‘Returning to Ireland feels like closure’ - This Is The Kit leader Kate Stables on Irish gigs, Glastonbury and why she’s in the mood to make a bit of a racket

AHEAD of their shows at Bangor’s Open House Festival and elsewhere in Ireland, David Roy catches up with Paris-based This Is The Kit leader Kate Stables to chat about why the acclaimed alternative-folk outfit seek out shows in unusual places, how their recent Glastonbury Festival set proves they are a ‘festival band’ and the key role Ireland played in the making of their sixth and current album, Careful of Your Keepers...

Is it good to be back home for a change having been so busy with the band over the past year?

Yeah, it’s really nice to be home for a bit. Paris has got a bit of a lull before the Olympic storm: all the Parisians have left and all the Olympic spectators haven’t arrived yet, so it’s just a lovely place to be. Paris in the summer is great.

The gigs that are coming up are kind of the last leg of touring this album [Careful of Your Keepers] that came out last June. It’s been an amazing year, but I am looking forward to getting stuck in to some writing and some other projects.

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The band convened in Co Cork to work up the songs for the album prior to recording with Gruff Rhys [of Super Furry Animals fame] in Bristol. Are you looking forward to coming back next month for your shows in Co Down, Co Galway, Co Cork and Co Kilkenny?

Yeah, exactly: before we recorded the album, we came and basically took over the house of our amazing friends, Caroline and Joe, who run Levis Corner House in Ballydehob. They were incredibly generous and just lent us their house – we were there for two weeks just working on the songs and getting them ready, and then at the end we did a gig in Levis’s where we performed the new songs for the first time ever.

That was quite an amazing experience, so it’s going to be nice to go back there in August and play the songs again. And, for us as people in the band and even the songs themselves, we’ve all been on this sort of journey. It’s all sort of different now to where we were back in October 2022 or whenever it was.

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So it’s nice that we’re doing a full circle, it feels like a nice kind of healthy closure or something.

You had a great set on the Park Stage at Glastonbury last month. Was it as much fun as it looked?

It was really fun. It was lush, really nice. And we had Suntou Susso join us for a song [he played Kora on Take You To Sleep], which was really lovely, because he played on the album as well. So that just made it sort of extra-special.

It was really enjoyable, it’s always just mind-blowing that people come and see us play at Glastonbury, it feels really lucky.

You all seemed so comfortable on stage and it came across in the performance. Do you feel like a bit of a secret ‘festival band’?

Ha, well the guys in the band are great and also we just sort of like it: it’s easy to get bamboozled by festival situations, because you get used to touring and sound checks and the sort of comfort of being in a venue and stuff – and then, all of a sudden, it’s just like ‘20-minute line check and play the gig, whether you can hear yourself or not’.

That is stressful for a lot of people, but I kind of thrive off that danger a little bit. I quite like it. I’d get bored if everything was sort of perfect and I did everything right all the time. So it’s lucky that I am a bit clumsy and sort of have to have to deal with the obstacles that I throw down for myself.

Speaking of ‘non venue’ shows, you recently released a live album for Record Store Day of your set at The Minack Theatre in Penzance, a cliff-top amphitheatre. Is that one of the more unusual places you’ve performed?

I feel lucky to have been doing this for long enough to have played quite a few unusual gigs, but that definitely is up there in the top few. Although we did play in the Mitchelstown Cave in Cork a few years ago – that is definitely up there as one of the most amazing and unexpected places we’ve played.

So we’ve played amphitheatres on clifftops, caves under the ground and everything inbetween. That’s what interests me, the interesting places to play. Obviously, it’s safer for promoters and stuff if it’s like on the beaten path and in a regular venue. But when they have got an element of creative imagination, it makes it good for everyone. I just love going off-track a little bit.

What was it like recording the album with Gruff Rhys?

He was just brilliant. It just really helps having someone there that is such an exemplary human being.

He’s got such a golden soul and he is such a sort of serious artist: like, everything he does, he does as well as he can in a fully sort of multi -disciplinary approach. He’s so great, and it was a real freaking gift having him on the team making this album. It taught everyone so much and made everyone’s experience of making the album so brilliant.

With the touring now winding down, how soon will it be until you start to think about making another record?

In the past, I’ve always felt a little bit sort of like ‘quick, get another album done’, but just now I feel like taking stock a little bit. I’ve been invited to participate in quite a few interesting projects that aren’t necessarily just like me making a This is The Kit album.

I really want to explore that a bit and see what it’s like to get out of my comfort zone – to just exercise some different musical muscles. I’ve been thinking recently about making the sort of music that I like to listen to, which has quite often got no words or tune and is sort of a bit noisy and just about making a racket.

So I might do a little bit of racket-making myself.

This Is The Kit, with support from Rozi Plain, August 10, The Court House, Bangor. Tickets via openhousefestival.com. Visit titk.cargo.site for full Irish tour dates and ticket details