Starting a band can be a significant commitment.
Chris O’Gorman had this dream and sought help from family and friends to make it a reality. The result is the Tucson-based shoegaze group Future Fiires.
“We knew we were going to be locked in together,” O’Gorman said. “We have a lot of fun and talk all the time. We give each other a hard time, and it feels like a group of brothers.”
The band released “The City,” an EP, earlier this year, and followed it up with the single “Life Support.” Future Fiires’ full line-up is O’Gorman (vocals, rhythm guitar), his brother Scott O’Gorman (bass guitar), Kevin Unwin (guitar, backing vocals) and Josh Harrison (drums).
“We formed about a year ago, and I had written some songs post-COVID-19,” O’Gorman said. “I started hanging out around Downtown after my mom passed. I just got into a funk, and I wasn’t going out anywhere. I went Downtown to walk around. You just get mixed feelings when you’re there. It’s a mindset. No matter what’s in a city, whether good or bad, that’s how I came up with the concept for our EP.”
O’Gorman said he was into The Cure and Depeche Mode as a youth and cited My Bloody Valentine as a particular inspiration for Future Fiires. He also explained the naming origin.
“Putting together music and constructing songs is not always easy,” O’Gorman said. “The longest part of the process is to get four guys to agree on anything. I love the word ‘future’ because this band really does feel like our future. We’re starting a new band, and it’s new and fresh. Our drummer thought of the fires.”
He added that the extra “i” was there to stand apart from a similarlynamed United Kingdom band.
The guitarist, Unwin, said The Smiths and U2, as well as Joy Division and its follow-up band, New Order, were other influences for Future Fiires.
“We all kind of overlap on the style of British post-punk, which in some ways is like the godfather to the shoegaze movement, and many of those bands are still playing today,” Unwin said. “Ironically, we grew up playing this style of music, and now it’s resurging. It feels like a big thing again, and we like doing something popular.
“We wanted the best version of our songs and were trying to figure out who we were. I was in another band a couple of years ago, but now we’re like, ‘What are we now?’ It took five or six months for us to decide what we were and how to make these songs sound. Once we started releasing tracks, I felt this sound is how we should do things now.”
This sound was important for Unwin, especially as he auditioned for the shoegaze group.
“Even though Chris and I are good friends, I was auditioning and trying to prove that I could offer this band something and not just play something hokey,” Unwin said. “I had ideas I really wanted to share with them, and now we’re all fully invested, and I have so much equipment now like never before.”
Both expressed excitement and enthusiasm as Future Fiires’ Spotify debut had seen some traffic.
“For me, I’m having the time of my life,” O’Gorman said. “I love it and I’m embracing it. Kevin and I have always wanted to be in that genre, something like dark waves, shoegaze and an indie sound. Being put on Spotify playlists has opened doors for us.
“I started pitching our songs to different curators on Spotify because it’s difficult to get picked up by lists. I also found playlists in the United Kingdom, Africa and Germany. We were on all kinds of these lists, and it’s really neat to see yourself side by side with all these bands like Hotline TNT and Whirr. We’re side by side with them and we’re this little band from Tucson that nobody has seen live. It’s pretty exciting.”
Unwin added that standing out was a challenge, but something he knew himself and his bandmates could muster.
“It can be hard to break in,” Unwin said. “We’re perfect for this show because people haven’t seen us play, and they don’t know how we sound live. Anybody can sound great on Spotify, but we still have to prove we can pull it off live. We have enough live material. We’re also networking with other shoegaze bands to perform with them.”
The two want everyone to have a great time at “Loveapoolaza” and hope Future Fiires will become a new favorite for new listeners. O’Gorman teased future works, so the wait for more songs won’t be long.
“Since we put the EP out, we don’t want to wait another year,” O’Gorman said. “We want to be active and work on a cover song that we might want to release in the middle of summer.”
This article appears in Jul 17-24, 2025.