Their connection to Drogheda and the surrounding area gives that broad musical outlook a clear home. The band developed material through sessions around East Meath, placing its beginnings within a community of people playing, exchanging ideas and returning to songs over time. That is a meaningful detail in their story. It suggests a project built through regular collaboration, with the music developing alongside the relationships between the musicians. Their debut album, Celebrity, grew out of that process.

Having seven members creates considerable scope for musical variety. The Cacks’ players contribute to songwriting and harmonies, and their instruments include guitar, piano, bouzouki and bodhrán. Each offers a different way to shape a song. A piano can establish its harmony clearly, while a bouzouki brings a ringing texture and a bodhrán introduces a distinct percussive character. The value of that range lies in the choices it makes possible: a song can be approached from several directions before the arrangement finds its shape.

Vocal harmonies are another important part of the band’s stated approach. Multiple voices give a group opportunities to change the emotional emphasis of a passage without changing its words. A line sung alone can feel personal or exposed; joined by other singers, it can become an expression of agreement, support or shared feeling. For a band built around several contributors, harmony also provides a direct way for those individual personalities to become part of the same performance.

Their mixture of influences creates an interesting meeting point. Irish folk and Americana both have deep connections with storytelling and music passed between communities. Blues offers a language for tension, repetition and emotional release, while rock brings other possibilities for momentum and intensity. Electronic elements can introduce sounds outside that acoustic foundation. The Cacks identify all of these as influences, giving them a broad starting point from which to develop their own material.

The challenge with such a range is finding a common thread, and collaboration provides one way of doing that. When musicians spend time developing songs together, their habits and instincts begin to create a recognisable group identity. The same people making choices across different styles can give a collection continuity. That is part of the interest in The Cacks as a band: hearing how seven sets of musical ideas can contribute to something shared.

Released in April 2025, Celebrity is their debut album and a useful starting point for exploring the group. It contains nine tracks, opening with “Remedy” and continuing through “Celebrity,” “Domino,” “Fishbar,” “Relevance,” “Lava Beds,” “Nom Nom Nom,” “When I Am to Die” and “Two Weeks.” The record runs for around forty minutes, offering enough space for a substantial introduction without becoming an oversized first statement.

Even the range of titles gives the collection an individual personality. “Celebrity” and “Relevance” suggest ideas of attention and significance, while “Fishbar” and “Nom Nom Nom” introduce a more unusual, playful quality. “When I Am to Die” carries a different weight again. Titles alone cannot explain what a song means, but they can establish curiosity, and this selection gives a listener several reasons to wonder what comes next.

The recording process took the band from its East Meath sessions to Black Mountain Studio in the Mournes, where James Eager and Peter Baldwin helped complete the album. Moving material from informal sessions into a studio creates a different kind of focus. Decisions about space, timing and instrumental balance become more deliberate, and the musicians have to settle on the version they want to share. For The Cacks, Celebrity became the recorded outcome of songs developed over a period of years.

Their live material offers another perspective. The band’s website includes Live in Spirit Store, a 21-track collection that stretches well beyond the debut album’s running order. Alongside songs from Celebrity, the set includes titles such as “The President,” “Mortuary Mags,” “Vultures,” “Daydream,” “The Will of the Tide,” “Bed on Your Floor,” “The Boyne” and “Fat of the Land.” That larger selection shows a repertoire with more ground to explore than one studio release can contain.

A live collection is particularly useful for understanding a group with several instrumentalists and singers. It lets listeners follow the changing combinations across a longer performance. The order of songs becomes part of the experience, with familiar material appearing alongside pieces they may not have encountered before. It also gives an emerging band room to show the breadth of what it does beyond the tracks selected for a debut.

The Cacks have appeared on programmes for Vantastival and The Grand Social, placing their music in settings where audiences come to discover artists as well as follow established favourites. Those settings offer different opportunities. A festival performance can introduce the band to people arriving with little prior knowledge, while a dedicated venue show allows more time for an audience to settle into the repertoire. Both are valuable environments for a group with such a collaborative setup.

There is also something appealing about the humour in the band’s public identity. Their descriptions of themselves are informal and mischievous, making room for strangeness alongside their musical ambitions. That tone offers an invitation: listeners do not need to approach the music with specialist knowledge or a fixed idea of what folk should sound like. They can begin with a song, a voice or an instrumental detail and follow whatever catches their attention.

For The Fat Llama, The Cacks represent the pleasure of looking closely at music being made nearby. Drogheda is the starting point, but the band’s influences connect with a much wider musical world. Their debut, live recordings and shared approach provide several ways into that story. The interest lies in discovering how the personalities fit together, how the songs develop, and what happens when a group gives itself enough freedom to pursue an unexpected idea.