From gaining his master’s degree from the prestigious Berklee College of Music to working on major Hollywood productions to touring internationally with the successful Irish experimental electro-pop group BARQ, the Mayo musician and producer Stephen McHale is quite an accomplished artist.

Beyond his professional commissioned work, Stephen also plays in tribute bands for Radiohead, Paul McCartney, Pearl Jam, and George Michael, as well as wedding bands. “I live by my Google Calander,” Stephen tells Post-Burnout of juggling his projects. “If I didn’t have a Google Calander, I would have no idea what I’m doing in the week coming up!”

Despite his packed schedule, Stephen is always looking to explore creatively. In 2019, BARQ decided to split, but their final single wasn’t released until 2020, well into the COVID-19 quarantine. The lockdowns combined with the end of BARQ made Stephen evaluate what he wanted to do next.

“I had kind of gone through a period, that coincided exactly with the pandemic, of not having an original music project or a creative outlet,” Stephen explains. “And I kind of hit a bit of a wall with music, as in I wasn’t really enjoying it anymore and I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to do it anymore.

“I was like, ‘Maybe it’s better to put all this energy into something else,’ you know? That was on my mind for a while, probably a couple of years, nearly. Then, suddenly, I just started to get a bit like, ‘Well, maybe I should write something. I kind of want to, and I want to play,’ but I was like, ‘Well, what am I writing it for?’ I wasn’t sure.

“And then when I thought, ‘If I just write a song and imagine that a singer is going to be involved with it and see what happens,’ I wrote a few. As soon as I started, it was like, [Mimes uncontrollably and rapidly playing on a piano] Awwggghhh! You know? Loads coming out.

“I had sent on a couple to Julie, because we knew each other from before and because I was a huge fan of HAVVK and Julie’s singing, and we’d also worked together – Julie did the artwork for a couple of BARQ singles and stuff like that – so I knew she was multitalented in different kinds of ways, that I was like, ‘This could be great.’”

Stephen is referring to Julie Hough (also sometimes p/k/a Julie Hawk), who is the frontperson of the Dublin-based alt-rock trio HAVVK. Julie and Stephen first met when HAVVK and BARQ coheadlined a tour of the UK in 2017.

“So, I just sent her a message,” continues Stephen. “I was like, ‘Eh, Julie, what do you think about…?’ [Laughs] And I had no idea whether or not she’d be into it, or too busy, really, was my main thought.” “I’m going to be honest, I definitely was too busy!” laughs Julie. “But I’m really glad I did it, anyway!”

She continues, “I think we had opposite pandemic experiences, where I was just like, ‘Right, what 18 projects can I be doing at the same time?’ [Laughs] But, in that same way, I really felt like I was riding this wave of…I had a lot of irons in the fire at the same time, and we got around to writing and I didn’t have this preconception at all of what it could be. It was really free-flowing and freethinking, in terms of listening to what he brought over and being like, ‘How could I respond to this, vocally?’

“It was a lovely state of mind to be in because I found myself getting into this stream-of-consciousness state of mind when I would listen, and, also, because your musical thinking is so different to mine, if I tried to understand the chord progressions too much, it just wouldn’t work. It was more of, ‘How would I organically respond to this?’”

This work would eventuate into PostLast, a new alt-pop duo. The project has been clandestinely cooking away in the background for over a year now. Given the schedules of Stephen and Julie (who, beyond HAVVK, also works on Veta Records, the record label she co-founded, and other projects), the two find it best to work semi-remotely.

“Usually, I’ll write something, as in a full arrangement of a song as best I can, kind of imagining and wondering what the vocals might be,” Stephen explains of their process. “I’ll get it as far as I can, upload it to a drive, then Julie has a look at those songs, adds vocals to it, sends it back to me, then I’ll look at that, start making changes with that, send it back to her, then she makes more changes, more suggestions, more everything, then sends it back to me.

“Once it’s at that point, of we’ve both been messing with it separately, it’s a good time to meet up and be in the same room and do it, ‘cause that’s definitely when you get that immediacy of bouncing ideas off each other, you know? […] I think it’s probably partially because we have busy schedules and stuff, you kind of get to it when you can.

“It’s actually hard to schedule times when we’re both free at the same time, so it’s good that we can do our parts separately and then meet up to get it to where we’re happy that it’s a finished song, you know?” “I think we get the best out of each other, that way,” Julie adds.

“Because it’s hard to write… – well, some people can do this – …but, I find it hard to just straight up write in the same room as somebody else, but I find it very easy to be like, ‘How about this? How about this?’  So, once we get the songs to about 90%, there’s a different energy that we bring to the table when we then meet up and actually work on the songs. It’ll be these gas little ideas that actually end up putting a real stamp on the song.”

Commencing in April with their debut single “Connect 4,” PostLast have steadily been presenting their music to the world, with a new single coming out roughly every two months since. Today, their debut six-track EP, Pull Me Into The Open Sea, was released, putting their four singles thus far and two additional tracks (“Headlands” and “Halloween”) into the exact order that they want fans to hear them.

With their debut EP, they tease more to come, especially in the new year. “We have some bits and pieces,” Julie says. “Bits and pieces in the works, still around these existing tracks, actually. We’ve got a video that we’ve made for one of the EP tracks that comes out around Halloween.”

 “We did a lyric video, as well, for ‘Headlands’,” adds Stephen. “I think the lyrics in ‘Headlands’ are my favourite of the songs that we’ve done so far, so I was very pushing for, ‘This one needs a music video! It needs its moment for the lyrics to shine!’, so, we did that, as well. So, that will be coming out soon.”

“We’ve been looking at remixes, as well,” Julie says. “That’s something that we’re going to come back to in the new year, and, hopefully, give a little bit of a different perspective on the existing tracks. In the meantime, we’re just writing and looking at material for next year.

“We came back to the idea of playing live a few times, and I think […] [in wanting] to create an experience for people that we really, really want them to enjoy, we didn’t feel ready to do gigs, mostly on a practical level; I think we’re both very, very busy.

“But we certainly didn’t want to just shoehorn a kind of half-version of these tracks onto a stage. We hear all these layers that really make the songs what they are, and if we were going to do them, it would be with a big gang of people we trust on the stage with us. It’s something we’re going to come back to, so I’d say watch this space, but it’s something we’re going to come back to in 2025.”

PostLast’s debut EP, Pull Me Into The Open Sea, is on all streaming platforms now. You can find the band’s music, videos, social media accounts, and potential live dates on their Linktree.

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews…tonight to hear this interview in full, where we expand on everything discussed in this article, as well as how Julie finds her lyrics between PostLast and HAVVK, their advice for younger artists on not burning out, the Irish music scene, and much more. 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.