Mar

22

Therapy? beam Crooked smiles – INTERVIEW

March 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Therapy? Crooked Timber CDCrooked Timber is out March 23, Therapy? play in-store at HMV Belfast at 5.30pm Monday, and Iain Todd interviews the band for UlsterMusic.com:It is late on a Tuesday afternoon when I meet lead singer Andy Cairns, bassist Michael McKeegan and publicist James Rollins outside the Holiday Inn in downtown Belfast. With the new album, Crooked Timber, releasing on March 23, they are an incredibly busy band, and I am grateful for them taking the time out to talk to me. Andy Cairns engaged in a phone conversation, Michael humbly introduces himself and we head into the bar. (Perhaps it’s the Northern Irish connection but I discover that talking to Therapy? is like talking to your best friend). James offers me a drink, tea or coffee, and Michael makes a pint swigging hand gesture to me behind him. I immediately know this is going to be a relaxed, chatty interview, and we toast with the first round of beers just has Andy gets off the phone. He shakes my hand, introduces himself, and sits down to a Bloody Mary. Despite it being late in the afternoon on a day Therapy? has had a full schedule, the guys break into conversation and are as chatty as if it was the first drink on a Friday night. I begin the interview asking them about how the time has gone since their last retrospective album, So Much For The Ten Year Plan.Andy (laughs) – It’s gone too fast. I was saying to Michael earlier, it’s our 20th year and I still feel as though I’m 24. The funny thing is that the length of time between releasing that compilation album, and now, has gone so quickly, whereas the time between forming the band and around 1995 seemed a lot longer.Michael – It all ties back to the title of that album. We never really had a plan. It was never like, “let’s play Madison Square Garden, hate each other and split up”. I always feel, even more so now, there are so many things we would like to do with the band. Ten years ago a lot of our ideas were a bit slow coming, whereas now it feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day to try and achieve all the things we would like to.UM – So is the band is a lot busier these days?Andy - Well we’ve had two years off and it’s still flown by. But a lot of bands seem to enter into it with a ten year plan: “we’ll do our first album, get on a major, sell out Brixton Academy, do well in America, and then become a record producer”. It’s all mapped out. I always just wanted to be in a band. Maybe that’s what makes the time fly, because we don’t have markers.

Michael – A lot of bands you meet, it all seems quite regimented. I think it’s nice to have that element of surprise, when you fire up your amps and you don’t know what’s going to happen. It gives it a spark. If you go and see a band, they play the same set they played three years ago and everyone’s bored, then it’s probably boring for a reason (laughs).

Andy - The amount of bands we meet at festivals who can’t wait to get home, you just think “what’s the point?” I could understand if you were working on an oil rig, or in the foreign legion, but you’re in a rock ‘n’ roll band playing every night. (laughs) It’s like they can’t wait to get home and see Christine Bleakley on The One Show.

UM – What do you think has contributed to the success of Therapy? over the years? Are there certain decisions that you have made as a band that have led to the continuing popularity?

Michael – It’s more of a learning curve, learning what things weren’t successful and what to turn down, or saying, for example, “let’s never be that unprepared again”. We probably turn down more things now than we would have done maybe ten years ago.

Andy- If you’re going to be a formula band, you have to be very f**king good at it. You have to be AC/DC, or Status Quo or Motorhead, a band that does what it says on the tin. But every now and then we make records and people go, “What the f**k is this?” When we did Infernal Love, with big moustaches, cellos, frilly shirts, the majority of our families at the time went “what the f**k are they doing?”, and now they love it. Same with Suicide Pact: it was all distortion, but now people love it. It gives a band a bit of longevity. I mean I like Captain Beefheart, and he’s got tons of albums, some terrible, some brilliant. Iggy Pop’s got some absolute stinkers, James Brown’s made some duffers, but they’ve all got an interesting trajectory.

UM – Listening to Crooked Timber, there are clearly a lot of influences, from Charles Mingus to Dimebag Darrell and Joy Division. Is part of Therapy?s success to do with the refusal to confine yourselves to a single genre?

Andy - Well we play agitated, guitar-based music, so whether or not we like it we are a rock band. But I think our sound comes from listening to lots of different music. We listen to Charles Mingus, for example, but we play it on our own instruments, whereas some other bands would hire blokes from New Orleans to play the backing track. I mean the last track on the album, Bad Excuse For Daylight, was inspired by Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring. There’s a section in that piece when it goes into a weird pulse, and when he first played it in Paris, a riot began. People said “This is bullshit”. I have it in the house and it’s amazing. I played it to the boys and I think it was Neil who said it sounded like something from Justice For All by Metallica. So we got the time pattern from that, but it’s played with distorted guitar so it sounds like us. I always try and take inspiration from an instrument that isn’t the guitar, because if I learn too many scales and play too many blues based riffs, it will become generic.

