Garage two-piece Adore have returned with their debut EP Biter, their first as a duo following the departure of bassist Lachlann Ó Fionnáin earlier this year. The seven-track project centres around the idea of vices and how people tend to take mannerisms from childhood that translate into adult life.
“These little acts of childhood menace are performed when a child feels great emotion; be it positive or negative, love or hatred” Lara Minchin (guitar, vocals) explains, “Over the years, I learned how keeping to myself and using silence as a form of self defence was affecting my sense of self. I no longer have to be obedient to survive”.
Speaking to Lara from her Dublin home and Naoise Jordan Cavanagh (drums) from Cork, you can really feel the sense of excitement that comes with releasing their first project. The project was Produced by Gilla Band bassist Daniel Fox and will be released via their label, Big Scary Monsters.
Adore at Whelan's, Dublin 8.12.2024 Copyright Colm Kelly
How have the past few months been for you, preparing for the EP?
Naoise: Really busy, but more so busy planning stuff. We haven’t been gigging too much recently, so it’s been mainly just building up to the EP and planning future gigs. We’re writing when we can too and rehearsing as much as possible because we just got a new bass player so we’re working through the setlist with him. It probably looks like we’re not too busy but behind the scenes we’re working
You’re recording everything yourself; the videos and covers are all recorded in-house?
Lara: We’re very involved in all of that. We try to keep it in-house with friends as much as possible. Lauren McGovern does our artwork; she’s done everything since Supermum, which is greatly because she really understands exactly what we like and she gets it. She’ll throw out some wildcards too which are always the best thing; the thing that was her idea inspired by what you said is always the best bit. We’re very involved in everything. We’re shooting a video at the moment, but it’s all been very hands out which is nice; because I think you can tell by looking at the artwork and the visuals that we’ve had a pretty hand in it. We like being very involved.
N: I wouldn’t say we’re a DIY band, we have a manager and an agent, but I’m the tour manager as well as the drummer and we try to do as much as we can ourselves. It’s nice to have a good amount of the workload taken off our shoulders, but we do definitely like to keep it small and any kind of decision always goes through us which is important.
L: And then I have the job of making badges for all our gigs in the kitchen. We started making them when Lauren got involved. We met in Girl Guides years ago and we’re very close, so we decided we wanted to make badges and we set up saying things that makes each other laugh for a few hours, come out with a few good lines, Lauren designs them and then I cut them out and use the badge machine. It’s great craic. We’ve been doing that for two years now.
How did the Adore first come together?
N: Me and Lara were in a band previously, but that broke up. Then over COVID, me and Lara were dreaming up bands and then eventually we started ADORE. We started in 2022, Lara had written a few songs before the band was officially made so we worked with those and then started writing new material as well. We’ve really been building since then.
It all seems to have picked up very quickly for you…
L: That’s what people say but I can never tell what's going on. People often tell us we’re very busy and I’d just never have been thinking about it to really realise how busy we’ve been. We were doing things at a pretty steady space. At the start, we took every gig we could get because we wanted to keep practising and gain experience, and then got really burnt out. Then when we got our manager in, he helped us set a pace and to focus on gigs that make us excited, he made it far more sustainable really. It feels like we’re going at a brisk walking pace.
When it came to releasing Postcards, did you have a few singles ready to go or did you prefer to work on one song at a time?
L: We were gigging for a year before we released that, and people kept asking if we had any music out and we said no because we were too broke to record. Richard from Blowtorch said to us that ‘The only reason I can think that you haven’t released anything is because you’re broke’ and we said yeah, and so he majorly helped us out and we recorded ‘Postcards’ in Athlone, because Naoise was living in Galway at the time and Athlone was the halfway point between there and Dublin. We chose that song to record because after gigs that’s the one people were humming and singing as they left, it was the catchiest song we had at the time.
Since then you’ve released a bunch of singles, but talk me through the decision to focus on an EP at this stage in the band’s life
N: We always wanted to do an EP, and the medium-term goal was to release an EP. At the beginning it just made sense to release singles consistently every few months and build it up and keep gigging. In the meantime, we were always writing because we wanted to be happy with the songs on the EP when it happened. I don’t think we were ever consciously writing for the EP per se, but when the time came that we were happy with what we had, that it felt cohesive, it felt right to go for an EP. We signed for Big Scary Monsters around the same time, and they wanted to release an EP, so when we heard that we were ready to go.
L: I think the EP documents a particular time of pre-Adore and during Adore, and then the last two tracks forecast what’s to come; so it’s nice to archive that period in time and it’ll be nice to have a little body of work that you can listen to all the way through, in the correct order, and we’re doing a physical release to which is really nice.
N: The EP is basically our 30 minute set in order, so it really is a nice time capsule in that way of where the band is currently at.
Adore at Borderline Festival 2025, The Workman's Club.
You went from a trio to a duo, did that feel like a natural fit at the time, and I presume a lot of the EP was written with all three of you rather than the two the band has become?
L: A lot of it I write at home, and I can’t write bass or drums, which they aren’t really songs without. We don’t tend to do big jams, I find it very stressful and it’s a lot of pressure, but I find it works to write at home and bring the idea in as a whole. We’ve been writing since as well. If we’re practising we’re generally writing.
What do you want the project to say to both people who have been fans for a while and newcomers who stumble upon it?
N: As a band, every aspect has been important but we’re definitely very focused on songwriting and trying to write interesting parts that fit around Lara’s songs, not being afraid to experiment and try out new things. For ‘Sweet Keith’ in particular, one of my favourite songs on the EP, that was one of the first times we wrote something as insane as that and as noisy as that with stacks, and was definitely influenced by Gilla Band and stuff like that. In the end, I hope people like it and if they don’t, so be it.
L: All the songs are very based on feelings, so I’m more than happy for people to attach their own meanings to it. Sometimes you listen to a song and it makes complete sense to you but then it turns out it means something completely different; so it’s better that people create their own relationship to it rather than me explaining it. I’m just looking forward to it being out there, and as it’s a physical release, the idea that it could be picked up in a record shop in 30 years is lovely.