When it came to releasing their first EP, Ask for Directions, the band put their energy into making sure the record sounded and looked good – the 12" vinyl comes encased in a beautifully designed pink sleeve with a special boardgame and poster inside. Not your usual debut release, then. "I suppose it was our first [record] so we decided that we’d make it a little bit special," says Paul. Rachel agrees, saying: "It was a good process, it was a learning process." Part of the learning process was discovering that the first batch of records had a huge hole in the sleeve and had to be replaced, which left the band at least momentarily disappointed. For the next release, the band are going with CD format, but want it to be just as special as the first one. "One of our mottos is ‘why not’," explains Cadwell. "So with these kinds of ideas, the idea of someone saying you know, ‘why?’… We’d always respond with ‘why not?’"
For Brian Cullen’s Love Bullets, there seems to be a sense of them not being part of a certain scene or movement. Rachel elaborates: "There are many scenes going on in Dublin at the moment. But I think kind of, I dunno whether it’s ok to say, to be outside a scene or whatever, but I think for us we’re dfferent from a lot of bands ‘cos we’re not in it to be on the cover of a magazine or for people to go ‘God there’s that bird from Brian Cullen’s Love Bullets‘, or ‘there’s that guy from Brian Cullen’s Love Bullets‘. We’re really just in it for the music and playing live and doing gigs and that kind of thing. So, we’re not in it to be seen as such."
I ask Rachel if she is ever conscious of being the only girl on stage when the band perform. "Sometimes it comes into your head," she says. "The odd time when we were playing our first couple of gigs we’d get the odd ‘show us your tits’ kind of thing – the usual. But, I dunno, I felt really like ‘hang on – you’re down there and I’ve got a microphone – you stupid boy!’ And then one time we had ‘show us your tits, blah blah blah’, so I started talking to the guy about preferred forms of sanitary protection – sanitary towels or tampons and…and then Caldwell slagged him about his Sgt Pepper style coat and the guy just shrank back into himself. It’s not something I think about. I think in many ways, being a girl in a band has done us a lot of favours."
Cadwell agrees: "I think a lot of people underestimate Rachel, because she’s a girl. And then when she blows their expectations out of the water that they almost pay more attention because they’re expecting…people seem to be expecting Rachel to fail because of the pure fact she is a woman and when she astounds them that makes it even more surprising. And they assume she must be bass or something, you know, playing two strings on the bass, when that’s ME playing two strings on the bass!" he laughs.
"There is that assumption of ‘oh you must be the bass player’. No, I’m the guitar player. ‘Oh, the rhythm guitar player’," recounts Rachel. "I don’t consider myself to be a girl in a band, I just consider myself to be whatever in a band, just a person in a band. But I think yeah a lot of people have gone ‘oh you’re the girl in the band…aww isn’t that cute?’ Look at ya!"
