First came Orlando. Then came Kathi and Orlando. Then came Ugly Megan. Orlando Fitzgerald was already recording songs by himself, when his girlfriend Kathi Burke joined in. Abandoning the previous recordings that he had made solo, they ‘started new. We went to my house for the weekend and recorded 6 songs, like a joke.’ The result was Ugly Megan (named after Megan Nolan, a member of You’re Only Massive).

When we meet, it is in the bus station. They are going to Galway to play Roisín Dubh. Kathi is sitting on the floor, surrounded by a keyboard, a guitar and a bag full of leads and toys. Orlando is in the shop. Things need to change. It’s awful bringing their stuff all around the country. “We’re going to get a car. It’s in the pipeline. Though we can’t drive. It’s never going to happen, really.” Though Ugly Megan are still quite young, they have two EPs under their belt (‘Three Whole Funs’, and ‘The Gavin, Megan, and Oisin EP’), both put out on their own label – Well Wicked Wecords. Naturally, due to their semi-lo-fi ethos and boy/girl vocals, Moldy Peaches comparisons get brought up. However, Ugly Megan are not the Moldy Peaches. While the Moldy Peaches’ Adam Green and Kimya Dawson blend crass with cutesy in their lyrics (“squinched up your face and did a dance/ shook a little turd out of the bottom of your pants”), Ugly Megan combine toytronica, harmonies, gangsta stylings, and gamine charm. ‘Sunshine Vs Splack’ opens with the Mystikal-esque ‘Shake that ass bitch and let me see what you got’, undercut with Fitzgerald’s Ian Curtis tones telling of long summer days, until, finally, the chorus melts into coos of ‘I love you’. ‘One Night at My House’ sets lyrics like “I really like your trousers but I’d much prefer them on the floor” against a glockenspiel background.

This mixture of pop and hip-hop ties in neatly with the first records that Orlando and Kathi bought. He bought the soundtrack to the Pokémon film, while she bought Eminem’s ‘Marshal Mathers LP’. They add, “we find hip hop really fun. Old school stuff. It’s really fun and summery. We’ll probably start covering Nordic death metal in the winter.” Their general listening is pretty eclectic as well, ranging from Wax Taylor to White Noise, influenced in part by Orlando’s sideline as an eclectro DJ. (‘I don’t have a DJ name. Maybe I’ll make one up on the bus.’) Composing songs is a joint effort- ‘We both write the lyrics. Sometimes we’ll do it separately, but it’s harder to write it together.’- often coupled with some outside influences- “Our song Bobby Orlando is made up of quotes from a biography about a disco producer from New York called Bobby Orlando.” Their relationship is definitely a factor in their music, but one that has changed with time- “Even if we broke up, we’d still sing together. We were a couple before we were a band. Even if we hated each other we’re still going to sing together. I think a lot of the songs when we first started playing were about love and stuff ‘I love you so much/ I wanna be with you babe’. But people get bored with that.”

While Kathi frantically checks her pockets for their bus tickets, and an announcement about the bus times to Naas blares over the tannoy, they discuss the band’s image- or lack thereof. “We don’t have an image. I don’t think that hard. We just wear clothes that we think are cool really. My dad calls my trousers ‘elephant pants’.” Though they’re about to leave for Galway, they plan to stay in Ireland for the time being. They were a hair’s breadth away from decamping to the Toronto School of Art, but instead Kathi decided on NCAD in Dublin. What’s Canada’s loss is Ireland’s gain, for Ugly Megan are very special indeed.

Ailbhe Malone is 21 years old. She continually gets Malcolm McClaren and Steve McClaren mixed up.
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