“My house was quite musical,” Rachel Quinn, the vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the Dublin indie band SPRITZ, tells Post-Burnout of her early days with music. “My dad, especially, because he’s, like, a boomer, so he’d be playing The Beatles and The Who, like, constantly, and I have a vivid, vivid memory of, he had The Beatles’ 1 CD, when I was four or whatever and going to primary school, and I had the tracklist memorised. I’d be like, ‘Could you put on number four?’ ‘Number seven, please?’, and he’d be like, ‘OK.’

“He was like, ‘That happened, maybe, once,’ and I was like, ‘No, dad! That happened every time I got in the car!’ I was obsessed with that CD. Then he made his own little mixtapes because he didn’t want to pay for the music, and I was like, ‘Slay!’ [Laughs]

“And he’d be playing Pink Floyd and The Blues Brothers a lot when he was cooking dinner. Blasting it because my mum wasn’t in the house, and, until she came home, it would be so loud! My mum, she would have quite a different music taste than my dad because she’s, like, a decade later than him, so her stuff would be more like ABBA and Elton John. She’s a pop girly! So, I think that’s where I get my older music tastes. I think at fifteen, I discovered The 1975 and that took me on a trajectory of indie rock.”

Rachel dabbled with playing music throughout her childhood and adolescence, but it wasn’t until the COVID-19 lockdowns began that she would take it more seriously. “I’ve played piano since I was, like, five, but I didn’t start playing guitar until I was seventeen,” she explains. “I had one since I was ten, and I tried to learn off YouTube and played a C chord badly, and I was like, ‘Nope! Never mind! This isn’t for me!’

“But then, randomly, I decided to…It was, like, at the end of lockdown. I was going into sixth year and was like, ‘Ah, you know what? I’ll give it another go,’ because I was kind of  getting into the idea of songwriting and stuff, and, I don’t know, it just kind of stuck a bit better that time.”

Not long after that, Rachel began checking out local club gigs. “I kind of only started going to smaller gigs in, like, Workman’s or The Grand Social once I got to college because, when I started getting into writing songs and playing music and the idea of playing gigs, it was all during COVID,” she explains.

“So, I was kind of only seeing the artists that were playing the 3Arena and the 3Olympia, and the smaller ones that would be opening for them. I never really considered the small club gigs, but I think I saw Last Apollo in Workman’s, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is cool! Because she’s my age, and she’s up there and she has a great following!’” 

Inspired, Sarah began writing her own songs and wanted to create a project to share them with the world, but she couldn’t find the right people to collaborate with. That was until The 1975 played at St. Anne’s Park in 2023, where she met Sarah Murnane.

Sarah says, “Rachel and I just met, basically, through some mutual friends at a gig, and we got really drunk and said, ‘We should start a band! That would be amazing! I play music!’, and it actually worked!” “Yeah,” adds Rachel. “After a few months of trying!” “Yeah, exactly,” responds Sarah.

Sarah’s background with music was similar to Rachel’s, with both influenced by their parent’s tastes, but Sarah was much more inspired by the rebellious mystique and romanticism of being a performer.

“My dad is really into music, as everybody’s father seems to be,” laughs Sarah. “He liked rock music, so there was a lot of that, and I’d always listen to it. I was very interested in it because he was interested in it and my mum was interested in it. And, I don’t know, I think I really liked the idea of being a rockstar when I was a kid.

“Like, I wanted to be Jimmy Page! I wanted to play a massive guitar solo and, like, kick…like, score the winning goal. I wanted to do whatever, and I appealed to that kind of character, I think, as opposed to the actual music; I didn’t really care about the music. [Rachel laughs]

“I didn’t! When I was a kid, I didn’t give a shit! I just wanted to be cool! That’s all I cared about! I wanted to be like Bill Hicks and Anthony Bourdain. That was my dream, and, later on, I cared about the music. Not very inspiring, I know, but it’s true!”

By the time the two met, Sarah was a well-seasoned guitar player. “I had a very strange experience at seven years old when I was put in a room full of musical instruments,” she says. “This is not a joke! There was, like, a cello, and a violin, and a tambourine, and a guitar, and I picked up the guitar and my mum was literally like, ‘OK! That’s your instrument now!’ [Laughs] That’s a true story!

