Silverbacks will be bringing their show to BRÚ House, Newbridge on Friday, December 1 – coinciding with the release of their latest single ‘Just for a Better View’.

This is the second in a series of collaborative shows between Broken Home & I, as we aim to bring some of our favourite musicians and artist to Newbridge – of which Silverbacks fits the bill for both of us.

Silverbacks have already eked out a solid rep for themselves when it comes to whipping up lashings of ’90s inspired lo-fi fuzz, a string of top class releases has ensured that.

Their slanted ’90s Pavement inspired sounds mix it up with the post-punk tones of Television and a touch of Talking Heads. Much like a Spring day, tunes like ‘Techno Dogs’, ‘Dirty Money’ and latest single ‘Just for a Better View’ are simultaneously gloomy and sun-kissed – in  LCD-meets-The Strokes kind of a way. I digress. The long and the short of it is that Silverbacks are one of the finest bands operating on these shores and in my humble opinion, one of Ireland’s best kept secrets.

Silverbacks join Oh Boland and Luke Redmond in BRÚ House, Newbridge this Friday, December 1, for what is a rather formidable lineup – Doors @ 9pm | Tickets €5/€7.

Ahead of the weekend’s show I caught up with Dan from Silverbacks, to shoot the shit.

Tell us a little bit about Silverbacks. How did it come about? And what is the essence/inspiration behind it?

Silverbacks started off as just Kilian and myself. We’ve been writing and recording demos for years and the end goal was always to eventually form a band and play them live.

Emma is on bass and has been playing with us for about four years now.

Last year Gary joined us on drums and Peadar on a guitar. This is the best live band we’ve had and as a result we’ve recently decided to take things a little more seriously.

In your opinion, what are the greatest challenges as an upcoming band in Ireland?

One obstacle is definitely that Ireland is an island. It makes playing gigs abroad trickier and more expensive, especially when you’re doing things yourself. It’d be nice if there were residencies for bands too.

Has growing up in Belgium had much influence on your musical output?

I don’t think so, well not yet anyway. Most of our influences are mainly American bands for the moment. But that could always change. In terms of the influence on my taste, I do have a soft spot for Jacques Brel and Kilian learned a good few Django Reinhardt chords and solos growing up.

One of my favourite songs is actually by a Belgian band called Deus, they were at their prime in the 90s. The song is called ‘Instant Street’ and my dad put it on a compilation tape for the car years ago . There’s a moment where Tom Barman (the singer) says the word ‘motherfucking’ and anytime my mother heard it she’d give out about the unnecessary rude language. My Dad would agree. Silverbacks have yet to use language that is deemed explicit in our songs so maybe there’s one obscure Belgian influence from my childhood.

What can we expect from a Silverbacks show?

Four friendly faces and Peadar.

Can you you tell us a bit about the Silverbacks artwork, and the artist involved?

It’s done by a good friend of ours who was in the same class as Kilian growing up and lived just down the road. He’s done all the artwork for Silverbacks over the last few years. We’re big fans of his work and we all feel the artwork he does for the band is a big part of Silverbacks.

You can check out his stuff here.

What are you listening to at the moment?

At this very moment I’m listening to the ‘Worst Case Scenario’ album by Deus.

One of my favourite bands currently is Happyness. I saw them play Whelans earlier this year and they were excellent. I’ve been revisiting some of the Sparklehorse albums too.

What are your plans for the rest of 2017 and 2018? Can we expect a new record soon?

We recently digitally released ‘Just for A Better View’. That’s the first song we didn’t record or mix ourselves. Stephen from Lamplight Studios had us around and we’re really happy with the results. We plan to record one more song at Lamplight before the end of the year.

For 2018 we’re hoping to start playing shows on a more regular basis. An album would be nice too but who knows, we’re currently sitting on a lot of demos.

And lastly, in all the interviews you’ve done is there anything you’re eager to chat about but no one ever asks you?

Not really Barry, we probably haven’t done enough interviews.