motel void

MOTEL VOID: You’ve just released your new single “girls, girls, girls.” It’s hard not to notice that you focus mainly on releasing singles. Still, are there any plans for a debut album? And could you tell us a bit about the recording process of your latest single? How does the songwriting process usually work within the band — is it more of a collective effort, or does one of you take the lead?

SELL EVERYTHING (TOM KELLY): We’ve been focusing on releasing singles for the last year or so and it’s been really fun and it’s been very different each song, you know, song to song. But we’re thinking of, well, we’re in the process of putting together a bigger project.

We don’t know exactly what we can say right now, but I’m really excited for it. The recording process of our latest single – the lead was taken by Fionn, Fionn McLaughlin, he created that sound on his own pretty much with all the instrumental. And then I spent the day just doing vocals and laying down whatever ideas I could find. That’s usually kind of how these singles have gone. It’s one of us taking the lead, one or two of us taking the lead, and then the rest of us chipping in a little bit where we can. I feel like it’s getting more of a, it’s becoming more of a collective effort now as we’re getting more equipment and more, more opportunities to record and we’re getting to explore different processes, which is really fun!

MOTEL VOID: Your most successful single so far, “Landlord Blues,” released last year, is approaching 400,000 streams on Spotify. Do you feel this success has helped your career – for example, did you notice more concert offers after that?

SELL EVERYTHING (TOM KELLY): Yeah, definitely opened a lot of doors for us and it definitely helped us, even just confidence-wise, when you’re starting out as a band and releasing music, you never know how it’s gonna go. So it was a really fortunate thing that we’ve got under our belt now. It’s kind of hard to fathom that many streams, it’s a lot of people. It has helped, I think, it kind of solidified with ourselves, solidified our own professionalism and solidified our confidence in our sound. And we know we’re doing something right anyway, so it’s a nice feeling.

MOTEL VOID: Who are the biggest inspirations behind your current sound?

SELL EVERYTHING (TOM KELLY): We all have very different inspirations and different tastes. For myself, I’d say people like MJ Lenderman and King Krule, MkGee and all the kind of newer indie coming out is really cool. Dean Blunt is always a huge one. I think I’m getting inspired a lot by the scene around us as well in Dublin. Like last night, I was at a great gig with Mount Pirus, Avenue 68, EppieBand and Mac Steady and we’d all be close enough in the scene and it’s just great to go out and see great music all the time.

We really are very lucky in Dublin with a really thriving scene and a very unique sound. And yeah, I’d love to get out and see more gigs of up-and-coming bands because every time I go out and see a gig, you always find another band that’s just doing something really cool.

MOTEL VOID: How would you describe the current local scene in Dublin? Could you recommend more of your favorite venues and local artists?

SELL EVERYTHING (TOM KELLY): Dublin is really thriving right now. I mentioned a few in another interview there and yeah, I’d say there’s loads of really, really amazing artists. One of our inspirations would have been BrickNasty coming up, just even seeing how they did it, went about creating music and putting on gigs and taking it serious and putting the effort in. People like Gurriers are great and a great inspiration to us as well and obviously you have big bands, Fontaines and loads of people coming out. I love Junior Brother, he’s another great guy in the Irish scene. Black Nylon are doing great right now, it’s great to see. Sarah Brookie and Bleach, that’s that kind of pocket of beautiful alternative rock and roll. And then you got the jazzy side of things. Mount Pyrus, Avenue 68, Troy Okay, Mac Steady, Esmeralda Road, syano, loads of great bands. Great musicians, Sidney Stein, gotta shout them out…

MOTEL VOID: Are you planning to tour with the new material, possibly even outside of Ireland?

SELL EVERYTHING (TOM KELLY): I think we would love to tour. We haven’t really toured yet, we just gig a lot, in a disorganised way. But it’d be nice to actually write it all down and have them one after the other. But yeah, I think it’d be great to tour around Europe anyway, for a start. Hopefully in the springtime or something, we’ll see!