Setting Hearts racing
When the Celt catches up with Evan Walsh the Savage Hearts had just returned from playing ‘The Archives’ in Liverpool and was getting ready hit London to play a venue confusingly called ‘The Dublin Castle’ on Tuesday. Then it’s back to the real Dublin for a gig to launch their brand new EP at ‘The Bernard Shaw’ this Saturday night, before they pack up and fly off to London again for another gig on December 17. It’s enough to set Hearts racing.
Evan regards the EP, titled Radio Silence as “four of the strongest tracks” from the live set, and a statement of intent from the band. It’s available to stream online, and their independent label Blowtorch Records have pressed a vinyl version.
“It’s the biggest promo splash we’ve made, and we’ll be hitting that trail hard with radio sessions and bits and bobs,” says Evan.
“We’re really excited about it. It’s Savage Hearts’ debut EP proper. We’ve put a couple of singles out before, but this is the biggest push we’ve had for a release yet, and there’s lots of exciting stuff that’s going to lead into the New Year.”
The band has lately been revamped with Evan handing bass duties over to newcomer Stef Byrne - so fresh to the line-up he missed the photoshoot (right). That switch sees the Cavanman once again wielding the drumsticks, meaning he’s back where he thrilled us all with The Strypes.
"It feels great to be back on drums," says Evan. "Playing bass with the first lineup was a fun experiment as I’ve always been a multi-instrumentalist but rarely get the chance to change around like that onstage for an extended period, but when we recalibrated for the EP release and asked Stef to join the band it seemed like the obvious move to get back behind the kit, it’s where I’m most comfortable and I think it’s important as in any band for each of us to play to our biggest musical strengths. I also love driving things from the back when it comes to live gig and really digging into the songs to give it plenty of welly!"
The Hearts is completed with Eugeni Collinassi on sax/keyboards and Darragh Muldoon on guitar and vocals, while Evan remains the primary songwriter. They’ve swiftly acclimatised.
“When you get a new member on board do you think: we need to drill the set back up again. But we’ve been gigging that much it’s just happened. A hundred rehearsals won’t make up for what a handful of gigs will do for a band in terms of getting you to pull your socks up.”
Evan views the Radio Silence EP as making a “personal statement in a very limited number of tracks”.
“You’ve only got four outlets to show people what you’re currently about. We like the idea that every track on it is ticking its own little box - Radio Silence is garage rock, bluesy sort of vibe; ‘This Time Tomorrow’ is bringing in sort of a soul/R&B kind of influence, it’s more brassy, more brash; and then ‘Dead Man’s Lottery’ is a hell for leather rocker really. It’s got a bit of psychobilly vibe injected into it, but played very much in our own sort of style.
“Twenty Million Miles from Earth is kind of pyschedelic really, it’s punky but it’s got that garage rock-psych West Coast American influence to it - it’s a bit of a freak out that we usually end the set with. It’s a guitar smasher to finish the set up!”
However he’s vigilant against the music sounding derivative.
“The tracks are all influenced by different things but none of them are a direct homage, because we want to make them sound contemporary, so it’s all very much with our own spin.”
The rush of gigs, radio exposure and new EP is pushing the Savage Hearts into the public consciousness, and Evan is eager for them to build on that “with some exciting UK-based plans”.
“We’ve had a shed load of momentum, pretty much since the middle of this year when we started to ramp it up to the EP release. The press coverage has ramped up here, we got a bit more national attention, did another Electric Picnic, did a couple of nice gigs where we supported the likes of Dr Feelgood, and a few other bands like that - a lot of stuff in the UK.
“Looking to in the New Year there’s possible stuff on the horizon - we’ll hit more UK cities and go on a bit further afield. So it’s getting busier and busier.”
Could a full UK tour be on the cards for 2026?
“Possibly could be depending on how the next couple of months go. We have a couple of exciting little bits and pieces on the go - what the next release could involve and who we’d be doing it with, and who’d be releasing it in the UK. So we’ll definitely be making our mark over there and putting in a lot of man hours.”