“It’s been like a whirlwind” vocalist Lily Aron admits, when she sits down to discuss the dramatic rise of her band Florence Road over the past 18 months. Surrounded by bandmates Emma Brandon (guitar), Ailbhe Barry (bass), and Hannah Kelly (drums) backstage in The Grand Social ahead of a sold-out headline show in celebration of the release of their five-track mixtape 'Fall Back'.
Since they released their debut single ‘Another Seventeen’ in 2022, the Wicklow quartet have gone from strength to strength, signed with Warner Music, played shows across Europe in support of US act Sombr, played Boston as part of Dermot Kennedy’s Misneach festival alongside the likes of Mick Flannery and Sorcha Richardson, and next week will support worldwide superstar Olivia Rodrigo in both London’s Hyde Park and Dublin’s Marlay Park. Taking it all in, whirlwind seems like an understatement.
“It’s been everything we’ve expected and more” Lily continues, “Even doing a music video was a huge dream of ours, and we did the ‘Goodnight’ music video two months ago and the whole experience was phenomenal. We’re all into the creative side of music so to be able to explore than has been amazing”.
“I feel like I went in with no expectations because I didn’t want to get my hopes up” drummer Hannah Kelly adds,”but everything has been great."
The members of the band all first met in school, some already deep into their musical education while others were still fresh. The band first began life as Panorama, with Lily Hannah and bass player Ailbhe, before guitarist Emma approached Lily one day asking to work on a song together.
They did, performing a cover of ‘Happier Than Ever’, at which point it became clear to everyone (though Emma took slightly more convincing) to continue as a four-piece. They very quickly won a talent competition, with first prize being recording time, which they used to record ‘Another Seventeen’.
Whilst the band’s musical output is undeniably catchy, with single ‘Caterpillar’ in particular being one of the best new Irish songs of the past year, one of the major driving force behind their success to this point has been their social media presence, in particular on TikTok, where they have garnered over 900,000 followers and 30 million views.
Their experimentation with video all started as a joke between friends, when one of them got an ealry iPhone 0.5 camera. “We just got together and made a video for fun, posted it, and it didn’t do well in the first day or so” Lily recalls of one of their early viral hits, “but then it gradually began creeping up and it’s getting bigger ever since”.
“It was again a case of us going in with no expectations” Emma adds,”People were just loving the big blue eyes and freaky angles, and we just went “great, lets do more”.
Despite the growing numbers online, the band recognise the importance of knowing when to take a step back.
“It can be easy to get swept up in that online validation but we have such a good team around us, our family and friends, and we know that that’s just not real” Lily explains, “We recognise it’s been so important in helping us get to this place, but if we get a nasty comment or video doesn’t do as well, we know ourselves it doesn’t reflect our work or hold weight as long as we’re proud of it”.
“Performing live is really our main focus at the moment” Ailbhe adds, “I feel like social media is just used to boost that really. I’ve definitely taken a step back from looking at the numbers and reading comments, it’s really helped. There was a while there when we were getting so much hate comments we had to just log out and disconnect, in particular when working on new stuff”.
Fall Back, marketed as a mixtape, is the first project from the band, with work beginning on tracks as far back as January of last year, with some of the songs even tracing back to the band’s origins, being the first they’d ever worked on together. The band locked themselves away for six months, writing and demoing, before picking out the five that best captured the past year of the band’s life.
“I just love every single song that we’ve written, and I’m sure that’s not cool to say, but this project are the tracks that really jumped out and felt most relevant to this point in our lives” Lily explains, “Fall Back encapsulated that feeling of really growing up and falling back and you’ve no idea what you’re doing, and I’ve a few songs in there about my anxiety, and other stuff that’s happened in the past year to us so we just felt that name was perfect for the project”.
When it came to marketing, after a very quick discussion among the band it was clear that the project was the perfect encapsulation of what a mixtape should be, a collage of songs and moments that, while worked on, were still given the chance to breath and be imperfect. Many of the takes heard across the lines are the first the band recorded when demoing, which adds to the sense of realism the project lives in.
“It captures how we are now, because this is our first project so it’s all rough and new, and still learning so much” Emma notes, before Hannah adds “It’s so funny, because people do ask is ‘is it not just an EP’, and we have to be like ‘No it’s not, you don’t get it, you can’t see the vision'”.
The project opens with ‘Hand Me Downs’, Lily’s reflections on anxiety and the impact it has across generations within families. It’s a smashing track, and perfectly summates what makes the band so powerful, balancing introspective lyrics with hard-hitting instrumentation.
The song first began at a band rehearsal in Lily’s back garden just before they headed off to LA to record with a number of producers. They near instantly had the verse and chorus figured out.
“Just before we went over to do our first session in LA, which is still crazy to say, we were in the studio in the shed in our back garden, we were just jamming, coming up with stuff and we pretty much instantly had the verse and the chorus figured out."
“I was thinking about it on the flight and I just really wanted to do something with the song because I felt so good about it” Lily recalls of the process, I started writing some lyrics over the melody that was already there and then we went in with the lovely Dan Wilson, we talked to him about what the song was about, he listened, we put together a verse and a bridge, and we just hashed it out”.
Originally it was Emma and Lily in the sessions with Dan, and once their sections were recorded they sent Ailbhe and Hannah in without even a demo to work with. They were just told to think back to the rehearsal in the shed 3 weeks prior to figure out their lines.
“We went in, we saw all the Grammys on the wall, and Hannah does her drum bit in like 10 minutes and I was just sat there thinking ‘Oh no’” Ailbhe laughs, "then Dan literally had a meter each way of over 100 pedals, and he just ran it and told me to play and it just came to me”.
“I went through my phone a few months later and I found nearly the exact same bassline from a few months before we recorded” Ailbhe adds, “so it must have been a line that was nestled in my brain from way back then, which is amazing to see it come full circle”.
With preliminary work underway on a new project and an eventual album; 'Fall Back' feels like the turning of a page for the band, from a band with potential to one of the most exciting rising outfits in the country. For now, 'Fall Back' is for people to find comfort and joy from. “I hope people enjoy it as much as we had fun writing and recording it”.