Ahead of Gurriers' headline set this weekend at SON Estrella Galicia’s Soundhood Hackney, frontman Dan Hoff talks Max Gayler through the songs that shaped his life.
Gurriers' breakthrough year has taken in a statement show at Glastonbury, supporting Kneecap in Wembley Arena, a celebrated debut album, and blistering live performances.
"It was amazing, it was an amazing opportunity to get such a big gig,” says Dan Hoff, reflecting on the Kneecap support slot. “To have the lads put that kind of trust and respect in us is really nice. It felt like a support gig, but at the same time it also felt like there were a lot of people there with Gurriers posters and t-shirts, so it’s nice to see that we’re starting to invade all the other bands’ fans.”
For a band who only released their self-titled debut album Come And See earlier this year, the rise has been relentless. Preceded by the scorched-earth energy of their 2023 EP Top of the Bill and a string of jagged singles like “Sign of the Times” and “Approachable,” Gurriers have carved out a noise-laden sound that thrives on tension and release. The record sharpened that ethos into a fully-fledged statement: equal parts fury, escapism, and catharsis.
Gurriers have also built their reputation on the live circuit, where their chaotic, cathartic sets quickly turn rooms inside out. “We’re starting to invade other bands’ fans,” Hoff laughs, noting how the support slots are bleeding seamlessly into their own headline-level moments. Anyone who’s seen live them knows their shows are a combustible mix of snarling guitars, feral drums, and Hoff’s commanding presence.
With a debut album in the bag, support slots that feel like headlines, and festival stages stretching further across Europe, Gurriers are quickly becoming one of Ireland’s most unmissable exports. Their London return is already set for Saturday, 27 September as part of SON Estrella Galicia’s Soundhood Hackney where they'll be playing alongside bands like Yawners and Courting.
Their ascent hasn’t been in isolation. “The Irish music scene is like a ladder, with each person helping the other up,” Hoff explains. “Before, it was a competition, a very cultural competition. You were lucky to support a band, and the band would barely speak to you.”
Now, Gurriers are part of a generation rewriting that story. “Enola Gay are an amazing bunch of lads, really close friends of ours, and they brought us on our first ever UK tour, Hoff tells me. "That got us involved with our management and playing in the UK, and it opened up so much for us. Now we want to bring bands like Nerves and Theatre out with us, because they’re Irish bands that deserve to be in other people’s ears.”
That sense of camaraderie is what makes the moment so vital. “There are so many other amazing bands in Ireland, I honestly have a massive list,” he says. “It’s great that we know them all, and they’re all sound.
“They all want the same thing: they want to have a crack, they want to have pints, and they want to make music. It really is that simple.”
The parallels with past musical hubs are clear to Hoff: “The whole scene reminds me of what we learned about the Manchester scene, or the New York scene in the 2000s, or even the hardcore scene in the ’80s. When something like that is happening, you don’t always realise it’s happening at the time. We’ll only know about it in 10 or 20 years, when someone writes a book about it.”
“In Dreams” by Roy Orbison
For my earliest memories, when I was like 11 or 12, I’ve always said there was no one in my family who showed me music when I was younger. But I’ve come to terms with the fact that’s complete lies, there was always music played in the house. My nanny used to always have BBC Four on at nine or ten o’clock. I don’t think you get BBC Four anymore, but they had all the old music playing on the television, re-runs of The Old Grey Whistle Test and all that. Roy Orbison was the one that really stuck to me the most.
My nanny would explain why she liked him. She said he barely looked like he was singing, but he was projecting his voice so much. He looked like Johnny Cash, but kind of sang like Elvis. She thought he was pretty as well, so she’d tell me all these stories and it was really nice. She’s still a massive Orbison fan, we listen to him every now and again with a couple of cans.
“In Dreams” was one of those ethereal kind of songs that’s so captivating. Even at a young age you love it and think it’s really cool. When I got older, I watched the movie Blue Velvet by David Lynch, and it was in it as well. That was one of those things that opened up my head, I was like, ‘I know this song, how do I know this song?’ Then all these memories came back, which was really nice.
