Inside story from out of nowhere

With a clutch of pop curios, a funky beat, a cool image and a stunning voice ÁINE CAHILL is a thrilling new singer songwriter. Her talent has seemingly emerged from nowhere. DAMIAN MCCARNEY is intrigued to find out more...

 

Something akin to the mythology of Robert Johnson surrounds the arrival of Áine Cahill as a musician, whose unheralded talent demands to be heard. Legend has it that in the ’30s, Johnson was a mediocre blues guitarist in Mississippi but after a midnight encounter with the devil at a crossroads, he was transformed into a master. Fame followed.
With a bushel of songs far removed from the usual Irish, nevermind Cavan, musical fare, Áine announced her arrival with her debut EP, ‘Paper Crown’. Her music is populated with pop hooks, R&B vibes, creative production and most notably, a voice drenched in Memphis soul. The Celt assumed the 20-year-old has been marinaded in music since birth.
“I didn’t even get into the school choir. Honestly, I didn’t,” she persuades a surprised Celt. “I auditioned in first year; didn’t get in.”
It seems her burgeoning talent also comes as a surprise to Áine.
“Yeah, it just came out of nowhere. I used to be a real tomboy, sporty type. Now, I can’t picture myself doing anything else.”
A course in music production in Cavan Institute was short lived (“I dropped out because I just wasn’t feeling the course”). Singing lessons were even shorter lived:
“They were trying to classically train my voice or make me sing classical songs - just no.”
Whether Áine made the short hike from Castletara down to the One Tree for a midnight rendezvous with a goat-hoofed gent, regrettably, the Celt never asked. But of course Johnson had to pay the devil with his soul. Áine’s soul is still very much in tact.
“I just want to do it,” she insists of making music. “I don’t even care about money or anything - that EP I gave away for free.”
Her urge to get the music heard may prove counter-productive as Paper Crown was released with barely a whisper of promotion.
“I didn’t do any launch, it was a very messy release. I was releasing the tracks as I was recording them - putting them on Soundcloud just to keep people interested... it was all kind of rushed at the end, trying to get everything done and I just ended up saying, ‘Right, it’s out’.”
Despite its muted arrival, she was nominated for Best Female Solo Act by Pure Magazine and Paper Crown was named best Irish EP of 2014 by Unsigned and Independent music magazine.

Fresh
Áine’s musical introduction came by playing keyboards at age 16, and in 2013, still aged just 18, she recorded her first track - a ballad called White Piano about Marilyn Monroe losing her mother at a young age. Recognised as the best song at a workshop in Cavan Institute, she was given the opportunity to enter the studio and posted the results online.
“When I put it up all that people were saying was: ‘Adele’, ‘Adele’, ‘Adele’! I don’t even listen to Adele. It’s just that type of song - a ballad with piano, that’s it - naturally it’s Adele.”
The Celt confesses, it’s not their cup of tea.
“I don’t like White Piano,” she surprisingly admits of her best-known song. “A lot of people just know me for White Piano, I’m just trying to get away from it. That would have been the first song I ever played in a recording studio - that would have been the second song I’d ever written. And to me it’s just old now and it even sounds old when you listen to it. I’ve grown a lot since then.”
Áine’s musical maturity has seen conventional ballads give way to funky takes on pop. Paper Crown is Áine’s favourite track off her debut EP.
“I think it’s the most fresh-sounding - I like the feel of it - it’s like reggae. The verses are dragged out strings, kind of eerie, then the drums kick in,” she says miming playing hitting a snare.
She hasn’t mentioned the lavish (synth) strings, melodramatic breakdowns, funky beat, the catchy chorus, shimmering guitars, and all contrasted by melancholic lyrics:
“She lived her life in a lie/smiling to the world but wanted to cry inside”; and later, “When the world was looking up/she was always looking down”.
Áine admits it’s the most autobiographical of her tunes.
“Oh yeah, sure I never even went into school towards the end of it. I guess I find music helps me to get through everything... If I was sad I would go up and sing at the piano - that’s how it’s gone for me. But I had at least two years when I was just depressed.”
Sosad invited her to sing Paper Crown at the opening of the new office.
“I just broke down through it. I tried but I couldn’t - the whole environment, everything was just coming back to me.”
Thankfully, Áine’s in a good place now, observing, “everyone has their good and bad days”.
Paper Crown was recorded alongside producer Martin Quinn of Jam Studios, with whom he has nurtured a special working rapport.
“Anything I said to him, he just got it straight away,” she says with a click of the fingers. “He’s brilliant at what he does, you’d know he’s been doing it for years. I can’t see myself ever going to anyone else. And I’ve already gone back to him, so I’m starting EP number two.”
The second release is due out this Autumn and she expects it to be titled Black Dahlia after a song which she plays on her phone for the Celt.
“It’s one of the most famous unsolved murder crimes in American history,” she explains. “Black Dahlia is the girl, she tries to make it big, but she trusts the wrong people, so she ends up dead.”
Another song in the can is called Twenty-Seven, inspired by the 27 Club - those musical stars who all died at that age - Hendrix, Cobain, Winehouse, Morrison, and incidentally, Robert Johnson.
When she explains that another song, Blood Diamond, is about greed, the Celt wonders if she sees herself as political?
“No, it’s not my intention to talk about politics,” she says, spitting out the dirty word.

Love
However, she’s hardly writing about run of the mill topics.
“I don’t think there’s a point in writing songs if you’ve nothing to say. A lot of people sit down and just force out songs about anything. That’s good but a lot of them are just about love. How many songs can you listen to about love? I think songs about love...” she hesitates, before dismissing the genre entirely, “write a poem!”
When it comes to gigging she enthuses: “I love it but I get very nervous.”
The Celt wonders if that’s why she has posed as the Mad Hatter character on the fabulous cover of Paper Crown? Does she adopt an alter-ego when on stage?
“I think I am a character myself, and the Mad Hatter, that’s just showing who I am. When I’m on stage I’m myself. I just try to be myself, that’s how you make a connection.”
With local impresario Paul Cox arranging gigs for her, she’s made a lot more connections recently - a debut on the famed Whelan’s stage supporting all-girl band ‘Featuring X’, another support slot with the funky-balladeer Duke Special and last weekend, she performed at the YouBloom festival in the Mercantile, Dublin - a showcase for new music.
Áine’s aspiration - to make music for a living - may sound modest but she accepts that she’ll need a break.
“It takes one person to hear you - the right person - and then it will all take off. That’s how it happens for everyone but you have to keep working,” she says, citing Lady Gaga and Marina and the Diamonds as key inspirations.
“All the artists I like, they played places like Café Sessions and kept going and going until someone found them.”