Charlie Magill played a stadium for the first time in his life and musical career in Thomond Park, Limerick last summer. Over 25,000 people watched the band Esmeralda Road – of which he is the guitarist, lead singer, composer and lyricist – as simultaneously the band watched the audience. Like an ocean of faces, almost merging into one. “This was like nothing we’d ever experienced. I was quite nervous to start with, so I didn’t know what to feel at first,” Charlie shared with Moze Jacobs eight months after the concert.
“It is hard to get your head around such numbers. When we’re playing to smaller crowds I like to make eye contact. Get a sense of how individuals respond. That wasn’t possible here. But the second time we did it, I loved it.”
Based on their confident, professional and captivating stage performance, the band was handpicked to support Liam Gallagher, the former frontman of Oasis, in July 2024; and then invited to do so again a month later, at the Boucher Road Playing Fields in Belfast, their hometown, in front of 40,000 attendees. Not bad for a bunch of (roughly) 21-year-olds who went on to win an Introducing Artist of the Year Award in late 2024.
Esmeralda Road started life in 2021 as a three-piece band called Moonboot, formed by Charlie, drummer Aodhan Moran, and keyboardist Josh Vance during their final years of secondary school, after writing songs in their respective houses at the height of Covid. “It was a time of great isolation,” remembers Charlie. “Very depressing, actually. It helped a great deal to be able to express ourselves in music.” Once the lockdowns lifted, guitarist Ben Murray and bassist Calvin Wells became part of the band. All from different parts of the city and born after the signing of the Good Friday agreement on April 10, 1998 with a view to ending the violence of the Troubles after 30 years. “We were ceasefire babies,” says Charlie. They were frequently joined by horn players Josh Baker (saxophone) and Tony Cowan (trumpet).
Before long, Moonboot was on its way to becoming really successful. An absolute highlight was when they sold out Belfast’s Empire Music Hall in September 2023. Two months later, their self-produced and self-released first track, ‘To U’, won Single of the Year at the NI Music Prize. The very next day Meta deleted their online presence due to copyright issues related to the Moon Boot trademark. (The original moon boot was inspired by the astronauts’ footwear).
The band was forced to adopt a new name. Esmeralda Road is the name of the street in London where the band members lived before. The change didn’t do them any harm. On the contrary.
Esmeralda Road has a way of making their music flow effortlessly. And Charlie Magill’s voice adds a unique colouring to his lyrics even when he sings about “ordinary” topics, such as relationships, in everyday words: “To see your hand holding mine, yeah, that’s a once in a lifetime/Oh, baby, who in their right mind/Is giving up on you.” (To U) “Time spent/Wasted/Don’t need your heart in my hands/But what the hell do I know/I won’t blame the way that I’m feeling on you (…)/But don’t forget me until I’m gone.” (Until I’m Gone) “Oh, babe, you spin me like a ‘45/Fuck up and put your arms around me/This conversation’s through no fault of mine.” (I Think).
In the interview, the lead singer (off-camera after a rough night out) says that his attitude towards relationships is changing. “I’m taking more responsibility for my own actions.” He also mentions that he wants to be more open, more vulnerable, less defensive and dismissive. And that song writing is becoming a more collective activity for the band. Rather than him being the only lyricist. When asked if the downside of achieving success is that it becomes harder to know if people (including potential partners) are genuine, he agrees. “I spend more time with a small group of friends that I can really trust.” Music is like second nature to him, having grown up in a house full of instruments, with a mother who wrote her own songs.
There is something about the band as a whole – a sum that is more than its parts – that warrants the question, Are Esmeralda Road here to stay? In 31 years’ time, having released their first full-fledged album in 2026, will they have reason to undertake a ’30 Years’ tour’ to celebrate a legendary record as Liam Gallagher did last year?
The answer could potentially be “yes”.
Maybe it is due to the combination of youthful, high-spirited energy and a connection to existing traditions, such as jazz. “Esmeralda Road, a compelling force in the independent music scene, draws inspiration from the eclectic sounds of the late 2010s London jazz scene,” says their online bio. It feels like a really smart move. Particularly when the band combine mellow jazz with a rougher rock approach. For example in the song, Until I’m Gone, selected by Hot Press as Track of the Day in June 2024 and showered with praise: “An explosion of syncopated charged energy that oozes elements of jazz joined by a whole lot of groove.” The song comes with a video that incorporates gritty real-life 8mm film clips of the band on tour, smoking and drinking and playing pool, laughing loudly, dancing, giving two fingers, pints of Guinness, green rooms, hotel rooms, unmade beds, jumping over trash cans. Faint echoes of the good old times of sex ‘n drugs ‘n rock ‘n roll that rock bands used to experience – but with a tongue firmly in cheek. A celebration of harmless, guileless, benign masculinity.
Esmeralda Road plays Connolly’s of Leap on Sunday, April 6 as a five-piece band (potentially the saxophonist could travel down from Belfast).