For me it’s the innocence of the song. When I was a kid, it was such a nice thing to hear, and then the juxtaposition of it in Blue Velvet, opening up your childhood memories in that way, is probably the weirdest thing to think about. But it’s good. It’s nostalgic.
I think the song “Come and See” was an influence from that. David Lynch using dream-like scenarios as creative output is exactly what ‘Come and See’ is about. As plainly as I can put it, it’s about a dream. I feel like you can really do whatever you want in a dream state. The rest of the album is very in the moment and about turmoil and how the world is absolutely screwed, but the last song is the escapism - in your dreams you get away from it. There’s definitely a Roy Orbison “In Dreams” and David Lynch influence in that.
“Rockin’ Chair” by Oasis
The reason I put Oasis in is because it was a massive turning point for why music became the centre of my universe. But I’m a big Blur fan, when I found Blur that all changed. My uncle was always into Nirvana and Oasis, and he’d be playing Oasis in the car or whatever. At first it was songs like “Don’t Look Back in Anger” or “Wonderwall”, the easier ones, but then when I really got into it, they became one of the first bands I completely consumed. I was obsessed.
We all illegally downloaded music back then, using uTorrent or whatever it was, and I made sure I had everything, Stop the Clocks and all the anthologies. But I always loved the B-sides. “Rockin’ Chair” is amazing. “Round Are Way”, “D'Yer Wanna Be a Spaceman?” - I was obsessed. I even thought their cover of “Heroes” was an Oasis song at first, which actually led me to discovering David Bowie, and then Bowie flattened everything for a while. It’s all connected.
For me, Oasis is a plot point because it was the first time I felt like I found community and identity. All the lads used to hang out wearing trackie bottoms and tracksuits, nothing wrong with it, it’s just what we wore. Then we saw Oasis in their jeans and parkas, walking with that simian stroll, and we thought they looked cool. I only even know it’s called the simian stroll because of that Elbow song “Lippy Kids.”
I bought a parka in Penneys years ago - really thin, completely useless in the cold. I’d walk around drenched in rain, doing the simian stroll, thinking I was the coolest kid in the world. Definitely not. But it was the first time me and my friends were all into something together, all discovering our brothers’ and uncles’ music at the same time.
The first song I ever sang with someone, just because I wanted to sing, was “Digsy’s Dinner”. I still wasn’t 100% like, ‘I want to be in a band’, I just wanted to sing. Oasis was that turning point. And “Rockin’ Chair” is the one I always remember listening to. It’s not even my favourite Oasis song, but it’s the one I most strongly connect with from that time.
I have this memory of walking through a field with my tiny iPod Nano, headphones in, singing that song while playing football. I’d put the wires under my t-shirt so they didn’t get caught, and I’d just run around with the ball, listening to Oasis. That’s how much it meant.
“Cosmic Love” by Florence + The Machine
I’d always say to my family that I was obsessed with Oasis, and that’s when I wanted to be in bands, or it was Nirvana. But they all said, ‘No, it was Florence + The Machine.’ And I was like, ‘Oh really?’ And they were, ‘Yeah, that was the first time.’
They said it was the first ever band that was new, brand new, that I heard on the television. Everything else beforehand was old, like Roy Orbison or Oasis or Nirvana. Florence was a new artist, and I was obsessed. I watched every video I could. I’ve still never seen her live, which is crazy, but I was really obsessed.
“Kiss with a Fist” was the first song I heard, and it was so fast. Then everything else was so ethereal and dreamlike. “My Boy Builds Coffins” is an amazing song. That time was also when my older cousins were really into Florence, and they were cool to me. Whatever they liked, I liked.
But with Florence, we were both into the same thing at the same time, and that was when I realised, ‘Actually, music right now is really cool’. So I got obsessed with buying everything I could in GameStop or the CD shops or whatever. My family always say that was the moment they noticed it. That was when they realised I had an obsession.
I wouldn’t really be singing along to “Cosmic Love”. I’d try, but I’d probably be terrible. I wasn’t a good singer back then, I’m not a good singer now. But I’d always sing “Kiss with a Fist”. That was the one I’d be blasting as loud as I possibly could in my room.