UM – The track Magic Mountain on the new album also sounds very different. It’s a 10 minute instrumental track, but I think it’s one of the best songs on the album. Where did you get the inspiration for that?

Andy - Well we were listening to a lot of Kraut Rock, like early Kraftwerk, that electronic sound. It’s like driving cruise control on the autobahn. You can hear it on Queen’s Of The Stone Age’s first album. You can get a lot of mileage out of one riff.  So we had that idea and I just tuned the guitar to a chord and played some weird harmonics. And this is on the verge of pretention, so forgive me (laughs) but if you listen to the time changes at the start of the track, it’s the same as John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, slowed down. We wanted it to sound like someone climbing a cliff face to the magic mountain, like in the novel by Thomas Mann.

At this point the barmaid comes over to ask Andy if his Bloody Mary is ok, and Michael takes the opportunity to order another round.

Andy - The first version of that was actually 23 minutes long, but we trimmed it down to the 8 or 9 minute version on the album.

Michael – It almost becomes like a mantra, when you repeat it and repeat it, and it leads into something else. You hear different notes, different overtones.

Andy - I’m a massive fan of hypnotics in rock, and it’s so difficult to do. We tried it with Neck Freak on the Nurse album, and we tried it with Crooked Timber and Magic Mountain on this album. Some bands can do it and some can’t.

Michael – When you’re playing it live, you get that connection with the audience. It’s like you just want to play that one note forever. It’s bizarre. It’s almost like a tribal thing, I suppose.

Andy - (laughing) We actually supported Pearl Jam once, before we released Nurse, and we played a version of Neck Freak in front of 30,000 people which was about 12 minutes long.

Michael – I think it’s about the dynamics. It’s not about everyone playing all the time. It’s more about dropping things in, like when the high hat comes in on the off beat on a good house record. It can change everything.

UM – Thinking about the track Enjoy The Struggle, based on a Greek myth and about the struggle of being alive, do you think it’s a struggle for bands nowadays in the Irish/British music industry to be successful?

Andy - Well it’s funny, because this is the first time we’ve had a press officer in the North of Ireland. Usually it would have been people we knew from the Limelight back in the day, whereas now we’ve got a lot more press. There’s so much media nowadays, so many magazines, and it’s great, but I do think there’s a lot more of a community and support on the scene, which certainly didn’t exist when we were around. We would play in The Limelight and be laughed at because we were from Ballyclare. I was a chubby guy with a beard and Michael had little round specs (laughs). We’d turn up at the Limelight and everyone thought the f**king yokels had turned up! The barn-dance starts at half nine!

Michael – It was competitive, but not in a good way. What I’ve noticed around Belfast these days is heavy bands and poppy bands playing together, and it’s no big deal.

Andy - Yeah, we sent The Rosetta Bar a demo tape, and the guy invited us down for a chat, said he’d put us on supporting a band called Candlemas, a doom metal band. So I thought “a gig’s a gig”, and we turned up. The guy goes “Therapy? You have short hair, I can’t put you on with Candlemas”. Seriously.

Michael – He said we’d get lynched.

Andy - We drove up in my orange Mini Metro, I might add (laughs). The guy probably thought “These guys are losers, they’ve come from Larne and Ballyclare in a Mini Metro, f**k that!”

UM – So is it easier for Northern Irish bands to play together now?

Andy - I think it’s also to do with the media. And a lot of people are supporting each other so it’s also the sense of community. People are talking about local bands again, like Cashier No. 9 and Oppenheimer, and I think there’s a great sense of pride in it.

Michael – The thing is that these aren’t just local bands, these are bands that have sold a lot of records and they’ve hit the mainstream media in a big way. David Holmes is a classic example, going from bedroom DJ to Hollywood soundtracks. Now he’s producing local bands, putting their songs in Hollywood films. Probably 20 years ago a rock band like us and someone like David Holmes would never have met, but he’s done re-mixes for us and worked on Infernal Love. There’s a lot of respect for anyone in Northern Ireland who’s creative.

Andy - A lot of it is comfort-zone music, it’s so formulised. When At The Drive In came along, it was such a change from punk music. Punk rock became that West coast sound and it sounds like kids’ TV music now.

Michael – It’s like McFly and Busted and all those bands. Like when Top Shop is selling anarchy T-shirts, you have to rethink your idea of what anarchy is. Is it about wearing the T-shirt, or is it about the way you relate to people?

Andy - (laughs) With punk music, it’s about saying “I’m mad, me”, and wearing the T-shirt, whereas Heavy Metal is about the beer-can/forehead interface! It’s like Minutemen, doing something different. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing. If everyone I know now who likes the Minutemen liked them back in the day they would have been on Top Of The Pops!

