Time was when a band would chop a few lines and pass 'round the Jack Daniels when you were interviewing them, but all these here Chicks - a new allgirl punk rock group from Dublin - have to offer by way of refreshment is a packet of Jelly Tots and some Wine Gums. Still in their school uniforms, they're having an animated conversation about which is better, Burger King or McDonalds, complaining about the amount of homework they have, giggling about boys and gushing about indie queen Cerys from Catatonia, who they met the other day.
Best to acquaint yourselves with them now because these precocious teenagers have easily as much potential as the last big thing to come out these parts, Ash: Annie Tierney (16) plays guitars and sings, Lucy Clarke (17) plays drums and sings and Isabel Reyes (17) is the lead vocalist and bass guitar - they're all from the Terenure/Rathmines area of Dublin. They've just released their debut EP - an astonishing slice of grown-up power pop that brings to mind The Ramones in bed with The Shangri-Las - which is brilliantly titled Criminales, Coches, Pistolas y Chicas.
If nothing else, writing about Chicks gives you the chance to use punk rock and Loreto on the Green school in the same sentence - for it is in that estimable educational establishment that Chicks met: they are now in their 5th year. So, since when did they start putting Ramones records on the Leaving Cert syllabus? "That fact that we're still at school, and in Loreto, doesn't have much to do with it," says Annie. "We decided to form the band last year during our transition year, just for a laugh, but when we started spoofing people that we had played gigs and recorded records, they asked for evidence, so we quickly had to learn how to play our instruments and how to get out and gig." To date, the band has played live only a handful of times, and always in venues where they wouldn't normally be allowed because of their age.
"People go on about our age all the time," says Annie with a weary sigh. "I suppose it was the same with Ash before us because they were in a band when they were still in school, but also we've also the girl thing to contend with."
Not to be confused with the saccharine, girlie sound of the likes of The Spice Girls or All-Saints, these chicks have a firm musical grounding in heavy, riff-laden, New York punk rock garage bands such as The Stooges and MC5. "I suppose unlike other girls our age, we were listening to bands like Bikini Kill" (obscure Amercian "riot girrrl" band), "and a lot of hardcore punk from the 1970s," says Annie. "We also listen to today's indie bands like Super Furry Animals, Catatonia and Supergrass, but we're intent on creating our own sound and having our own voice."
And some voice it is: lead singer Isabel Reyes, who is half-Spanish, sings like Patti Smith's niece over a thundering rhythm section complete with whiplash guitars. The lyrics ain't half bad either: "There's stuff in there about the Star Wars film, because we love it and Manga comics because we love them," says drummer Lucy, "but it's more stuff about what we see around us and how we feel about things." One of the verses in one of the songs goes "We are the products of these pitiful apes/born to discover we're children of rape/If you think I'll wait for your brain to develop/I think you're sick boy, get some help". What's that all about? "It's just about relationships," says Annie, who's the main lyricist, "I've just written a new song called Feminism because people are always asking us are we feminists and we just say `define your terms' because feminism in 1998 means something completely different to what it did 20 years ago. The lyrics in the new song go: `You wanna make me join your club/you need a break from evolution/ have a sexist revolution/have a skin care resolution' and people can interpret that anyway they want."
While ostensibly displaying all the usual attributes of schoolgirls - sighing a lot, arguing ferociously among themselves only to collapse seconds later in hysterics when talking about how some "smelly boys" asked them for autographs after a recent gig and how they were noticed in their beloved Burger King one day - all three display a wisdom (and not just in a musical sense) far beyond their years. By way of illustration, Annie says she reads Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski (don't worry, Loreto parents, they're not on the school syllabus), and while struggling to make a point about intellectual activity, she turns to a quote from Foucault: "We renounce the will to knowledge and its sacrifice of life, we revere a certain practice of stupidity." Yup, I'm impressed.
Just to annoy them, it seemed appropriate to ask if their parents and teachers approved of what they were doing - what with all those groupies and drugs we keep hearing hang round on the music scene. "Our parents are very supportive," says Isabel. "In fact, my father comes along to video our gigs. It used to be that they would drive us straight home after the gigs but it's getting to the stage now where they won't be able to come to them all.
"The teachers at school are fine, we're just pupils to them, after all. I think there may have been a worry that we'd be out till four in the morning and not doing our homework but that's not the case - unfortunately."
So, you're going to make a real go of a rock 'n' roll career after school? "Yeh, we think so," says Annie. "I would like to go to college at some stage, but we don't have to go immediately after school, we can give the band some time first."
Although their EP only went to No 31 in the charts on its first week of release, it's worth remembering that Chicks don't have the considerable support of major record company label behind them. They're with a small, Dublin independent label and are taking the slow-burning route to success, with the emphasis more on the music than the marketing. "This is nothing to do with Girl Power" says Annie. "We're not going to be marketed, PR'd and exploited - we know what we're doing and we're going go out and do it." Chicks' Coches, Criminales, Pistolas y Chicas is on Supremo Recordings. Chicks play live at Whelans, Dublin on Monday 25th and Wednesday 27th May; The Empire, Belfast on Friday, 29th May and The Metropole Hotel, Cork on June 6th.