“Anyway, sorry, I need to relax, I’m too fucking excited,” Christy Leech tells me as I press play to start recording our chat. We’re tucked in a tiny, red-lit corner in the backroom of London’s XOYO, joined by his brother and second half of Le Boom, Andy Leech, and a few partygoers who can’t resist the temptation of being around the Navan brothers after the night they’ve just delivered. Minutes before we linked up, they were setting the dancefloor of the iconic venue on fire, not only with their now very well-established dance and clubby beats, but with their unmatched energy, synchronicity, and Irish charm.

“I’m on a massive high. I don’t know, there’s a mixture of like, we haven’t slept properly in the last three nights, and then there’s that high that you go into…”, Christy pauses, eyes locked with his brother as they seem to simultaneously digest the feeling. “It’s very close to sadness. It’s the thin line between being very happy and being very sad,” they share a laugh. Hours before the show, they spent the day on a train from Paris, fresh out of a show they described as “just unbelievable,” following an equally unforgettable night in Berlin.

“It’s a weird one, I can feel I’m crashing at the minute,” Andy adds. “I think this is probably the happiest I’ve been, ever. It’s like, just the last two shows have been amazing. And then tonight, just absolutely special as well. If you spoke to us before the gig, you might have got more of a level-headed answer.”

Silently, I think that perhaps not having the most level-headed answers to questions is what makes Le Boom so special. On and off-stage, they’re the perfect depiction of what brotherhood actually means. A connection that transcends sonic waves and is imprinted in their sound through Christy’s masterfully layered production, Andy’s close-to-heart lyricism, and their shared passion and pride in their motherland, Ireland.

With an intoxicating warm-up set from DJ Jojo and a surprise performance from fellow Irish creative Kayleigh Noble, Le Boom’s London night was, again, one for the books. With close collaborator Peter Fleming, the Leech brothers create an atmosphere of escapism, carefreeness, and equally positive chaos, crowds chanting along to Andy’s spoken words on a note of relatability, nostalgia, and, in best Irish behaviour, pure craic. From London, they’re off to the last leg of their UK and Ireland tour — and one thing I’m sure of, I’d never say no to a Le Boom gig.

Keep scrolling to read our full chat, and listen to “Class,” their new single, out today…

How was Paris? Did you have any luck finding a decent pint of Guinness?
Christy: The Guinness is so shit, you can’t even get it. Paris actually was class. So we played Berlin on Thursday night. Then we played Paris last night. And if Berlin was the last show of the tour, you’d be like, brilliant. But fucking hell, Paris just knocked it out of the water. And it was just unbelievable. Tiny room, like, 100, 120 people. It was tiny. People on top of each other, have a fucking vibe in the room. We were like, ‘any Irish here?’ And it was like, three people in the back, ‘yay!’

Andy: We even tried [to ask], “is there anyone from Navan here?” And there was a dead silence. But it was incredible. Absolutely amazing.

And what were your expectations for London?
Christy: Obviously, we were really nervous about London, because London’s London. Still, we feel like we’ve no business being in London. Three lads from Navan, turning up to London and playing at an iconic venue like XOYO. It feels like a fucking dream every time we do anything here. But to be able to do it, and we’ll look out, and then even to mention Ireland and get a bit of a fucking cheer, and just to see the same reaction that we get at home here, is fucking surreal. Kind of gorgeous. A bit emotional, you know? And I suppose then, not to get overly nostalgic about it all, but I guess there’s the thing of me and Andy, obviously we know each other on another level than most bandmates, because we’re brothers, obviously we’ve grown up together. And just sending messages back into our family group at home, and the buzz of that, and the connection we have. It’s super emotional.

Do you send loads of pictures to your family group chat?
Christy: Let’s say, they are kept up to date.

Andy: 100% kept up to date. And if we didn’t send something in, Mam would be straight in and be like, “Oh, what’s the story”.

Do you think you discovered anything about each other that you didn’t know yet when you started working together? Did you start admiring each other on a different level?
Andy: I think the thing that surprised me most was how on the same page we were. While growing up, anything creative, Christy would have been the first person I would show things to. So going into it, I kind of knew we were always on that same level, but I just didn’t realise to what extent we were actually just kind of the same brain.

Christy: Genuinely, when we’re texting, often I text the same message that he writes, and then they both come through at the same time. And we’re like, ‘alright. That’s what I’ve thought.’

While growing up, when did you start working together, making music together?
Andy: Only very recently. I mean, we worked on creative things the whole time, so I would have done a lot of writing before [starting the band], and so would have been writing for like, plays and different things like that, and Christy would have always written the music for it, would have produced all the stuff as well, so we worked together on loads of things like that. But the music thing is actually… It’s kind of a lockdown thing. We ended up living together purely accidentally, because just everyone was living in mad places. And then it was kind of just something to pass the time, we just started making tunes, and then just kind of went with it.

