The Dublin-based Irish/Spanish gaze-sprinkled alternative rock trio Left Iris have been consistently touring nationwide since their formation in 2023, releasing six singles and accruing a small army of loyal fans in their trail.

It wouldn’t be until February just gone that fans would finally get their chance to enjoy a full body of work from Left Iris, when they dropped their anticipated debut EP, Love Songs. To be fair to the members, they did not anticipate it would take so long.

The band’s guitarist and vocalist, Finn O’Reilly, takes some of the blame for the wait, admitting to a degree of meticulous retooling on his end (particularly on the title track) for delaying the EP way past its launch show in August.

When not with Left Iris, Finn utilises his engineering skills to mix and master tracks for other acts; a process which he finds much more expedient when he has less attachment to the material.

“When I’m doing it for work, it’s a lot easier to be more objective about things,” Finn told  Post-Burnout. “There’s that phrase in music, and probably in a lot of art disciplines, of ‘Kill your darlings,’ where it’s like, ‘OK, you’ve got twenty songs, but, actually, eleven of them are good, if we’re being honest here.’ So, I like to think I’m objective with my own music, as well, but it’s only human [to be emotionally attached].”

Love Songs was an accumulation of two years’ worth of material that, at times, felt Sisyphean to get over the finish line, with Finn saying it “took forever” when describing the process of completing it.

Given the time it took Love Songs to hit streaming services, it may come as a surprise that Left Iris’s first post-EP single would follow only two months later. Not particularly intending to begin the band’s next chapter, the germ of a song came naturally from Finn simply playing his guitar and finding inspiration.

“I started the song with literally just a little hook on this twelve-string guitar I’ve got,” Finn explains. “And because of how jaunty it sounds on a twelve-string, I thought, ‘Oh, this is a good little hook for something. A song that’s kind of complaining about somebody else, but in kind of a nice, fun, vibe-y way!’ That’s just, immediately, the feeling I got from it. […] So, that kind of came first; just that feeling of someone taking all your stuff, emotionally. [Laughs]”

After recording a demo of what he had so far, Finn sent it to a confidante of his, the Dublin-based Polish indie-folk singer-songwriter Susie Heart, whose debut EP, Journey Through the Shadow, he had helped produce.

“So, me and Finn have been working from the start of me being a musician, basically,” explains Susie of how the two met. “So, I came to him about a year ago, and I was like, ‘Hey! I’ve been writing all these songs, and I don’t really know what to do with them.’

“We had been friends before, so it felt seamless. He started helping me out a bit. I had done the majority of the work on my own songs, but then he helped quite a bit. Then, one day, he was like, ‘Oh, hey! I have this song that I’m working on. What do you think?’ Then we started working on it together.”

Finn didn’t send Susie the song that would become her and Left Iris’s latest single, “Heart and Soul,” with the initial prospect of them collaborating, but things naturally eventuated. “I guess she just really resonated with it,” Finn says. “I think just personal things happening in both our lives at the time…it was weird, in a really cool way.

“We were kind of writing this song together, kind of about ourselves, and our relationships with other people, and other things going on in our lives, yet it seemed to be almost the same thing. So, at least from my perspective, I remember us kind of experiencing similar things around a particular time.”

Hitherto, Susie and Finn’s partnership was as artist and producer, with Finn simply facilitating her vision and giving her complete autonomy over the material they worked on. Now, as co-writers, their dynamic shifted slightly. “I mean, it was the first time that I’ve collaborated with somebody on music,” Susie says.

“And I think the process was so different. I mean, it felt easier because of the fact that I had somebody there to be able to bounce things off of, and to say, ‘Hey, this works, and this doesn’t work.’ Very often, as Finn said, when I’m working on something alone, I can kind of stew on it for a little bit too long [Laughs], and I sit with it for ages, and sometimes I get stuck in my own loop. Because we decided this is a collaboration, it just made it so much easier.”

Finn agrees with Susie’s assessment that the two working together oiled the gears of productivity. “It was probably the most organic and easy song that I’ve written and released, ever,” he declares. “Like, the guts of it were done very, very fast.

“It was a couple of days of going back and forth, and, obviously, we had to iron out the kinks, and get it to where it was, but, in essence, it was kind of written in a couple of days, which, for me, is crazy, because I’m someone who spends so long on songs, and spends ages working on stuff. So, it was a nice change of pace. It was a very easy birth, I would say. [Laughs]”

Despite the differences in musical styles between Left Iris and Susie’s solo material, the two feel they overlap in a “vibe-crossover,” with both wanting to explore dreamy, ethereal spaces, which was the initial building block.

When it came to lyrics, Finn and Susie’s writing styles are very different, with Susie being more open and direct in what she is singing about. “It’s difficult to be vulnerable, I think, especially if you’re sharing with so many people, or if you’re going up on stage to share an experience,” Susie admits.

“But I find it almost needed, you know? As a part of art, for me. Like, for me, that’s what it is: It’s kind of like digging into the crevices of what’s going on for you, and taking out all the gunk, and being like, ‘Here it is! I hope you guys enjoy that!’ [Laughs] Because I think, a lot of the time, that’s what we look to music for, is a sense of comfort.

“At least that’s what I look to music for, and I know that there are different things that you can get out of music, and a lot of different people get different things out of music, but, personally, that’s what I get out of it, is a sense of connection to somebody who may feel a certain a way, or may be going through something, or may be interpreting something in a similar way to me, and finding comfort in that and saying, ‘Hey! Somebody gets that,’ you know? I think I write in a way that I listen, also, to other people.”

When writing lyrics for Left Iris, Finn admits to a certain reticence. “I think something I sometimes struggle with… – and I’ve talked to Susie about this before – …as a songwriter, is maybe almost leaning too much into ambiguity in songs,” he says.

“I think, sometimes, it’s good to have an air of ambiguity… – I love that – …but sometimes, you don’t always want to take a million turns to say what you have to say, you know what I mean? So, I think, as a songwriter, I’m also trying to open the door a little bit more like, ‘No! This is the song! This is what it’s about!’

“And, because of this song and its collaborative nature, it kind of lends itself nicely to that, because it was two people working on something, you know? I wasn’t going to say to Susie, ‘Well, I’m not telling you what this verse is about!’ That doesn’t make sense! You can’t write a song where two people are trying to hide each other’s homework!”

Finding the process of making “Heart and Soul” “refreshing” and “easy,” Finn envisions this experience bleeding into his future work with Left Iris. “I think this song, and particularly what I’m writing at the moment… – and there’s a couple of other bits and bobs which Susie appears on as well – …they’re much more simple in their approach,” he says. “Like, they’re coming together a lot faster.

“And I think, probably, it’s because I’m focusing more on the songwriting, as opposed to getting so bogged down in the production and all the layering and all that stuff, which I love, but I think, if anything, I’m probably guilty of hiding behind that a little bit. So, these songs feel really good, because they’re really simple. They’re basically four-chord pop songs!”

Left Iris and Susie Heart’s latest single, “Heart and Soul,” is out now. You can keep up with Left Iris through their Linktree, and with Susie through her Instagram.

You can see Left Iris at The Thomas House, Dublin, on May 16^th. This event will be recorded for an upcoming release! Tickets are available through Eventbrite.

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews…tonight at 22:30 (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.