Dubliner Ciarán Fitz had been a punker since he was a kid. As he calls into Post-Burnout from his local pub, he tells us, “I think what drew me into it was my cousin gave me an Offspring CD, Americana, and I would have been playing Tony Hawk’s [Pro Skater] 1 – I must have been 10, right? – put the sound off and listen to Americana, and then, getting bored of it, and then playing Tony Hawk’s, and you hear ‘Police Truck’ by Dead Kennedys, which later became massive. Also, on Tony Hawk’s 2, Bad Religion. Bad Religion would’ve been a massive one for me, as well.”

Not long after, he began going to shows in the city, such as catching Bad Religion when they played The Ambassador Theatre in 2004 and gaining memories of being thrown around the historic venue by some Australians, and getting involved in the local D.I.Y. scene. “When I was growing up, it was the [City] Arts Centre, beside the DART station on Tara Street,” Ciarán remembers of getting involved.

“They used to put gigs on there, all the fucking time, man. Again, I was just 14/15, but they were always all-ages gigs […] This Arts Centre thing was incredible! But I was hanging out with people who were a bit more… – even though they were the same age as me or, sometimes, even younger – …they were more clued-in. I always kind of tagged along, and I felt like I was just growing in front of this stuff. I honestly didn’t know what to think about it, and I wouldn’t have figured it out until a couple of years later.”

Not long after, Ciarán began forming bands of his own. “I’ve been playing in punk bands since I was 13,” he says. “There’s a band called Big Tears going around; Judy, the lead singer of that band, me and her had a band when we were 13, called SPG, that lasted about a year, maybe less.

“From there, I was in a rock ‘n’ roll band with another mate, called Bebop and Rocksteady. I just played all throughout my teens, and then knocked it on the head in my early twenties and got into DJing and stuff, and I hadn’t played for years.

“Then, about ten years ago, I kind of got back into it and wish I never gave it up, to be honest, because I’m 35 now. [Laughs] Well, it feels like it would’ve been nicer if I was doing this at 25, you know? But we’re having fun!”

But before his return to bands and during his time as a DJ, Ciarán discovered psych rock. “I was working, doing club nights and stuff – like, house nights and stuff – and, during the day, we used to have an office in town, and some of the lads would be playing a lot of house and techno and stuff, but I was kind of veering away from that stuff,” he says.

“I wasn’t listening to it as much, and then Tame Impala’s first album came out. People will have their issues with Tame Impala, but those first two records still [are great], specially the first one, and the second one was great, as well. So, I used to slap that on and, I don’t know, it was a bit of a game-changer. From there, you kind of go, ‘Oh, who else is in this band? Oh, your man’s in a band called GUM?’

“This whole Australia scene, man, you know? It was fuckin’ bananas. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are massive for me. This whole ‘new wave,’ but it’s not really ‘new’ anymore, though, is it? It must be fifteen years old at this point. Bands like Thee Oh Sees. It’s kind of endless. You can get really lost in all those bands because there’s so many of them.

“Like, there’s a great band called Frankie and the Witch Fingers out right now. They all kind of sound the same, but King Gizzard have been going long enough now, and Thee Oh Sees are going long enough now, that there’s bands they influenced coming out, now. […] That’s kind of how I got into that, and then you kind of go further back.”

Just before the COVID-19 pandemic, Ciarán returned to his roots and started a new band called Melter. “Me and Darragh [Ashe Bowden], who’s our former bass player – good pal – and Matthew [Lynch] used to be in another band previously to this, that we started just before lockdown with another lad,” he says of this band.

“He was the main guy; the other lad was the main guy. We were happy. That was the first proper band I was back in. We got Darragh to play bass. He never played bass, he bought a bass. We got Matthew, he was a mate of my younger brother. We played in that band for about two-and-a-half years. We played a few gigs, and then Darragh left, then I left. Matthew stayed on for donkey’s, actually! [Laughs]”

Darragh and Ciarán kept writing together, and then Ciarán bumped into Matthew in town and asked him if he knew any drummers, to which Matthew volunteered despite already being involved with other commitments. The three met up and began jamming on some tracks from their previous project, and then naturally began crafting new stuff. These sessions expanded into Dumb Posh Hippies, a band which fused Ciarán’s love of psych and punk.

