Colm Lynch is a Dublin singer-songwriter who began his career singing covers in pubs. No, come back! He might do a mean version of ‘Losing My Religion’ but there’s more to him than that. Much more.
For his part, Lynch is under no illusion as to how the public perceives his genre. “People have had it up to here with singer/songwriters,” he begins. “I totally understand that – I think it reached its peak with Damien Rice’s O, which is just an unbelievable piece of work. It’s impossible for anyone to follow a record like that.”
Thankfully Colm’s not trying to better Damo. Rather, he uses the acoustic guitar as a springboard for some quite intriguing musical adventures. Released last April, his debut single ‘The Storm’ was a quiet affair suffused in strings. However, he was keen to demonstrate his more dynamic side also, hence the release of the up-tempo ‘Lucinda’ as a free download soon afterwards.
“I just wanted to show that there’s different flavours to my songwriting. I draw on a whole range of influences,” he explains.
Still, battling prejudice is not always easy, he admits.
“Everybody in this genre has to rely on word of mouth to get anywhere,” Colm observes. “It’s never really going to be about conquering the radio, and you’re never gonna have the number one pop song. If you’re worth a listen, people won’t necessarily buy your album but they’ll come and see your show. And your reputation will spread that way.”
Hard graft is nothing new to Lynch, though. Years of playing pubs have instilled in him a strong work ethic.
“I used to work in a bank, and after a hard day’s work, not once did someone come up to me and say: ‘oh my god, that was great. That was an amazing day’s work, and everyone’s mood is a little better because of it.’”
Your correspondent laughs at the thought.
“It’s true,”he insists. “The point is that people do say those things to me every time I sit on a barstool and take out my guitar.”
An early inspiration was his father, who encouraged the singer to keep going no matter how difficult the odds seemed.
“He’s a diamond. Before I got my current manager, he used to get gigs for me. But even now he’s still as active. When I’m switched off and just trying to relax, he’ll be getting up in arms about how a shop didn’t have any copies of my album.”
The album in question is A Whisper In A Riot. How did it feel to hold the finished product in his hand?
“It was brilliant,” he gushes. “It feels strange too, though. It’s a year of arduous, nit-picking work condensed into one disc. But it’s great to have it out there finally.”
Yet, it’s not only the music that he payed attention to. There’s also the matter of the design.
“The title’s from a line in the song ‘Two Bullets & A Gun’, where I’m saying that I’m a whisper in a riot – that I’m meaningless in something so much bigger.”
Tim Porter, the artist responsible for the cover design, took the name more literally: he shows rioters on one side, police on the other and a dove between them.
“The dove I take to be the whisper,” says Lynch. “He did a brilliant job. It looks much better than the standard thing of having me in a blazer looking all moody.”
Lyrics, in fact, are something of an obsession for the Dubliner.
“I really do put a lot of work into the words, and that’s probably the one thing I want people to take away from the album,”he says. “I do spend a lot of time thinking about them, I go about my day trying to think of snappy turn of phrases,” he laughs.
In which case, his girlfriend Helen might not be too thrilled about him pledging his undying love to one ‘Sophie’.
“Helen knows there’s no Sophie, she’s a fictional character,” Lynch assures. “It was just easier that way.”
As in there’s more words that rhyme with ‘–eee’ than ‘-en’?
“Exactly!”