“Wait, are they covering the Thomas the Tank Engine theme song?”
Ciara abruptly detracts from what she was saying to point out the gimmicky chug coming from the next room. The rest of Problem Patterns burst into laughter. The band are sitting in a circle on the floor of their rehearsal space off the Springfield Road, a cosy studio littered with battered sofas and cables. Ciara and Alanah sip on iced coffees; Beth and Bev unpack their kit as we chat. Their neighbours have unknowingly joined in on a private joke. “Thomas the Tank Engine was pivotal in album recording,” Alanah laughs. “We’d just stick it on whenever we needed cheering up.”
The band are still recovering from their first live set of the year at the Atlantic Bar in Portrush the previous weekend. When I ask how it was, they answer in a chorus of superlatives – amazing, electrifying, sweaty. The sold-out goodbye gig for the iconic north coast venue saw Problem Patterns take to the stage alongside ASIWYFA, Brand New Friend, Ferals, Dugout and Axis Of. “It felt exactly like being a teenager again, except it hurts so much more now!” Ciara cries. “We’re in so much pain and we’ll be invoicing ASIWYFA for the whiplash.” Bev even ended up smashing Ciara’s glasses in a moshpit – “Ciara and I got in a bit of a scrap about it but we’ve made up.”
Problem Patterns have been in Blackstaff Mill for about three years, moving on from their first space on Lombard Street where it all started out with their EP Good For You, Aren't You Great? in 2019. They recently announced their signing to Alcopop Records which they’ve been struggling to keep quiet about since last summer. They’ll be joining labelmates Cherym, Fight Like Apes and Hellogoodbye and have plans to release their debut at the end of the year. With a string of live dates across Europe in the coming months, these are very exciting times for Problem Patterns.
Although they can’t say too much about the record, their enthusiasm is palpable. “I keep saying it’s the least cohesive album ever, but in a good way,” Beth explains. “It’s weird as hell but it works and I think all of the songs were meant to fit on that album together. It’s a sonic journey.” A few songs they didn’t think would make the cut have been reworked. Alanah agrees: “If you were immediately looking at it you’d think, ‘this isn’t cohesive’, but it still sounds very much like us. It really takes you on a journey – sonically, it goes up and down, it’s still full of rage. There’s also humour in there which we’ve always had on stage, but I don’t think too many of our recorded songs have had that silliness that we tend to bring to the table.”
“For a debut album, it really says who we are. You get a good mix of all of our different styles and vocals and perspectives,” says Ciara. “I’d hope that if you listened to it you’d be like, ‘That’s Problem Patterns’.”
All four members sing on the album; the lack of a defined frontperson and switching of instruments is a key tenet of the band. “What’s very important to us and has been since day one is that all four of us have a voice and it’s just a complete collaborative effort,” says Alanah. When the group first got together, both Alanah and Ciara wanted to be behind the mic, but weren’t sure how it would work. “It worked out for the better that both of us wanted to sing because then all four of us get to.” For Ciara, the same goes for whoever’s on drums or guitar: “When we’re swapping, none of us are going to play the instrument the same way.”
“Having it all come together has been amazing – finally getting the masters back and listening to them and just knowing that we made that,” Alanah beams. “Especially because in the grand scheme of things we’re quite a young band, we threw ourselves into it very quickly – a lot of bands will work away and then do their debut show and single a year or two in, whereas as went straight into the studio with one single.” Mixing, mastering and label negotiations are new territory. “We never had a plan, we never knew what any of this was going to be,” Ciara says. “It’s exceeding our expectations every day.”
Problem Patterns started out as friends in the local punk scene. Their name comes from the clashing outfits they tend to wear, although the new political meaning it’s taken on fits just as well. Alanah and Ciara used to work together in a cafe; Beth and Bev were briefly in a band who played “one and half” gigs with one song and a lot of teenage angst. “We all answered a newspaper ad…” Bev jokes. “And then Simon Cowell rang us up and said, do the four of you want to be in a band?” Ciara roars. The group have a great sense of fun and camaraderie, often finishing each other’s sentences. Despite the rage-fuelled anthems they write, in person their love for one another is obvious (“The secret ingredient in the Problem Patterns soup”, they tell me). In many ways, Problem Patterns is like group therapy.