Christy: But I think, like, I don’t know if you’re really close to anybody, a sibling or anything like that, but it hits you harder when you know that person. Sometimes when I hear his [Andy’s] words, they kick me. And it took me a while to understand that that would happen for other people too, so I would hear these words and be a little bit knocked by them, I’d be like ‘yeah, I get that.’ And then, we were doing a rave somewhere in Dublin, and I asked if he wanted to get up on stage and do a tune. And you got up and did it, and then I looked out and I said, ‘fuck, they’re feeling the same way I’ve been feeling.’ And that was the moment we said, let’s fucking do more of this, like, you know, and I think, since then, genuinely it’s just been fucking amazing.

How is your creative process these days? From where do you start working on new music?
Christy: Well, we don’t really sit around waiting for inspiration. We treat it very much like work, we meet at like half nine, ten, every Monday, and we sit in a room and we basically just start creating. So it’s either looking through ideas, writing, maybe you [Andy] come up with words, I come up with tunes, whatever, and we just bounce shit off each other all day, and generally by the end of that day, we’ll have something, and then we kind of just repeat that as many times as we can.

Andy: We have like five or six different formulas [of work], and depending on the music or depending on the words, we kind of go for certain places. Often Christy will come with, like, class music, and say like, ‘do you have anything for that?’ Or then, otherwise, I’ll go to him with words, and the tune will kind of shape around those. It really depends on the day, and it depends on kind of what kind of is inspiring us then.

And how did you incorporate the spoken words into your music?

Christy: We very much come from the secret raves, dance music, the partying thing, so we never wanted it to be like, ‘alright, we’re at a rave, and now this chap’s gonna get up and say a poem, and we’re all gonna like, stand and like you know, pretend we’re not high as fuck.’ It was never about that. We got to the point where we actually actively went through tunes, or through spoken word pieces, and slashed anything that felt overly literary, or overly romantic, or anything like that, and tried to bring it back to a much smaller place. I think the goal was always to feel like you’re speaking to one person, and not like speaking to loads of people. It was never about impressing [anyone], it was like speaking to one friend, that thing you’d shout in their ear of your friends when the tunes are going on. And I mean, that has meant like, slashing true bits, you know, and like going for a really direct way of saying a thing.

Andy: Yeah, especially with the lyrics, and I think with the music as well, anything that is in the tunes is something that I’ve heard my mates say at an afters, or like, I’ve directly heard from them, or I’ve directly said to someone. I think the tunes are tunes that we’ve heard at afters, or that we’ve actually listened to ourselves, so I think that’s like, it’s then it’s just been so easy.

Christy: Literally, we’ve been there, we wake up the next day and go, ‘fuck, never do that again,’ and a week later we go, ‘let’s make that a tune.’

I see you as part of a big group of Irish creatives that are using your music and art as a space of activism as well. Is that something you actively think about? How do you reflect on that?
Christy: I think we don’t think about it, on an activism level, but there is something about being very honest… I mean, keeping it to those words that you would shout in your mate’s ear, makes the whole thing very personal, very Irish, and very colloquial. And in that, that’s activism in itself, because it’s not pandering to a more global version of ourselves, or a fucking more Americanised, or Anglicised, or anything like that. It’s very much a cultural thing.

Andy: And, like, I mean, we’re massively inspired by this fucking explosion of Irish music on the panel at the minute. So the likes of, say, Lankum and The Wallopers, for us, is just huge, because we went to an Irish secondary school, we speak Irish to each other. When we were growing up, Irish just wasn’t cool, you know? We were going to school, and we were coming back to our mates, and they were like, why did the two of you go to an Irish school? So then when we see the likes of Kneecap, Lankum, Wallopers, and crowds in England and America going mad for it. It just blows my mind. I’m like, oh my… If thirteen-year-old Andy could see that now, his head would explode.

What would you tell him?
Andy: Yeah, well, I’d be like, fucking get into Trad and own it as well. Fucking own it, don’t be ashamed of it.

Christy: Cause I think we both probably went through a period at the beginning of any creative endeavour, you’re inspired by these things, but when you start making it, you’re so self-conscious of what you’re making that you’ve probably try to make it in the mainstream way. And I think that’s probably what you [Andy] brought mostly to what I do, you gave me the confidence maybe to be a bit more honest about what I was making and go ‘no, you can make what you want, it doesn’t have to be just the popular thing.’

What excites you most about the future?
Christy: Honestly, getting to do more of this. We often say before we go on stage, it’s not only about the audience. It’s about our connection with the audience all that kind of stuff, of course, but it’s actually about these three lads, dragging our suitcases, getting into flights, planes, trains all that stuff, and it’s about just maintaining that our connection and just smiling at each other, having the craic and just loving it for all those reasons that we started doing this. And, look, I honestly agree when you say what we have is contagious. It definitely spills out, and if it doesn’t, it’s still the craic. If every gig that goes well allows us to do it one more time then that’s worth doing.