“Then I had lessons, and I just really loved it. I had a very scary, like, actual punk guitar teacher as a seven-year-old wearing pink tracksuit bottoms. After a year or so, I had the guitar teacher David Hawkins, and he was literally my guitar teacher [from when] I was eight years old to nineteen. He’s an amazing guitar teacher.”

When Sarah and Rachel began talking, they noticed the similarities and contrast in their tastes. “What’s interesting about Rachel and I’s music tastes is that we operate within the same space,” Sarah explains. “We’re both into indie rock music and that to its broader sense – like, going more towards the ‘rock’ side a little bit, and then more towards the ‘indie’ side – and that general, ‘alternative’ music scene.

“But, while we like each other’s music taste, we’d gravitate towards different areas in it. So, I’m more in The National, Nick Cave, The The, […] that kind of space. Tom Waits. Sad old man music.

“But Rachel would go more towards…I would say you’re more into, like, beabadoobee…”  Rachel helps with the list, “Pillow Queens. The Japanese House kind of thing. NewDad. That kind of stuff.” “Which is kind of fun,” continues Sarah, “because I didn’t really know a lot of that music very well until I met you. Not that I had written it off, but I was a bit more, like, ‘Oh, it’s whatever. I don’t care much about it.’

“So, it was nice to broaden, in that sense. But, then again, there is overlap. Like, I like all that stuff, but it just wouldn’t be what I’d naturally…” Rachel adds, “Like, there’s a lot of bands that the two of us would listen to simultaneously, but it’s the stuff that is in-between the ‘90s and the contemporary kind of thing. Like, anywhere there.”

Once they established a friendship, the next step was establishing a band. “‘Organic’ is one word for it.’ ‘Blind luck’ could be another word also used,” Sarah says of their inception. “It was more, I think, we just wanted to play. [To Rachel] You had songs.” “Yeah,” replies Rachel. “And I wanted to play those,” continues Sarah. “I wanted to play your songs. I thought your songs were great.” “Oh, thank you!” Rachel modestly laughs.

Sarah continues, “That’s what I cared about. I was like, ‘Rachel’s a great songwriter, and she’s very talented…’” “Like, ‘We have original material that we could actually use,’” Rachel adds to Sarah’s thought. “Yeah,” responds Sarah. “And we wanted to play live and it was literally the most random, bizarre beginning because we didn’t know Rishi [De, their bassist] and Loeka [Ram, their drummer] at all – literally, not at all – and they came to play a gig, and we had, maybe, two rehearsals beforehand.”

“We literally met the two of them, like, five days before the gig,” Rachel explains. “We submitted a video of us rehearsing on a whim to the Trinity Battle of the Bands with UCD last year, and I was sick in bed for a week before it, and [Laughs] I got an email a week and a half before the gig, like, ‘Oh, so you guys got in,’ and we were like, ‘[Exhales] Oh! So, we actually need to start a band, now!’”

 “So, no plan, no direction, no thought put into it whatsoever, besides we just wanted to play live, basically,” Sarah says. “It was kind of like the universe forced us to do it!” laughs Rachel. “Yeah, basically,” responds Sarah.

Retrospectively, the members feel that this time restraint was a motivational blessing. “I think we did need that little push,” admits Rachel. “Because we were talking about it for ages. We were like, ‘Oh, we should probably look for a bassist and drummer sometime soon,’ but we had to find a drummer and bassist then.

“After that gig, we got another gig – because my friend was organising one – and we were like, ‘Are you guys free again?’, and they were like, ‘Eh, yeah, I guess so!’ The second gig was when we introduced Holly [Fitzgerald], who is our third guitarist in the band, but, at the time, she was on the keyboard, and she does not like to talk about the fact that she was on the keyboard! [Laughs]”

When we asked how the addition of new members altered the musical vision of the two-piece, Rachel responded, “We all like the same music, but, at the same time, we all have such different musical backgrounds and where we would gravitate towards in that little spectrum of indie rock. Like, Rishi, our bassist, he has a jazz background, so he incorporates a lot of that into his bass playing. Loeka likes a lot more chill stuff, but will go hard on the drums! [Laughs]” “Definitely, yeah!” says Sarah.