UM – The title of the album celebrates that Kantian idea about the diversity of human kind. How diverse do you think the Irish and or British music scene is?

Andy - I think it’s on the verge of something glorious. I mean I’m a fan of the Libertines and Pete Doherty, but I think we’ve had our fill of post Libertines, skinny-jeaned bands who sound the same. The return of some of the electronic pioneers is a breath of fresh air. People like Code 9 and Benga are bringing back music that indie kids are now getting into. Punk and metal became formulised and now I think people are looking more outside the box. In times of the recession as well is when a lot of the best music is made. I think something special is just round the corner.

Michael – I think with Pop Idol and X Factor, people now know the drill so well. They know that it is what it is. Five years ago, people thought “I’m going to be on Pop Idol and be a star”, but it doesn’t really work like that. The good thing is it has diversified the bands and their approaches. I’ve no problem buying the Leona Lewis single and a Bloc Party record on the same day, you know? It’s music, it’s not like they’re the anti-christ.

Andy - But back to Kant, I mean the one thing that frustrates me is that people aren’t stupid, and the way that the entertainment industry treats people is that they are idiots who need to be guided. But you walk into any high street shop on a Saturday afternoon and you’ll hear the same ten tracks. People aren’t exposed to things that will open and blow their minds. It’s the Kantian idea: celebrate your quirks and strangeness.

Michael – It’s like in L.A., there’s only so many orthodontists you can go to so everyone, at some stage or another, has got the same teeth.

Andy - Don’t get me started on L.A.! I was there visiting a friend and they’ve got dog hairdressers (they both explode with laughter). It’s almost like the credit crunch is the best thing to happen to the West. I mean, not if you’re an unmarried mother living in a flat in Preston, but f**k me, dog hairdressers? How bored are we as people?

Michael – Who the f**k rings up a dog hairdresser and books an appointment to bring Fifi in?

Andy - I think the recession will affect those people. There’ll be a lot of plastic bags in rivers, with dogs fighting their way out!

UM – So talking about the recession, do you think that free music downloads are a good thing?

Andy - I think it’s the way things are progressing. If I was 14 I’d be downloading everything. If you told me there was a new Code 9 album that wasn’t going to be released for 3 months, but I could get it off a file-sharing site tonight, I would do it. I’d like to think I’d also buy it for the artwork and to see who produced it etc. The industry are going to have to think for a bit, which is a good thing. What can you do to make people buy your records? Make it interesting. Even if it’s something simple like putting it out on vinyl. It’s up to people in the business to look at new ways of getting the music out there. Our producer reckons in a couple of years you’ll get your album with the concert ticket. So it’s up to the band. You’ve got to do something with your live show, it has to be something that people want to buy, and that’ll mean something to them.

Michael – I’d rather have the songs on someone’s iPod than not on their iPod, however they get there. As long as the music’s out there and people are getting into it, there’s a massive knock-on effect for the band. There’s so many bands that I’m not that bothered about, but if I hear a song I like I’ll go to the gig, buy the T-shirt. Probably, in the long run, the band will get more from me buying the ticket, the next album and the album after that.

Andy - At the end of the day, if you’re a musician, it all lies in the performance. It’s a good point. If the album’s out there and people are liking it, then great.

Michael – I’d rather have someone out there with Therapy? on their iPod than with none, regardless of how they got it.

Andy - (laughing) You don’t want to be the Victor Meldrews of rock! Or like Lars Ulrich hunting people down in their pyjamas at four in the morning.

Michael – There are new avenues opening up for music everywhere in the digital age, it’s all good. You have to do interesting things with your music.

Andy - (In a mock American accent) Therapy? will come to your house and cook you dinner, whilst playing their new album. All for just 57 dollars.

At this point Andy, Michael and publicist James break into the banter and begin laughing and chatting, so I decide to stop the interview. I thank them, they finish their drinks and they’re off again, continuing their busy schedule. Andy tells me they’re taking it easy tonight in anticipation of their 8 o’clock train ride down to Dublin tomorrow. Somehow, I don’t think a band as hardworking, committed or prolific as Therapy? ever take it easy. We say goodbye, and I watch the three of them leave the bar and cross the road. Only the barmaid and I are left and there’s an awkward silence as she lifts our empty glasses. I am too busy reflecting on a great interview with an amazing band and truly inspiring people. As far as Kant is concerned, Therapy? really are a band as diverse in their attitude as in their sound, and it is evident in this new album as much as any other that I have heard. Long may it continue, and long may Therapy? reign.

Crooked Timber is out on 26th March, on DR2 Records.


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