ethos of our music, if such a thing exists! I’ve been to some gigs as well where the room is quite full, but no one is looking at the band. It might be a particular night of the week, or a night a promoter is putting on, that’s good for drawing a crowd but isn’t necessarily the right fit for the band. It’s a cliche, but you’d see a band giving it their all to a load of fellas on their phones, or turned around chatting to their mates even though they’re right up in the front rows. Obviously gigs are a social place, but that would be a nightmare with Therapy Horse. We put a lot of ourselves into it. That’s not really an issue with DIY gigs, you have a more symbiotic relationship between the audience and the band. The people are appreciative of the effort that goes into performance and putting on gigs. Nightmare gigs are where that’s not happening. Dream gig is a great bill with a lot of really horrible, noisy buddies of ours. Who you’re playing with makes a huge difference, When you can rock up to a soundcheck and be amongst friends, and then just watch your friends' bands. That’s great

EMILY: I kind of like when there’s a huge contrast too. Our first gig was put on by our buddy Seth who runs Wombat Promotions in Limerick. It was a showcase with ourselves, Mise an Sliabh, who’s a singer-songwriter, Blonde, the lads from West Cork who do indie rock, and Martian Subculture, who do psychedelic jazz fusion. It was so funny. There was tonal whiplash. I love a gig like that. Going up right after Blonde, who are really good pop songwriters, and just starting with a noise jam and bashing everything, that was so fun!

If ye were stuck on a space shuttle forever, with no hope for coming home, what five albums would ye want to have with ye?

EMILY: You’re asking two massive nerds this question. I think number one is You Never Know Why by Sweet Trip, I just love that album. The Velvet Underground and Nico…this is really hard... .Wednesday by Just Mustard is a huge album for me. The Talkies by Girl Band! Curveball, I think I want to say Magdalene by FKA Twigs! I really love that album, I think she’s really cool

CORMAC: For me, I’m gonna say Pastel Blues by Nina Simone, Music for Airports by Brian Eno. There’s a live album from the 70s no-wave scene in New York, I think is just called Improvised Music 1981. It has Derek Bailey, John Zorn, and this incredible guitarist called Sonny Sharock, who I just rip off all the time. I think that collective is called Last Exit, but they didn’t always play under that name. Antiphonals by Sarah Davachi, a sound and ambient artist who works with lots of church organs and things like that. I think it would really calm me down as I voyage through the stars. In Heat, Not Sorry by The Altered Hours is amazing. It’s so heavy and beautiful and would remind me of Cork. I’ll go with one more Cork album and go with Galtee Virtual Muse, which is the new Mantua album from Elaine Malone. It’s really, really wonderful, and I think is the peak and outgrowing in a wonderful direction of everything she’s done with that project so far

EMILY: You chose really calming ones, I’m gonna be crying up there!

Is there anything else you’d like to add

CORMAC: Death to our enemies

EMILY: Death to our enemy. Death to one of our enemies, like a lotto system

CORMAC: Hopefully we’ll have some stuff out soon, just keep an eye on our socials 

EMILY: Maybe we’ll start busking

CORMAC: But only play Let Me Be Clear

In libraries!