They got their name from a random name generator and their sound from the kind of shoegaze, indie and dream pop acts who roamed the earth all of thirty years ago.
But hold the floppy fringes and stripy T-shirts because Galway act NewDad are in fact all shiny and, well, new.
Having built up a fanbase over the last five years with a run of singles and EPs, the fourpiece of singer/guitarist Julie Dawson, bassist Cara Joshi, drummer Fiachra Parslow and guitarist Sean O'Dowd have just released their impressive debut album Madra.
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It's quite a concoction. All darkly confessional lyrics, cooing vocals and basslines you could hang a bridge from. At the centre of the controlled storm of emotion and guitars is front woman, 23-year-old Dawson, who sounds like an ice maiden with a poisoned pen and a tear-stained diary.
However, on the Zoom machine from the band’s adopted home of Clapham in London, she is anything but the character - or characters - she portrays in the band’s tensile and cathartic songs.
She’s quick to laugh, funny and wide-eyed at the prospect of the world hearing NewDad’s debut. "I miss the Galway air!" she says. "There’s nothing like the Irish air, it’s so fresh! London air is just heavy. I get really homesick."
Signed to Atlantic Records, NewDad have never made any secret of their vintage indie sound. In fact, they say it best themselves: "We make music that you can listen to with your parents, and if you come to a gig with them, they'll probably enjoy it more than you!"
So, have Julie’s parents heard Madra yet?
"They have! The second we finished recording it, they were hounding me for the Mp3s. Haha," she laughs. "They love it! Doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks - at least mum and dad like it."
The band recorded their debut album in the fabled Rockfield studios In Wales, where the likes of Coldplay, Oasis and Stone Roses have worked, with Chris W Ryan, whom the band picked for his work with Dundalk act Just Mustard. Madra was then mixed by Alan Moulder (The Smashing Pumpkins, MBV, Nine Inch Nails).
The result is a record with a pop sheen and a lushness offset by spiky guitars and moments of atonal artiness. It’s indie club night on In My Head and Sickly Sweet and Sunday morning comedown on White Ribbons and the title track. It shimmers, it blisters.
"We wanted to be a little bolder," says Julie. "Our first two EPs were more indie and quite stripped back but with the album we wanted to achieve a bigger sound and we were able to get that in Rockfield.
"It was a very chilled recording session. We were there for fifteen days and we even had a day off and we managed to record fifteen songs. We weren’t going too hard on ourselves. We’d start about 10 o’clock and go until 11 that night, other nights we’d go until 3am."
Lyrically, Madra embraces some heavy themes and reviews have remarked on Julie’s cynical but honest lyrics on songs that delve into bullying, self-medication/depression, destruction, co-dependency and resistance.
"I didn’t have a great time in school growing up," she says. "I was very much one of those kids who nearly felt I wasn’t good enough because I wasn’t academic.
"I always had that but with music, I’ve definitely found my own confidence in myself because now I’m good at something. I can do something that I love.
"It’s something everyone can relate to. All of us go along that route. Even if it’s just talking about a feeling, I know that most people, whether it’s adulthood or your teens or childhood . . . it’s a feeling that people go through - feeling alone or not good enough."
Without trying to sound too facetious, was school like Mean Girls? "It was fine," Julie says. "I had a moment when I was about 17 where I was getting a bit of abuse from a good few people but I try not to dwell on it, I guess the music is where I release my anger.
"I don’t think about school anymore. I’m 23. I don’t think about being 17. But I suppose that stuff sticks with you and makes you lose your confidence in yourself."
Living in London hasn’t stopped NewDad from keeping up with what’s going on at home.
"There has always been great music in Ireland but I think people have been paying more attention since the success of Fontaines D.C. worldwide," Julie says. "Young artists and new bands feel like its achievable now.
"There was a sense before that if you did well in Ireland you’d be stuck there and you’d have no wider appeal but now with bands like Fontaines you’re seeing success and it is incredibly inspiring.
"Seeing Just Mustard opening for The Cure, who we think are the best band of all time. Just Mustard are from Dundalk and we’re from Galway so why not give it a go?, we thought."
A Galway girl at heart, Julie says the city had a definite influence on NewDad’s sound.
"Our guitarist Sean put it well when he said that when you come from a place like Galway that’s so vast, you try to fill that space with noise.
"When you compare music in Ireland with music in London, in London people aren’t trying to fill that space - it’s stripped back, like bones.
"Whereas music in Ireland is like walls of sound, trying to fill that quiet and that vastness. I grew up a twenty-minute walk from Galway Bay and that definitely inspired me."
They’ve nailed that vast sound on Madra but just how ambitious are NewDad? "We’re pretty ambitious," Julie says. "When we were trying to decide would we sign to a major or an indie label, we knew that we really want to reach as many people as we can so we definitely needed a big team and the resources to do that.
"This has been a big change but it’s what we needed to get our career to where we need it to be. We’re ambitious. Hopefully we’ll be on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury one day!"
Alan Corr @CorrAlan2
Madra is out now. NewDad play the Button Factory, Dublin on 28 and 29 February
