Brooki is an alt rock band from Dublin with a sound similar to PJ Harvey, Portishead, and Wunderhorse. The University Times got the chance to speak to them after their packed Ireland Music Week show in Workman’s. The band is composed of lead singer Sarah Brooks, bassist Jake Brennan, drummer Anna Kelly, and guitarist Dara Gooney. They are currently on a UK and Ireland tour.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
UT: Do you want to talk about how you got involved with Ireland Music Week?
Sarah: I was sitting in my gaff one day, like a few months ago. I just saw the applications were open, so I was like I would love the opportunity to play at Ireland Music Week — because it is such a big deal. I sent an application in, at like three o’clock in the morning, and then got an email a couple of months later saying that we were playing it, and I was so happy.
UT: You guys are in a band as Brooki, but are also labelled as Sarah Brooks?
Sarah: We’ve transitioned.
UT: So you’ve gone from Sarah Brooks to Brooki?
Sarah: We’ve kind of gone from she to they.
UT: How did you guys form?
Anna: We met in music college.
UT: Which one?
Anna: BIMM. We were all in BIMM together.
UT: What courses are you in?
Anna: Sarah is songwriting, Me and Jake are in Drums and Gooney is in guitar. We just got together after. Jake came in after a year or so.
Sarah: We went through two failed bassists.
Anna: Yeah we went through a few bassists.
Sarah: I went up to Jake one day at college, and I was like ‘do you know any bassists?’. He was like ‘uh me’ and I was ‘uh okay’ and then here he is!
Jake: They haven’t gotten rid of me yet. This line-up has been about a year now.
Sarah: The guts of a year.
UT: When did you transition as a group?
Sarah: Around the time that Jake joined, it was definitely more of a band. But I always had the idea of making it a band. I was just lazy with the name. I’m still lazy with the name, it’s only Brooki.
UT: How long have you been releasing music as Sarah Brooks/Brooki?
Sarah: We’ve never released any music.
UT: Do you guys have any music on the way? Like a single or an album?
Sarah: That’s for us to know and for you to find out.
UT: Do you think BIMM has positively affected your musical career, or do you think it has contributed anything to your success as artists?
Sarah: We wouldn’t have met if it wasn’t for BIMM, so there’s that. BIMM was great. I learned a lot in the time before I dropped out.
UT: Your last song was really crazy. There was a lot of emotion.
Sarah: That’s me.
UT: Where does that come from?
Sarah: *laughs. Trauma? I don’t know.
Nah, ‘Amber’ is a song about having anxiety and having a panic attack. In Workman’s, ironically enough. So, it’s kinda funny playing it here. Yeah I wrote it after I had a series of panic attacks, in Workmans, in the bathroom. Those cubicles- they keep me warm.
UT: Have you guys ever had a show that big?
Sarah: No, we’ve never played in front of that many people.
Anna: Definitely not that many people who turned out for us.
Sarah: There was like fucking three hundred and fifty people or some shit.
Anna: We were lucky enough to play a support for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah last month. It was a great gig. Tonight was definitely the most we’ve played to, that came out for us, you know.
UT: Is there anything you would like to be published to Trinity students?
Sarah: For Trinity, I wanna say- come to our gigs and shout out graduate Finn Chatten of the class of 2024, because he’s like the only person I know that went to Trinity.
UT: You guys have a kind of gravitas on stage, do you wanna talk about that?
Sarah: It’s a lot of emotion and drama, you know yourself. I’m a big fan of Eastenders, so I think that comes out in my performance.
