Your act is instantly recognisable for the plastic shopping bags you use to mask your faces. Do you do it to avoid the perils of fame, like getting stopped on the street?
We wear bags on our heads because life is meaningless and the only inevitability is death. It also helps us to have sex with women, because women love shopping and we look like shopping.
When did you first make the link between hip hop and comedy?
Music is just another form of artistic expression. For some reason, it tends to be dominated by solemn love songs. We don’t try to be funny, we just write songs about things that don’t usually find their way into songs. Like retarded birds of prey, or two-foot puppets of Gabriel Byrne. We haven’t made a hip hop song in about five years, because hip hop doesn’t allow the exploration of vocal melodies. I was visited by the ghost of Bob Marley when I feel asleep on a toilet in a train and he told us not to limit our musical palette to hip hop exclusively.
Your Australian shows are part of the Cane Toad Cuddles tour. Is cuddling cane toads really a good idea?
Yes. The cane toad is treated with derision in Australia. They are turned into wallets and hit with golf clubs. We intend to cuddle dozens of cane toads on our arrival and position ourselves as cane toad messiahs who will lead them to paradise.
Are there any similar animal threats in your home country, Ireland?
Yes – an increase in Wi-Fi signals has driven foxes mad. Foxes steal denim jackets from clothes shops, and they all hang around underneath sheets of galvanised metal, wearing denim jackets and avoiding Wi-Fi signals. It’s a serious problem.
Ireland has certainly produced some massive acts over the years – do you have ambitions to be the best band Ireland’s ever produced?
No, we honestly couldn’t give a fuck. We’re fine as we are.
The Rubberbandits appear at Max Watt’s on Saturday October 31.
