MacD on Music: How Suite It Is

There are few things more important for artists than debut singles. It’s the song that announces them to the world and gives us a glimpse of what is to come. Queen had ‘Keep Yourself Alive’, Olivia Rodrigo had ‘Driver’s Licence’, TRAMP had ‘Frankenstein’ and now The Suite (aka the subject of this week’s column) have ‘Keep In Mind’.

The Suite are Jack McGinn (vocals), Caoimhin Duddy (drums), Cian O’Dowd (guitar), Paul Carlin (keyboard) and Shay O’Kane (bass) and, in the short time they’ve been together, have managed to get opening slots for both Selador (along with the band formally known as White Lighter, now Head Melt) and Telezura (along with The Marra).

I spoke to the group following the release of their debut single ‘Keep In Mind’ and we spoke first about how they initially came together. Jack: “Basically, me, Cian and Caoimhin, we’re all in GCSE Music together and we just decided to ask Mrs. Burns, our music teacher, could we stay behind just to play in the lecture theatre. We learned a couple of songs. I think our first was ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’. We knew Shay played bass so we just asked him if he would come along. Then we decided we wanted to bring keyboards into the band and have a bit of a synth sound, so we got Paul in because we knew he was great at piano.”

Next, we spoke about the single: “The single’s been through I don’t know how many redrafts. The lyrics at the start were shocking. It started in Caoimhin’s shed. Basically, we handed you [Cian] the bass…”

Cian: “I don’t play bass, but they handed it to me, and I was messing about on it and something was made from that and that’s how the song was started.”

Jack: “We took the bass line out of the last practice then I went back and made a riff. I have this loop pedal and I played Cian’s bassline on the loop pedal, and I put the riff over it then went to the practice the next day and got it down. We started talking about this pub and we had no idea what a pub was like. It was not good.”

“The actual song is about; I went to Leeds on holiday, and I was walking through the city centre, and I saw gangs of boys our age all wearing fake clothes. There’s so much fakeness about it. As you walk into Leeds airport the first thing you see is this big billboard that said it’s the capital for Botox in the UK. Kind of just observations of what I saw in Leeds and also there’s a bit about life around here as well.”

After that, they told me about the reception the song has been getting so far: “It’s doing pretty well. At the minute we have over 6000 streams and it’s only been out a week. For us to be so young and being new it’s good. Instagram’s doing well. We’ve got maybe a thousand followers and we’ve gained, what, 500 followers just because of the single.”

“We recorded it in Blast Furnace and Rory Donaghy recorded and mixed it. Then we messaged the guys in Selador and said ‘we like the sound and how you’re mastered. Who did you master with?’ and they said this guy, Pete Maher. He had done work with the 1975, the Peaky Blinders soundtrack. He mastered it for us and that boosted the song so much. Completely different song.”

The night before we met, the group had been opening for Selador in Sandino’s: “It was our first proper pub gig. We were opening and the crowd was just a bit still. We played well. We had four originals and two covers, and we got a good reception. Loads of guys our year said we played really well.”

Caoimhin: “We’re playing in the 7Twenty on the 30th March so we’re looking forward to that.”

Jack: “Plus the Our Space Easter gig and they’ve asked us to headline it. It’s always a good reception there because it’s all ages and tickets are really cheap. We’re only really getting started, just trying to get round.”

And that’s it from the Suite. They’ll be headlining the Our Space Easter Charity Showcase in the Nerve Centre on 28th March and opening for Telezura on 30th March in the 7Twenty.

Their debut single ‘Keep In Mind’ is out now and they can be found on Instagram @thesuite.band.