“I think there’s a genuine heartfelt feeling in our music that anyone on the street can recognise and will get,” says Ciaran Gribbin. In an instant the Leya frontman has summed up just why the Belfast four-piece are currently the people’s favourite.
Named Hot Press ‘Most Promising New Irish Act’ earlier this year, Leya surprised many by beating the likes of Julie Feeney and Humanzi to top the prestigious public poll.
It was surprising because, unlike Humanzi or The Blizzards, Leya haven’t been all over the papers or radio. Nor have they basked in the sort of supposedly highbrow praise heaped on Julie Feeney or had one of their songs on a TV ad, a la The Rags.
Most of all, though, they don’t fit with the angular, skinny-jeaned rock currently so fashionable.
“Well, we’ve never been a band who lean towards any fad that comes along,” avers Gribbin. “We’re an honest band that get out there and do our thing and it’s been gigs that have won us fans because for six years we’ve had no airplay on the radio. ”
All that, however is about to change. Signed to Rubyworks, a small Irish label enjoying big financial funding from MCD, Gribbin (vocals and guitar), and Michael Keeney (keys and noises), are understandably excited about the release of the group’s debut album, Watch You Don’t Take Off. As Gribbin says, perhaps understating the case, “It’s been a long haul.”
Step back to April 2003 and a Hot Press interview with the group, in which Watch You Don’t Take Off is billed for release the following month. So what exactly happened?
“It was a case of difficult first album,” Keeney jokes. “We felt that we could have stuck a record out at that time, but we’d no money or anything to promote it. We decided we didn’t want to be one of those bands who puts a record out themselves and then six months later everyone goes ‘well whatever happened to them?’ So it was the right thing, I think, to wait for a deal.”
Signing to Rubyworks in late 2004, their re-recorded debut is a veritable giant of a record, growing in complexity with every listen.
‘Grandstanding’ and ‘epic’ are adjectives frequently levelled at the band but they’re all too simplistic to describe the complexities of WYDTO’s 11 tracks, which shift from bleak blanket depression (‘Again’) through to anthems of hope (‘Moving On’, ‘All On The Black’) and cries for love (‘Stay).
Recorded in a villa in southern France, an hour away from any civilisation, you can hear the stillness and isolation created by the four members being locked away for five weeks with only each others company.
“It was like the twilight zone,” recalls Gribbin. “This fog would come down in the evenings and you’d be sitting outside, having a smoke, thinking ‘fuck me, where are we? What’s going on?' But that added to the album because it’s obviously very dark in places and very moody and angry. When there’s nowhere to go and no distractions I think it brings the true you out. It adds to the whole emotion and it’s a very emotional type of music.”
Having supported Snow Patrol (on whose current album Gribbin contributes backing vocals) last weekend in Dublin Castle, Leya return to Ireland from a UK tour for a Dublin headline show on May 26.
Then hopefully it’s Oxegen in July, a gig the band had to pull last year after Gribbin dramatically collapsed from dehydration while en route to the stage.
“That’s the only one gig we genuinely wanted to do,” remembers Gribbin, “and there I am lying in the medical tent with drips hanging out of me while the others are setting up wondering where I am. Typical.”
“Tell you what, though,” interjects Keeney, “I played a fucking belter of a soundcheck!”