Ties Family
Having charmed the noise-thirsty population of Ireland with their debut album Chariot, The Cast Of Cheers are back with a writhing, zigzagging new record. As Adams, Adams, Higgins and Curran prepare to unleash their first “proper album” on the world, they let Celina Murphy in on a few of their family secrets.
Celina Murphy, 26 Jun 2012
Ther was a time when you couldn't simply google The Cast Of Cheers... At least, not without having to wade through a whole lot of tv guide covers an Kirstie Alley chat show appearances from the '80s before getting to the four noisy boys from Swords.
This was before the label signings and the festival shows and the Choice Music Prize nominations and the homemade YouTube covers and the Maida Vale sessions and the BBC playlists and the X-Rated Nick Grimshaw interviews that you have to promise to be over 16 to listen to... It was before The Cast Of Cheers became the go-to success story of the Irish DIY scene, thanks to the jerky, hook-laden sound debuted on their first record, and the decision to make that record free to download for anyone who cared to listen.
“That was literally the first six months,” bassist John Higgins recalls, “Watching Bandcamp and looking at the stats. ‘We have 22 downloads of ‘Tip The Can’ today! Amazing!’” (He was right to be excited – Chariot eventually racked up an unprecedented 150,000 downloads.)
The Cast Of Cheers were already in the middle of recording their second LP when they were courted by School Boy Error, a brand new label set up by Colin Schaverien, manager of tour buddies Two Door Cinema Club. After a head-spinning 18 months with only Richter Collective’s Michael Roe, otherwise known as the busiest man in Irish music, to keep up with the hype, the band were glad to jump on board.
“We’re not business heads,” drummer Kev Curran admits, “we’re really not good at managing that sort of stuff. We just wanna play music.”
“School Boy Error do so much for us that we can’t do for ourselves,” guitarist Neil Adams explains. “Like Kev said, we’re not business heads, we’ve been in bands before and we’ve tried to promote ourselves and we’ve tried to market ourselves and we’re not good at that, so we never got anywhere, whereas with these guys, we’re playing Australia, we’re playing all over Europe, getting on Radio 1 and that’s not by fluke, that’s because these guys know what they’re doing.”
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