Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell

Pillow Queens are coming off the back of a big year; the Dublin-based four-piece released their third album, Name Your Sorrow, in April and followed it up with scattered tours around North America, the UK and Ireland.  Then in November, they parted ways with long-time drummer and backing vocalist Rachel Lyons who made the difficult decision to pursue another career.

Pamela Connolly, Sarah Corcoran and Cathy McGuinness continued – and on Saturday week, January 25, they are set to play Galway’s Róisín Dubh with support from local favourites Shark School.

Though that Saturday night gig is sold out, tickets remain on sale for Pillow Queens’ all-ages show in the same venue the following afternoon.

Co-frontwoman Connolly looks back on 2024 fondly, and in particular on an album that, with a balanced mix of noisy earworms and heartfelt ballads, represented the band’s most considered work to date.

“The album that we released, we are incredibly proud of,” she says. “It’s one that we really held very close to our hearts, and we adored making it and bringing it out and having people connect to it as well. Being able to tour it as widely as we did was amazing.

“Then obviously there was a big change in the band. It’s not something we take lightly. We have been together for so long and we are, all four [of us], individuals whose lives change. The investment that we’ve all put into this band is huge and it’s not without sacrifices. If one of us wants to change their path in life, it’s commendable if anything.”

For Name Your Sorrow, the band treated their rehearsal space as a 9-5 office. It wasn’t a case of adhering to strict deadlines but affording themselves an extended period of time to come up with a record. Unlike their previous LPs, they ended up having an excess of material to bring to the studio.

“With this one, we just had a lot of space, and we didn’t put pressure on ourselves,” Connolly says.

“We kept on going into our rehearsal space and saying let’s see what today brings us. At the end of every day, we’d have a little bit of something here and a little bit of something there.

Pictured: Pillow Queens…afternoon performance will follow sold-out gig.