Lyrically, Florence has always struck me as quite spiritual, with this weird pagan aesthetic running through it. But I never really connected with that side of it. I’ve always been agnostic, and at the time I was more atheist, not believing in anything. I probably saw it more like fantasy—I was mad into fantasy movies and novels, and I treated her lyrics the same way. I never thought of it in a spiritual sense. I just thought it was really different, and she was cool. She’s still cool.
I didn’t realise ‘Cosmic Love’ was the last one single from the album, apparently it wasn’t even meant to be a single at first. But then when she played it live, everyone kicked off, so they released it. I don’t feel bad now having five singles from our first album. That’s the game.
“For Reasons Unknown” by The Killers
This is where it all kind of clicked for me. This is where I was like, ‘Okay, I want to be in a band.’
Brandon Flowers was like the coolest guy in the world. When you’re 13 or 14, that’s what you see. I started my first band when I was 15, and I was really into it. I bought Hot Fuss, Sam’s Town, and Sawdust because I liked the name The Killers, and that was the first time I really listened to them. I bought the CDs.
Obviously I already knew “Mr. Brightside” because everybody in the world knew that song. But I loved the whole album - ”Believe Me Natalie”, “Smile Like You Mean It”. Then Sam’s Town came along, and it’s still one of my favourite albums of all time. Me and my partner Tori always play it. It’s one of her favourites too, something she listened to when she was young. I probably know the lyrics to every song on Sam’s Town, which is rare for me, because I’m terrible at remembering lyrics.
Melody is my favourite thing. When a melody is really, really good, that’s what I connect with. I obviously love lyrics too, but I always get them wrong. I think it’s helpful though, I can sing whatever I want, and then when I go back to record, I think ‘Oh, that’s what I said, so that’s what it’s going to be.’ There are lyrics I’ve misheard from bands, then years later I read them on Genius and realise I was way off, but my line’s better! Misheard lyrics are a good thing, because it’s like your songs keep evolving.
There’s always that thought process about how bands evolve. You see it happen around a third or fourth album, when they change it up. For us, we’re not trying to change for the sake of it, but we are trying to evolve as writers and write songs for bigger rooms as the rooms get bigger. We’re learning how to work in those spaces.
We’re trying to write songs with more care. Not just throwing them into a room and jamming them out to see if they’re good, then playing them live straight away. We want to look at songs with a fine-tooth comb and work on them more until we think they’re genuinely ready. If you let something brew for longer, you can add more to it. That’s how I see it.
“No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross” by Sufjan Stevens
We get to the sad part of this song list now, we’re getting to the sad part of the plot points. This is me being in a couple of bands that never really did much. I didn’t do great at school, so I ended up doing what I wanted to do in college, but I didn’t do great in school to a point where I felt successful in college.
I ended up working in this really shitty fast food restaurant on the night shifts. Me and Mark [MacCormack, guitar] met each other there. All we used to do was talk about music. That was nice, but it was a really low point because I was working month in, month out from 10pm to seven in the morning, five days a week. On your days off you’re not a human being; you just go out for pints because you need to do something. I used to hate it; time used to go way, way slower and it wasn’t very healthy up here.
One thing I did give myself, because I didn’t really smoke, I only smoked when I drank, was I’d ask if I could go out to the car park and clean up before we opened for breakfast. I’d put the headphones in and play Sufjan Stevens’ album from start to finish. I don’t know why, because it’s a very dark and depressing album, but it would help.
The last two songs would come on, the sun would be rising and I’d think, ‘OK, there’s only an hour left.’ That was my little window: listen to the album, get through the shift, then you go home, and you sleep.
That’s how I started using music not just as being in a band or a personal thing, but as a tool to get you through something.
Listening to albums like that made me realise I wasn’t the only one. At the time I wasn’t playing an instrument in bands, I wasn’t the musician who’d sit down with a guitar, but it did make me want to learn. I don’t know why I never did; I want to learn now. I really want to learn piano because I feel like I’ve wasted years.
I’m just enamoured with lyrics and how they tell stories. I’m a massive Nick Cave fan and a massive Tom Waits fan - it’s always been about how you tell a story. I’ve spent 16 years writing and honing that craft, and sometimes I think I could be unstoppable if I learn an instrument. It’s one of those silly thoughts you keep having as the years go by.
