It would be easy to see Florence Road as something of an overnight success. In the last few months, the excitement around the Dublin band has quickly caught fire, the flames fanned by support slots opening for Olivia Rodrigo in their hometown and London’s Hyde Park, plus a jam-packed show at The Great Escape and a tumult of excitement (and hundreds of thousands of streams) following the June release of major label debut mixtape ‘Fall Back’.
But before the darker recesses of the internet start crying “industry plant!”, just take a look at the band’s TikTok – where teenage videos of the quartet covering Sam Fender in their school uniforms sit next to clips of their early 2022 single ‘Another Seventeen’ – for immediate proof that vocalist Lily Aron, guitarist Emma Brandon, bassist Ailbhe Barry and drummer Hannah Kelly have been putting in the hard yards for years now.
“People can scroll back and see the really bad covers if they think that,” laughs Aron as Brandon picks up: “We’ve said it before, but who would plant that?!” “That’s why it doesn’t really phase us,” Barry nods, “because everyone in the world can see those ridiculously bad early covers, and the growth and the work towards it all. If there were any degree of truth, then I imagine it would be a scary thing, but this has been our lives for 10 years.”
Friends since they met on the cusp of teenagehood at school in County Wicklow, by the age of 16 the four pals had started building the foundations of Florence Road, playing their take on tracks by Hozier, Declan McKenna and future gig buddy Rodrigo in assembly to “possibly our harshest audience ever, just people eating their lunch”.
After winning a competition posted on their school bulletin board, they had the opportunity to record and release ‘Another Seventeen’ – the second original song they’d ever penned. Since then, they’ve never pressed pause, playing dozens of gigs around Dublin and writing relentlessly. “On the release night of ‘Another Seventeen’, we wrote two songs at 11pm when we were waiting for it to come out, and we’ve never stopped,” Aron smiles.
Their prolific tendencies (Florence Road say they’ve got at least 40 tracks in the bank) coupled with a different-but-complimentary musical background that spans childhoods spent listening to everything from Alanis Morissette to The Beatles, Wolf Alice to The Kinks, has led to a sound and a confidence that already feels tantalisingly like the real deal. Florence Road are A Proper Rock Band, with the riffy chutzpah and the commanding vocal chops to prove it.
But on ‘Fall Back’, they also dip into softer territory, with a host of pop’s most in-demand producers queuing up to help them realise the vision. Now, they’re about to release the distinctly Morissette-esque ‘90s indie anthemics of ‘Break The Girl’ – adding yet another string to their rapidly increasing, ridiculously exciting bow.
You started on TikTok – how has it been taking it offline and seeing the fanbase grow in real life?
Lily Aron: “It’s incredible that it’s been able to translate. Obviously, we were quite wary of being seen as just a TikTok cover band or not a real band, and that was something we were nervous about. But since we’ve started releasing and doing a whole bunch of gigs, the response has been so wonderful and it’s been a nice sigh of relief. We played a headline gig for the EP release, and I took my ear out during ‘Heavy’, and people were screaming the lyrics. The feeling is so crazy, that we created these words, and people are really feeling them.
Emma Brandon: “It’s very hard not to cry. It’s so surreal.”
For ‘Fall Back’, you worked with loads of really high-profile producers, including Dan Wilson (Laufey, Mitski) on ‘Hand Me Downs’ and Dan Nigro (Olivia Rodrigo, Chappell Roan) on ‘Caterpillar’ – how was that experience?
Aron: “It can be very daunting to be like, ‘This person’s done so much stuff and I’m just a random girl!’ But we really tried to go in with no expectations and just write, and it was so, so good.”
Hannah Kelly: “Walking into Dan Nigro’s studio, I was like, ‘This is the couch… that’s the piano…’ I was very familiar with the studio before we even went in. But I think he was trying to capture the energy and the freshness of those records without it being a direct copy.”
And you went out to LA for all the sessions – what are your fondest memories of your first big Florence Road trip?
Aron: “It was like ultimate girlhood. It was so cool. One of my favourite memories was getting a flight to New York – we had a layover before we flew to LA, but we were five or six hours delayed, sleeping on the ground at JFK. When we got to LA, we had three hours before our first session, so we drove to Trader Joe’s, got some snacks, and then that first session was where we wrote [lead single] ‘Heavy’ – we were so sleep deprived, but it just worked. It flew out of us.”
Kelly: “I’ll never forget going down to Santa Monica pier and swimming in the clear blue waters and jumping around like idiots for two hours. After the studio, we’d get a taxi home and then play the demos on the massive speaker in our house together, bouncing around.”
‘Fall Back’ moves through a lot of different genres – how does it introduce Florence Road’s sonic world?
Aron: “I think what’s nice is that we never overthought it. ‘Caterpillar’ is very different to ‘Figure It Out’, and you could say the same about every single song. There are definitely crossover points, but it was never a discussion. The feeling was there, and we knew each song had its own moment. Having different musical influences, we have a lot of range in our songs, and they take you up and down. That’s something I love about our music – I don’t listen to one genre, I love music in all forms, and that’s why it comes out in what we do. I don’t see a reason for a box, or to say we can’t have piano cos we’re a rock band.”
Naming yourself as a rock band feels integral – are there other women in that space who’ve been influential?
Aron: “Wolf Alice are so cool, and Beabadoobee – the way she can do rock but also the lighter stuff. I listened to her a lot growing up, and that definitely influenced me.”
“I always say, ‘If this is it, then this is amazing’, and my expectations keep getting blown out of the park” – Lily Aron
You’re now all 20, what does this EP say about being that age?
Aron: “I think it’s definitely a very emotionally-driven project. That transition from being a teenager to adulthood – even though we don’t feel like adults at all – there’s that feeling, and a lot of it for me is about being anxious and trying to get over that. It’s been really helpful for me to write about it and get it all on a page, and then getting to sing them all the time is very therapeutic. And then ‘Figure It Out’ is a yearning song of ‘I like you, like me back please!’ which is very common at this age.”
Tell us a bit about your upcoming single ‘Break The Girl’…
Aron: “I was talking about the conversation I’d had the previous night with one of my best friends, about her relationship with her mother and all her feelings. I couldn’t stop thinking about it – it was really weighing me down. I think we wrote the song in an hour, where we talked and chatted about feelings, and it was just there. The meaning is quite sad and reflective, but there’s these ‘la la las’ and the contrast of going, ‘I’m just gonna keep singing cos there’s nothing else I can do!’ I really love it.”
Which you’ll have just played whilst supporting Olivia…
Kelly: “One of the first songs we covered was ‘Jealousy, Jealousy’, so it’s a crazy full circle moment playing with her.”
Brandon: “Her whole discography, I haven’t heard a bad song yet, which is crazy because she has so many. She’s very impressive.”
Aron: “And she’s a young woman who’s a similar age to us, so it’s very inspiring to see her kick it.”
What’s coming up next – are there plans for an album in the works yet?
Kelly: “From day one, we’ve known that ‘7563’ is going on the album, and there are at least four or five others that are certain, so now it’s about trying to fit them together in a way that feels cohesive.”
Ailbhe Barry: “We’re writing all the time, so it’s exciting to see what we’re gonna do next and see what we haven’t touched on and maybe find new sounds and find what doesn’t exist yet.
Aron: “We just have so much fun together. When something big happens, I always say, ‘If this is it, then this is amazing’, and my expectations keep getting blown out of the park. We just have a blast, and it is so fabulous to do it with these three.”
Florence Road’s ‘Fall Back’ is out now via Warner Records