“We were in a WhatsApp group slabbering about the news and how awful women are treated – [we thought] we can be depressed and go about our lives, or we can try and do something – and in a small way that made us feel powerful,” says Beth. Alanah felt similarly disillusioned: “When we got together, I remember feeling angry about a lot of things, like we need to put pen to paper.” All the members have been making music since they were teenagers and have gone on to learn each other’s instruments. In the true spirit of punk, Alanah says she’s only started to seriously learn guitar in recent years and they reminisce about only have one tuner between them when they started out. As Sid Vicious once famously said, “You just pick a chord, go twang, and you’ve got music.”
Bev is from a very religious family who don’t approve of her “rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle”, she says, tongue-in-cheek. She learnt guitar on her mum’s acoustic and then got an electric for her birthday. “It’s been a lot of fun since I met you guys and started playing. It’s way more fun to play stuff you write. It’s all about growth – we’re learning as we go!”
Problem Patterns latest single Who Do We Not Save came out on International Women’s Day and is a burning indictment of the politicians who are allowing the NHS to crumble and fall into the hands of privatisation. “We are all just collateral damage,” Alanah screams on the track over frenzied riffs and thudding drums. “I am someone who has had to rely on national healthcare for a long part of my life. As a chronically ill person, it’s been frustrating.” They compare the current situation with ten years ago - the thankless task of trying to get through to a GP is one that many of us will be familiar with. The title is taken from a photo of a whiteboard tweeted by Dominic Cummings in 2021 outlining government Covid strategy which featured the line written at the bottom. To many, it was a blatant display of how dispensable people are to those in power. “It’s a real anger, rage song about the state of the government,” Beth affirms. “And I feel like we haven’t had a real anti-government punk song yet.”
Current affairs are often the catalyst for Problem Patterns tracks, be it the tragic murder of Brianna Ghey or allegations of predators in our own local scene. “[My writing] is usually spurred by some specific event that’s pissed me off,” Alanah says. “There’s always an idea,” Beth concurs. “With YAW, we’d seen the Sarah Everard case which we were all devastated about, then Alanah wrote some lyrics. I think the best Problem Patterns songs are the ones where we don’t remember how we wrote them. They just seem to fall out of us.”
One of the songs on the new album came from a riff that Bev sings to her cat. She had never played it on guitar before, but “it turned out to be the weirdest, silliest song we’ve ever written.” (Pickles will be wanting a writing credit on that track). Problem Patterns’ inspiration comes from a lot of strange places according to Ciara, but they always strike a balance between their signature playfulness and the hard-hitting messages of their songs: “The lyrics will always come from something serious even if the song is quite stupid.”
The band’s ethos of social justice goes hand in hand with their activism. “If we say something, we mean it and we put our money where our mouth is,” they assert. All profits from their Bangers ‘N’ Mash-Ups compilation went to She Sells Sanctuary and those from YAW were split between Cara-Friend and Women’s Aid. “As small as our platform is, it brings awareness to these topics as well,” says Alanah. “Also being present at marches and vigils for numbers, showing our support.”
With the rise of high profile misogynistic influencers like Andrew Tate and the dangers of incel content on platforms like TikTok, counteracting it with a feminist message can feel like a hopeless task. “Music can help, but I don’t think it’s our responsibility,” says Beth. “Absolutely, if people are receptive to our message, then that’s something we’re 100% behind if people want to have that conversation, but it’s very difficult if it’s a fourteen-year-old boy who thinks that women shouldn’t have rights. What are we gonna do?”
It’s disheartening in this day and age that people are still shying away from calling themselves feminists. Alanah believes it’s due to a lack of knowledge. “It’s not about hating men, it’s about hating the patriarchy which affects everybody, including men. They forget that. I think it’s just as important for men to be emotional and vulnerable and be good dads to their kids and not feel bad about how open they are with their feelings. Patriarchy affects that - it makes them think that they have to be hard and cold and macho. It’s damaging all of us.” Beth highlights how the bra-burning, razor-averse caricature of a feminist still pervades for some. “It becomes a symbol of ridicule and people don’t want to align themselves with that.” Ciara agrees: “It’s a lot more helpful to the cause to make mistakes and actively address them. It’s such a weird, dirty word but I’d say that most people do agree with it, they’re just afraid of the wording which is so silly.”
Given Belfast’s history of punk and whole host of things to be angry about, the emergence of a band like Problem Patterns feels only natural. As queer, feminist ceasefire babies, Problem Patterns represent the next generation of protest music in the North.