“All My Happiness is Gone” by Purple Mountains
I was living on Harcourt Street in Dublin with my girlfriend, and we lived in a tiny studio apartment. I was definitely the darkest I’ve ever been, the most depressed I’d ever felt. I had just left my last band before Gurriers because of my mental health, and I was going through really bad thoughts all the time, anxiety attacks all the time, and falling out of love with music completely.
I even said to Tori, ‘I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do music anymore. I think I’m done.’ But at the same time, I was saying, ‘I’ll do one more. One more go. If that doesn’t work, I’m finished.’ Always fighting.
I used to look up new releases on Metacritic or Meta Music every Friday. That was my ritual, check the new bands, see what’s out. That’s when I came across the Purple Mountains record. I thought the cover looked cool, but I didn’t really listen to it. Maybe I glanced through. Then a week or two later I saw that David Berman, who made the record, had killed himself. I don’t know why, but I felt like I had to listen. Maybe it was morbid curiosity, but I pressed play.
The whole thing changed me completely. Even thinking about it now makes me emotional. I talked about it in therapy, how much impact that album had. Not that it was the same as what I was going through, but David was in such a dark place, and the way he wrote about it was so funny and so human, yet so distraught with life. I felt that too. He made me feel like you can write about these things and make art out of them.
I got into Silver Jews through that record, which I didn’t know of before. I’d always been a massive Pavement fan, but I didn’t realise Stephen Malkmus was in Silver Jews. That opened up a whole new world. It became my first real obsession with music again. For years I hadn’t had that, I’d stopped being obsessed with music. And suddenly I was back. That was the domino effect. I listened to every podcast, bought his books, watched the documentaries, even the one of him in Israel trying to find his identity. I was obsessed again.
It didn’t cure my depression, but it got me excited about music again. That was huge. Around that time Gurriers was still just a conversation, we were all friends already, but we hadn’t started properly. I think we first talked about it in 2019, which makes sense because that was when this record came out. Songs like “Top of the Bill” definitely come from David Berman’s influence, because it’s more biographical, more about your insecurities and weaknesses, and allowing that to exist in the songs.
People say that album was like a goodbye letter, and I think that’s true. It’s absolutely heartbreaking, but it’s also so artistic. Talking about it now gives me goosebumps. It’s incredibly sad, but also kind of hopeful in a weird way.
We don’t really write happy songs in Gurriers, but it’s not because we’re unhappy. We allow ourselves those moments, but it feels disingenuous to write overtly happy songs when the world isn’t reflecting that. What Berman did was juxtapose happy melodies with miserable lyricism - major chords with despair. That’s something we’ve taken on board. Our songs are anthemic, motivating, but they don’t ignore reality.
“Masterpiece” by Big Thief
I did this one with my girlfriend Tori as well. We wanted to pick a song for us, because she’s very, very important to me. We’ve been going out for nine years this year, and out of all the plot points in my life, she’s probably the main one.
Big Thief are the band we’ve seen the most together, and it’s one of those bands where as our relationship grew, their gigs grew too. We saw them in Whelan’s in Dublin, which is like 400 capacity. Then Vicar Street in Dublin, which is about 1,700. And then 20,000 people in Barcelona at Primavera. We’ve seen Adrianne Lenker on her own too, in a small room, in a bigger room.
Every time we went to see them, it was always years into our relationship, and we were stronger and stronger as time went on. It’s always been a nice thing, it’s like the gigs reflected us. Our relationship was building, we were learning how to live with each other, love each other, get stronger, and hopefully get into bigger houses over the years. She’s really important to me, so she has to be one of the main plot points.
The song itself reflects us as well. Even that opening lyric, “Years, days make a difference to me, babe.” it’s beautiful. It really is us.
We do have ‘our song’ as a couple. It’s actually “Therapy” by Loudon Wainwright. You can’t get it on Spotify, which is really annoying. Years ago, she downloaded it from a YouTube converter and put it on my phone without telling me. That was really nice.