Both Sarah and Rachel say that expanding from a two-piece to a six-piece has made the dynamics of their music much more interesting, but they also concede that it has made the logistics somewhat more difficult. “It kind of makes it harder because Rishi, our bassist, does live in Paris now,” laughs Rachel. “So, we try to do as much rehearsing as we can, but most of it comes together a few days before the gig, when he is able to come back over.”

She continues, “We had a good four-week run of gigs in September, just before Rishi left, and then one in October. He was back for recording, but we weren’t going to organise a gig for one of the days when we were supposed to be recording. […] [For tonight’s gig] we have a different bassist stepping in, just because Rishi can’t make it back, which will be interesting, because we’ve never played with another bassist. It’s going to be sad.”

“But, I think there’s always been a core element of chaos to SPRITZ,” says Sarah. “Oh, yes!” Rachel eagerly agrees. “I think from the fact that we met five days before the band had its first gig. [Laughs]” “Even now, even though we’ve been playing together for a long time, every time before we play a gig – no matter how far in advance we know when the gig is going to be – two weeks before, there will be mass panic,” laughs Sarah. “But I think that only adds to our performance!”

At the beginning of the month, SPRITZ released their debut single, “Anyway.” “It’s the one that’s been around the longest,” Rachel says. “I did a songwriting course in BIMM last year, and I wrote it in the first few months of that. It was the first song that Sarah and I played together that wasn’t a cover. I did it for an assessment and got her on board for it. I think it was the first non-cover we played with Rishi and Loeka, as well, and it was just the one that stuck out the most as, ‘Oh, it makes sense to release this one first.’

“Also, I think even leading up to us recording it, it was the one that the crowd would remember the most, other than ‘Dying Light.’ But very early on, they started singing the little ‘Oh, oh’ bit in the song back to us, which was kind of wild.” “Yeah, I definitely feel like it’s our best song,” adds Sarah. “Because we’ve worked on it the longest and we’ve spent the most time on it, thinking about it, so I think it just made sense. I think all of us were like, ‘Yeah, that’s what we want.’ A mutual agreement.” 

Rachel says, “‘Anyway’ was recorded in this studio that’s basically just in a shed in the back of a house in Kimmage [Laughs] with Matt Winston, who is a legend. I play bass for my friend, and he’s the drummer in her band, as well, so I know him quite well.” “Yeah, he’s fantastic,” adds Sarah. “And he helped us come up with new ideas, as well,” Rachel continues.

“I think October/November was just a shoegaze kind of time because he was like, ‘We can make this sound so shoegaze if we add this,’ and I was like, ‘OK, Matt! Go for it!’ So, it’s there, but it’s very quiet in the mix! But he just sent the stems over to Loeka, our drummer, and she did the mixing for it because she mixes for her other band as well, and she sent it back to Matt to be mastered. […] So, it was nice to have that control because he completely allowed us to have as much control as we wanted.”

The band plan to use the fuel generated by the single as a springboard for the rest of the year. “We’re all quite busy at the moment, but I do kind of feel like, ‘Oh, we should record another one, and then another one!’,” laughs Rachel. “Because we do want to release an EP by the end of the year. That’s the main goal. And we have the next two [singles] not necessarily planned but we know which ones we’re going to record. But it’s just a matter of getting everyone in the same country, basically.”

 “I think, as well, now that the single’s out, when you’re in a band, you get those peeks and dips of momentum,” Sarah says. “Over Christmas, there was a dip in momentum, and now, because of the single, you get that big drive in it […] and when you feel that momentum, your natural response is to keep it going, and be like, ‘OK, we’ve got this now. Let’s keep going. Let’s power on.’”

SPRITZ’s debut single, “Anyway,” is on all streaming platforms now. The band will support Lara Fitzsimons tonight at Whelan’s Upstairs. Tickets can be purchased here. You can also keep up to date with the band through their Linktree.

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.