Lemoncello's debut album is a wry look at our constant quest for stimulus

There's something of Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit in the new single by Dublin-based band Lemoncello - it's dark and brooding, folky and rooted in the mystical while being wholly of its time.

Dopamine, out today along with their eponymous debut album, is a gloriously wry look at our constant quest for stimulus, normally down the rabbit hole of social media. It's a theme the duo Co Carlow singer and guitarist Laura Quirke and cellist and singer Claire Kinsella, from Co Donegal are keen to explore and the juxtaposition of such modern subject matter with the more traditional-influence on their melodies and harmonies makes for something timeless.

"I want more, I need more, validate me, vilify me, objectify or analyse me," the young women sing as the chords lurch a half step, strange and satisfying, familiar and disconcerting. "Let me know that I exist in your world, that I exist."

Life through the looking glass, then, in this case doom-scrolling on a mobile phone.

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Elsewhere on the album, the pair mine Americana and even English folk but it's always underpinned by a sense of Irishness. Always Neighbours is a haunting ode to the disconnect of people in the 21st century, perhaps harking back to their comparatively simple lives in the country, and all wrapped up in a heartbreaking love song. There are notes of Beth Orton and Nick Drake, perhaps, two artists who in their way were also able to conjure this sense of disenfranchisement, the transient nature of love and of being tied to the land. "Childhood friends, teenage lovers," they sing. "Adult strangers, always neighbours."

Old Friend revisits this theme, the sense of moving on from relationships, physically and emotionally, or is it an effort to rebuild them and start again? "Old friend, let's pretend that we're strangers again..."

And, later, a reworking Lagan Love again touches on this idea, of the new and the old intertwined. It's pretty special. Lemoncello met while Laura and Claire were students at Maynooth College and after honing their craft at local open-mic nights in the Co Kildare town, they were fit to release en EP, Stuck Upon The Staircase, in 2018, were nominated for Best Folk Song and Best Emerging Folk Act at the RTE Radio 1 Folk Awards a couple of years later.

And despite the natural progression taking in some big shows across Europe the pair took a decidedly lo-fi approach to recording the album. Producer Julie McLarnon brought her analogue recording philosophy and approach to records by artists such as The Vaselines and Lankum and left a raw, old-school stamp on this record.

They explained: "Recording the album on tape felt like the right way to capture the energy between us as a band. You don't record to tape to make a really clean product and that's not what this album is it's an unfiltered document of a place and time. It was such a joy working with Julie.

"We didn't look at a computer screen the whole time making the record. The best part of recording to tape is the limitations that it brings so in this way we benefited from having to make choices quickly and trust instinct and feeling more than technical correctness. The magic comes when you put your trust in it."

Trust me, the magic is there. Check out Lemoncello and Dopamine, out today, and go see them at Ulster Sports Club on Thursday.

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