With Big Thief though, especially the solo version of “Masterpiece”, it just sets the tone for Adrianne Lenker. Her solo career is almost threatening the band now, because she’s at the gold standard of songwriting. It’s like she can’t miss. She’s untouchable.
As an artist, I don’t really feel the need to separate myself from the band, I’m very happy intertwining everything. But the lads don’t want to do sad Nick Cave ballads, so maybe a couple of years down the line I’ll be the new sad Nick Cave. Maybe I’ll go down that route. The sad pro-Palestinian Nick Cave.
“Hold On” by Tom Waits
For context, Tom Waits is my favourite artist of all time. When I first heard him years ago, when I was young, it opened up my mind to how diverse an artist can be. That was it. He became a plot point for me. Last year on tour, I was making playlists of music I liked to share on my socials, but I always came back to Tom Waits.
My life went from listening to Tom Waits alone in the field with headphones, to listening to him in the tour van going to gigs across Europe and the UK. It felt like such a nice moment, like this guy was one of the reasons I wanted to be unique in what I write about.
What I do is very heavy rock, post-punk, noise-gaze, whatever you want to call it. I’m even trying to coin my own term. But getting in the van, sitting there listening to Bone Machine again, falling back in love with that record as an adult, finding new things in it I’d never noticed as a kid, it was special.
Me and Ben talked about it a lot. Growing up, Tom Waits was my little secret, my own artist that no one else around me knew. Then you get older and suddenly you meet people who love him too and you’re like, ‘Oh my god, I can talk about this now.’
I once read a YouTube comment that summed him up perfectly: he makes you nostalgic for a place you’ve never been. That’s how I feel with him. He gives you that feeling of distant memories, but they’re not yours. He romanticises being down and out so well.
And this song, “Hold On”, is so motivating. That’s what it’s about. He wrote it with his wife, and that connection really comes through. Tori, my partner, has helped me with my writing over the years as well, so it’s nice to feel that link. She’s basically my editor. When I send her stuff, she doesn’t sugarcoat it. She’ll say, ‘You need to edit this. This is shit.’ And honestly, that tough love has taught me how to be a better writer.
“Blue & Gold” by Madra Salach
They’re very new. The name translates to ‘Dirty Dog.’ They’re probably 22 or 23. The singer’s name is Paul Banks - not the one from Interpol. They released their first track, “Blue & Gold”, which is amazing. The story is about a young man who thinks he can win over his love by getting money through scratch cards. That’s what the ‘blue and gold’ is.
I’ve seen them live four or five times this year, and every single time I’m in tears crying. They have a song called “The Man Who Seeks Pleasure” which is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. It’s really amazing.
For me, with the way my head works and how I think about music, I’m listening to this really young band from Ireland writing some of the best stuff I’ve heard in so long. And they’re lovely, they’re sound, we get on really well with them.
The point for me, though, is what I was saying earlier about how strong the music scene in Ireland is. You see artists like Madra Salach getting an agent, getting a booking agent, getting management so fast, and it shows the spotlight is on Ireland now. The spotlight is saying, ‘the talent is there.’ You’ve got Cardinals, you’ve got Cliffords, two amazing Cork bands. You’ve got Black Nylon from Dublin, Delivery Service, Nerves, so many great bands. And Enola Gay too. They’re not new, but they’re another example of how stacked the scene is.
It’s just amazing. I feel happy to be part of it, and happy to know all these people. I was part of the scene when it was a horrible competition, when bands barely spoke to each other, and these guys were just kids.
Now everyone knows each other, they all hang out, and there’s such a sense of community. If we can help in any way, we want to. That’s why we’ve brought bands like Theatre to support us in the UK, they deserve to be heard.
The truth is, Dublin is expensive and getting harder to live in. The government isn’t fixing housing, the homeless crisis, or anything that actually matters. People are pissed off, and that’s why there’s such good music. Instead of going to the pub and giving it out to your friends where nothing changes, bands are channeling that anger into writing songs. Nothing’s happening politically, but the catharsis is there.
I might sound pessimistic, but that’s just me.
Soundhood Hackney takes place on 27 September across three venues in East London: Oslo, Paper Dress Vintage, and the Sebright Arms.
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