We’ve all been there - the famous last words of the smoking area. The drunken guff of ‘Let’s start a band!’ that fades from memory long before the hangover. For Kildare’s post punk noise puppets Blue Slate, however, it was the spark that brought childhood friends John Harney and Pierce Devine together post-Covid to create music.

As guitarist Pierce Devine recalls, “2 o’clock in the morning just sitting outside a bar in Naas and I just ran into John (Harney - singer) and he asked me to come over and jam and see what we came up with and I was like ‘Fuck it.’”

A short-lived line-up was established. “They didn't want what we wanted out of it,” reflects Devine of the ex-members who were quickly replaced by James Hargreaves (bass) and Tim Tora (drums). Eighteen months on, the group have shared their sonically astute debut EP ‘This Is How I Sleep At Night’ featuring the uproarious single 'Beaker' and the musically sophisticated title track.

“We love all the songs,” says Devine, “but we're  quite proud of that one. It just encapsulates what we're trying to do. It progresses in a way that we worked quite hard to figure out in terms of writing. There were loads of arguments over it and then we finished it and demoed it a couple of times and when we were happy with it, we were like okay, we're properly proud of that.”

'This Is How I Sleep At Night' deals with a subject matter which has been experienced first-hand throughout the band: body dysmorphia

“Writing about it takes the weight off the shoulders a bit but you still have to go through it,” says Pierce. “It's something that you're stuck in and you can't get out of it, and then you put it into the art and you go on stage and throw yourself around performing it and there's liberation in that.”

Blue Slate have been inspired to be so open and honest in their lyrics by the likes of Manic Street Preachers, who themselves have been notoriously frank about their body issues.

“We've always loved music that's honest. We all write (music). John focuses on the lyrics but we all write outside of it ourselves with like poetry," explains Devine.

“All the songs are really just about taking a brutal look at yourself in the mirror - no white lies.  It's what am I dealing with here? What have I done? This is what happened in this situation.”

He adds, “I think if you're gonna build a project of art or a band it should be honest and represent who is in it and not a lie of what you'd like to be portrayed as but you yourself properly.”

The no white lies approach permeates the band, who haven’t been afraid to abandon recording sessions and keep rerecording songs until they are as good as they want them to be.

“Beaker was recorded down in Transmission Rooms in Longford a year and a half ago with Keelan O'Reilly from Post-Party - that's Mick Cronin's studio. We did three songs down there, but we only ended up using Beaker”

A further recording session in March 2024 was deemed insufficient before the band finally decamped to Sonic Studies in Stoneybatter with producer Joe McGuirk, where the EP was completed in three days last summer.

“It's a span of songs really, it wasn't like we went into write an EP for the purpose of releasing it,” notes Devine. “The songs aren't too far away from each other in terms of meaning. We write about our lives and write about our experiences in situations and what we deal with and struggles that we’ve had and how hard it is to go on and do stuff…

“It is all just about us so the meaning of everything is not too far away from each other. There is a bit of theme I suppose but it's not intentional that we put a big project together to have this big message, it's just that each song kind of relates to each other.”

Another big issue the EP deals with is alcoholism and the dangers of partying too much, a subject the band anchored with the passing of Dennis Wilson on 'Marina Del Rey'.

“The song is about drinking too much, being stuck in that habit and you just can't kick it. John watched a documentary about the death of Dennis Wilson, and we were throwing this idea around about how alcoholism is like drowning and we decided to call it that. It did have another name originally, but we changed it to that because we thought it was more fitting.”

For a band who hold themselves to such high standards and bestow so much importance in lyrical honesty, it is surprising that their name is the antithesis of their standard operating procedure and is by contrast throwaway.

Devine laughs sheepishly as if to say it had nothing to do with me when we raise the origins of the band’s name. And it didn't. "We had our first gig up in Dublin in The Sound House and we needed a name and John was like, 'Did you ever hear of Blue Bangor roof slates'? John wanted to call us Blue Bangor Slate, but then he put it to Blue Slate and we all said 'Why not?' There's no deep, meaningful reason behind it... it's literally off a bag of roof slates.”

Following the release of the EP Blue Slate are set to play The Windmill Brixton on Paddy’s Day, but you can catch them closer to home in The Summit Inn on March 1st with Really Good Time, Last Apollo and Martina and The Moons.

We can expect more shows to be announced soon. “We're working on tour dates in UK and Europe and Ireland” notes Devine coyly.

'This Is How I Sleep at Night' is out now on Blowtorch Records. More info on Blue Slate here