MacD on Music: All About You

For almost as long as there’s been music, there’s been family bands. Groups like the Lemon Twigs, the Everly Brothers and, of course, the Undertones have been responsible for so many classics over the years on topics ranging from perfect cousins to the pains of love to finding a baby chimp in the forest and raising it as a human child.

This week I’m talking to another band of brothers that have been making a name for themselves over the past few years, The Ocelots. Twins Brandon and Ashley Watson released their first album ‘Started To Wander’ in March 2020, right as the world was shutting down. Now, the Wexford brothers are about to release album #2 ahead of their Derry debut on February 16th in Sandino’s.

I spoke to them recently about the album and how they got to this point: “We’ve been playing music since we were fifteen or so. We started as a school band and have been pushing away and gigging our asses off since then, so about thirteen years, and we’re just ready to release our second album on the 7th February.”

Speaking about their main influences: “We have a lot of different ones. When we were younger, we had a lot of indie bands. We started learning music from learning Kings of Leon and Arctic Monkey covers, and also Bob Dylan and Neil Young. I guess learning a lot of covers as teenagers and doing cover gigs in Ireland was a huge influence on our songwriting. We also performed two tribute nights of completely Leonard Cohen songs and completely Kinks songs over in Australia one time. I’d say our biggest influences are those sixties-seventies bands.”

Next, we spoke about their upcoming album ‘About You’: “Our first album came out in 2020, as soon as COVID hit, so we didn’t get to tour it or really promote it in any way, so this is like our proper first album, where we have a tour scheduled and we have a proper team behind us to do this. It feels very much like a debut album.”

“We recorded it over three days in a studio in Wexford called Orphan Recording Studio. While it only took three days to record the live performances, we were still rehearsing and doing a huge pre- and post-production phase, so there were months before those three days where we knew the songs that were going to be on the album and we were rehearsing them again and again to get them to a finer point, then afterwards we also, back in Leipzig, had a huge state where we were adding the finishing touches or overdubbing onto all the tracks.

"Our bassist and drummer [Cillian and Lorcan Byrne] actually produced the album and they did the mixing, but I think because they’re such close friends, the four of us had a huge input into the final product and it was, for months afterwards, the four of us were, every single day, adding an egg shaker there or taking away a vocal here.

"We really played with it for a long time and tried to get it to the stage where we loved the finished version. It was a huge process. I think it was the most work we’ve ever done. Definitely put more work into that than the Leaving Cert for sure.”

I asked what it’s like being in a band with your twin: “We’ve very big critics and we’re very honest with each other, and that’s probably the thing with a family band, when you think of the Bee Gees or something like that, there’s a different relationship there. You can be a bit more critical of each other. That’s a very good thing and that can also be very stressful. We don’t let a lot of things slide when someone writes a bad verse. It has to pass the test of what we both think is good.”

“It’s a good thing as well. Since we started, and we started street performing and sleeping on people’s couches and stuff like that. There’s a lot of things we wouldn’t have done solo that we can do together. It definitely comes with a bit of security, to always have another person there.”

And that’s it from the Ocelots. Their second album ‘About You’ is out this Friday (February 7th) and they’ll be playing Sandino’s on the 16th. Tickets are available in Cool Discs at £12.

READ MORE: MacD on Music

Now, onto other business. Snow Patrol (the band behind ‘Chasing Cars’, the sign of imminent demise in Grey’s Anatomy), have recently announced support acts for their upcoming European tour. February 25th and 27th will see Sister Ghost opening in Dublin’s 3Arena and Belfast’s SSE respectively while the 28th will see CHERYM take the stage (also in the SSE).

Even if you’re not a Snow Patrol fan, these gigs should be worth it for the openers alone (although if you’re suffering from any minor ailments, you may feel the cold hand of death on your shoulder when you hear the intro to ‘Chasing Cars’).

Finally, time for the socials. Sister Ghost can be found on Facebook and Instagram @sisterghostofficial, Snow Patrol @snowpatrol, CHERYM @cherymofficial, Cool Discs @cooldiscs and The Ocelots @theocelotsmusic.