Despite only forming a little over a year ago, Dumb Posh Hippies already have a sizable discography consisting of one EP, four singles, and an album of remixes of their songs. Part of this was due to them knowing that their original bassist Darragh could not commit to the project long-term.

“When we started the band, me, Matthew and Darragh, who was the original bass player, knew that Darragh was going to be moving to England,” Ciarán explains. “Right, so we started the band, we had a rehearsal, it went really well, so we said, ‘Right, let’s book a gig before Darragh goes away.’

“So, we did that. It was a month away, so we had a month to write a set. We had three songs – one from the previous band, another two we wrote at the first session – so we were like, ‘OK, let’s write another eight songs,’ you know? [Laughs] And we had booked the gig, got the support acts, and all! So, we had to just write all these songs! And some of them we’re still playing now, so that pressure was fun.”

After Darragh left, he was succeeded by James Hutcheon. The quick turnaround of their first EP, The King of Kimmage, set the template for the process that has enabled them to get so much material out: Write, play gigs to afford to record, record, and repeat.

Ciarán found the Dublin punk scene to be very accommodating to Dumb Posh Hippies, especially in helping them to get shows, as he had been out of the scene for a while and was unfamiliar with what to do. But he finds the “psych” part of their “psych-punk” label may make them not the smoothest fit in the scene.

“We love that stuff, but we do feel like maybe we’re a little bit different because we’re playing a lot of these songs that may be ten minutes long,” laughs Ciarán. “But then, we also have the two-minute punkers. So, we’re actually trying to find our own feet a little bit, still. So, the idea, really, is to have a synth player and to have another guitarist and be a loud psych band, but we can’t help write the punkers, man! [Laughs] They keep falling out!”

While Ciarán admits that working as a trio limits their sonic range, he’s also weary of how additional members could hinder their celerity, in terms of being able to meet up frequently, jam, and get songs out. Their latest single, “Scrunched Up Fist,” was released today, and is a good example of how they work off each other.

“We were in the middle of writing another song, called ‘Glow On, My Son,’  the big, ten-minute long one,” says Ciarán of how the single came about. “When I say, ‘We were trying to record it,’ we were just in the rehearsal room, trying to record it on our phone, just so we’d remember the structure of it, you know what I mean? And we kept fucking up, and when you have to restart a ten-minute-long song, it’s really fucking annoying.

“I was just snapping. I think we were eight, nine minutes in, and we fucked up, and I was like, ‘Fuck it. I’m going for a smoke.’ So, I just went out in a huff and had a ciggie and calmed down. When I came back in, they were playing exactly what you hear on the song…[Verbally replicates the rhythm part]. There was almost kind of like an echo kind of beat on this thing.

“I’m not really a great writer, but sometimes something will just come a little bit, you know? And I’ll write it down on the phone. I had one verse and another verse, and I just knew…’Cause I was singing it in my head as I was writing it, and as soon as they played it, I was like, ‘That goes with that,’ and I said, ‘Just keep going,’ and I took the lyrics out and just started almost fuckin’ rapping! Because the Beastie Boys are a massive influence on me, as well! […]

“Anyway, so, basically, it worked. Me and the lads, the lyrics, and I added a little bit of guitar. There’s fuck all guitar. It’s two-and-a-half chords, you know? We knew straight away, ‘That’s it. Done.’ It just comes like that, you know? And it’s funny that it comes like that, when we were trying to remember to play a big, long ten-minute thing. It was like Dee Dee Ramone saying, [Doing an impression] ‘Stop playing that shit, man!’ [Laughs]”

Dumb Posh Hippies’ latest single, “Scrunched Up Fist,” is on all streaming platforms from today. The band will play an all-ages matinee show with Vulpynes and 50 Foot Woman at The Grand Social, Dublin on Sunday, November 10^th. You can find tickets on The Grand Social’s website. You can follow the band at Bandcamp and Instagram.

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews…tonight at 21:00 (IST) to hear this interview in full. Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music Podcasts.

Aaron Kavanagh

Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.