“Me and Ciara are very much hands across the barricades, we’re a cross community band!” Beth jokes. “I’m from the Shankill Road and Ciara’s from the New Lodge so 25 years ago we probably couldn’t have been in a band together - we would have never have crossed paths or met which is a real fucking shame. And that makes me sad because of how many great friendships and bands could have existed if that was a possibility. It’s a contradiction because we’re a political band but we don’t really like to talk about Northern Irish politics in the sense of Protestant-Catholic. I grew up in a very DUP household – both me and my brother are gay so that was really tough, but my parents are fab now.”
“Being in a band with Beth has taught me so much about the weird intolerances I was born with, when realistically Beth is the most like me in the band,” Ciara explains. “We grew up metres away from each other, we’re the most similar in age, we’ve very similar philosophies, we’ve the same craic and she’s taught me so much about what I was afraid of [on] ‘the other side’ – just stuff I was uncomfortable about, but didn’t know I was uncomfortable about. I’ve unlearned so much from being in a band with Beth and Bev as well. I was never sectarian, I wasn’t raised like that, but when you’re in a community you hear it all around you. There’s so much casual sectarianism and it’s from fear a lot of the time. The generation before are just terrified, they don’t want us to go through what they went through, they’re like ‘don’t go into that area!’. But we’re the generation that have to go into that area.”
“I think we’re in a good place – obviously there’s people who want to send Northern Ireland back 25 years, but there’s also a bunch of fucking amazing people out there – I think Northern Ireland is a really exciting, cool place to live at the minute,” Beth says. “We’ve got a very fun, cool arts scene and hopefully our band has fostered some of that.”
“Should we make a Derry Girls, but about Problem Patterns?” Bev suggests. The band erupt in agreement. “A modern, cross-community band with a culchie and a Canadian in it!” Lisa McGee, expect a phone call.
In the meantime, what message would Problem Patterns like to leave us with? “Buy the album. Be decent. Don’t be a TERF.”
The Kathleen Hannah Connection
Problem Patterns come from a long line of feminist punk groups, from riotgrrrl pioneers Bikini Kill and Bratmobile to Hole and Pussy Riot. The riotgrrrl movement, which originated in the US Pacific Northwest in the early 1990s, was an anarchic lashing out against patriarchy and the belief that women couldn’t be as loud, ugly and angry as men on stage. Endorsement doesn’t come much better than from the godmother of riotgrrrl herself, Bikini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna.
“They make weird music for right now that sounds like no one else and I am addicted,” Hanna said of Problem Patterns’ sound in The Skinny. She has name dropped the band several times in interviews and they even billed to support Bikini Kill in Glasgow last year before the gig was cancelled. “She is a fairy godmother,” Ciara said. “She’s been part of relighting the fire and the trust and confidence we have in ourselves as a band.”
Recently, Hanna called Problem Patterns her “ultimate favourite band” during a Q&A at Sydney Opera House when asked about new musicians that inspire her. She praised their originality and delivery, inviting the Australian audience to check them out. The band are delighted to count on her as a fan: “We are just very grateful that she took that time on such a big stage to acknowledge us.”
Problem Patterns on Problem Patterns
Beth on Alanah – “Alanah is like a hot Laszlo from What We Do in the Shadows if he was Canadian! She writes all these deep lyrics. Sometimes I’m at the back and don’t hear them and then I’m like, shit, that is so fucking profound. She brings profoundness to Problem Patterns.”
Alanah on Beth – “Beth makes me feel more brave. She is a marvel because you usually have your science brains and your art brains, but Beth is just good at everything [Beth is doing a PhD in molecular parasitology, the band’s resident “worm doctor”]. We’re so privileged she’s in the band and we’ll all agree she’s the best drummer in the world. She’s got so much power and energy in such a tiny woman!”
Bev on Ciara – “Ciara really cares about people. She is very in touch with her feelings and she helps me get in touch with my feelings. She’s such a badass and not feared of anything. Ciara’s also incredible at flirting – she really boosts someone’s self-esteem!”
Ciara on Bev – “Bev makes me want to be more myself. Bev has shown me that you can go through so much that tells you not to be yourself and still kick a full wall down and not give a shit. She is one of the coolest people I’ve met in my life, but I’ve never known someone who’s so unaware of it. So effortlessly warm and talented.”
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