an interview with child of prague

proof that if you wanted to, you can.

I have included the option to listen to one of Child of Prague’s most popular songs ‘Watershed’ as you read this piece in order to get a proper feel for what the band is all about. Enjoy!

Towards the end of a conversation about art, nationality, capitalism and mostly, music, I said to Adam and Amelia of Child of Prague, a cool new (ish) band hoping to make it Dublin “there's every reason to not start a band, not to be harsh to you, or, dump on your dreams, but like, you know, it's not exactly the easiest thing in the world right now to give a lot of time to a creative project.” A few weeks ago, I wrote about the answer Fran Lebowitz gave that completely changed the way I view my city. This summer I’m moving to New York, and afterwards, I have no idea. I’m trying to figure out how to create communities in basically expensive, unliveable cities. I’m trying to find answer to whether I should leave Dublin, and more broadly, should I stay in Ireland at all? I will surely earn more money and have a better quality of life elsewhere but then again, that kind of feels like pussying out.

Of course Adam didn’t know any of this when he answered with unusual surety “Actually, other than the trickiness with some venues, I think there's a lovely little scene brewing in Dublin at the moment, in terms of bands. There's a lovely little community of bands in Dublin. There's so much music coming out, so many people to fill bills, if you're looking to fill bills for events.”

Ostensibly, I asked Child of Prague for an interview because I thought it would be good press for the both of us (which will hopefully be true) but in reality, I just wanted to know how they do it. They are a moderately successful band, especially when you consider they’ve only really begun in earnest back in September. They regularly headline Workmans (THE ‘alternative’ club in Dublin, frequented by the likes of Paul Mescal), there’s talks of professionally recording songs, they have a manager for Chrissakes. And yet, they’re all college students. Most of them in relationships. Some of them even have part times jobs on top of all that. I wanted to know exactly how they did it all, if I could have access to their Google Calendar, I’m sure my inferiority complex would take on its own physical body and beat me up.

Amelia took a relaxed approach to her busy life, saying“I'm gonna be so honest right now. There is an element of pressure. It can be difficult, but I think it's one of those things, like, give a task to a busy person because, you know, they're going to do it. Like, if you are busy, like, you just have to organise yourself better. So like, oddly, I think, like, it could be maybe a tiny bit stressful, because it's like, you care about it and you care about the two, but like it does maybe necessitate that you have to be kind of diligent with how you organise your time. So that's also a silver lining.” Adam, on the other hand went rather green and simply said “Oh, man. School, yeah. I don't know. I need to get back into the flow of balancing that kind of stuff. I don't know I'm not great at school at the moment and but I love the band, I love I love playing music, and I love my social life. So it's all, it's a it's a kind of delicate balance of it, and I need to get a job.”

Of course not everything is perfect and rosy, during our conversation about the gentrification of Dublin (where I was predictably gloomy, and Adam was, as usual, unfazed), Amelia had a well thought out theory on the subject. She said “you see so many bands or artists that are really, really desperately talented. And it's really like, once they've gotten major success, they go elsewhere. Because there's just a plateau that you reach, and to just go beyond that everyone just moves to the UK. And for that structure you have to move elsewhere in order to do well, and it's not that you necessarily want to leave.” My mind immediately flicked to Megan Nolan, a writer from my hometown of Waterford. She lived in Dublin for years but once she started getting published in the likes of the Guardian and the New Statesman, she moved to London and then, after her second novel was published, on to New York. She wrote about whether or not it was a mistake to leave, but we all know the answer. She wouldn’t have been able to do what she did without leaving. Still though, I can’t help but wonder what Waterford would be like had she stayed. Certainly she would add to the already vibrant arts scene. But as Amelia explained, there is a ceiling in this country.

I won’t be surprised if Child of Prague make it big in London one of these days, the atmosphere at their gigs feels like living in a chapter of Please Kill Me. They ossicalte between rock-punk-Irish trad numbers to covers of Sinéad O’Connor to indie love songs all while managing to maintain the same vibe throughout. Despite college, despite gentrification, despite all the excuses most people make that stops them from pursuing their passion, Child of Prague have managed to create a community within the most anti-social generation ever. It is mostly just very hard work that got them to where they are but I reckon their passion helps as well. Noah put it well when he said “The feeling that I get when I play. This is the only time I feel alive. And so if I didn't play, I wouldn't really feel like I was doing anything with my existence.” And if the gigs are brilliant, part of it has to do with the lyricism of their music. When I asked him about his process Adam told me “if I can really articulate how I'm feeling about something in music, I think I've that's that's what I'm looking for, and that's the kind of thing that I keep going back to when I write.”

You can check out Child of Prague for yourself on February 12th in Workmans for their suitably ironic ‘anti-valentine’s day’ gig. I would encourage you to do so. Child of Prague consists of six members; Adam Tracey, Jack McDonnell, Amelia Durac, Rachel Baum, Noah Edwards and Jake Brennan. All photos included in this piece were taken by @thomaslaraleonard on instagram.