Cool As Flock

Think of your favourite song. Chances are it has a lyric or two that resonate, that trigger an emotional response. And yet sometimes, the most poignant songs speak volumes without featuring a single word. It takes real skill to create instrumental music effectively, but it’s something that Dublin/Kildare-based six-piece Overhead, The Albatross seem to have little trouble with.

Formed a shade over two years ago, Overhead quickly developed a sound that exceeded their expectations. Mindful of their roots, the band took their name from the opening lines of sprawling Pink Floyd epic ‘Echoes’, albeit with an added comma for good measure.

“The comma is… grotesquely pretentious,” chuckles bassist Joe Panama. “But I don’t mind because that album [Meddle] is incredible. I’ve been reared on Pink Floyd and I know it’s a classic thing of being one of those bands, ‘ah another Pink Floyd fan’ but I genuinely love them. I don’t listen to them that much anymore but they still shaped the music I’ve listened to for my entire life. We’re all insanely big Pink Floyd fans but I don’t think we sound like them.”
He’s right. While they proudly wear their influences on their collective sleeve, Overhead seem to delight in concocting a more modern but no less pensive brand of soaring wordless engagements. Panama might seem bemused when recalling a flattering write-up the band received, where they drew comparisons to Russian Circles, Sigur Rós and Explosions In The Sky – “We’re six lads who can’t play our instruments properly. They’re bands!” – but then an outfit like Overhead are always going to find themselves at risk of getting stuck in a post-rock pigeonhole. Are they comfortable with that tag?
“Absolutely,” nods guitarist Vinny Casey. “If someone asks me what we sound like I’ll say, ‘Post-rock’, and if they say, ‘What’s that?’, I’ll mention those examples but we don’t aspire to be that way. Our medium is sound and unless you actually have someone listen to it, you can’t get across what it actually is. If you’re trying to, on the written word, give even an inkling of what it is, it’s the only way to do that. You have to compare it to music that people have already heard.”
Currently attached to Dublin indie label Eleven Eleven alongside such kindred spirits as Friendquestionmark and Alarmist, OTA have released both an EP (Lads With Sticks) and a double A-side (‘Mr. Dog’) this year. Casey engineered both efforts at pianist Dave Prendergast’s Clique Recordings studio, somewhat exhaustively as it turned out.
“Vinny’s favourite word is ‘pernickity’ and that really describes all of that recording process,” notes Panama with a grin. “But if someone came to us and said they wanted to produce an album, I’d only do it if Vinny was engineering, because I’ve seen people engineer other bands and they do the 9 to 5 – they get in, they get out, their work is done. Vinny went for 48 hours without sleep at one stage. He was actually hallucinating. He put his head to the desk, he didn’t sleep, he put his head back up again and goes, ‘Oh shit lads, I’ve got the worst feeling of dread’ and we were all, ‘What’s wrong man?’ and he goes, ‘I’ve gotta go do my Leaving Cert!’ Just for the record, Vinny’s 25! At one point he had a half-hour power nap and as one of us woke him up he was singing one of the violin lines.”
Casey says that the ordeal left him with a protective hold over future recordings. Such a trial would have left other bands scarred for life, but Overhead are nothing if not inspired by bizarre impromptu experiences. Take the fantastic ‘Liam Neeson’ for example, so named after the Ballymena man’s kill-crazy rampage through Europe in 2008. A completely fictional onscreen rampage, but a rampage nonetheless. Casey’s face contorts wildly when reminiscing on the birth of that particular number.
“I remember Stevie (Darragh, guitarist) bursting in the door going, ‘HAVE YOU GUYS SEEN TAKEN?!’ and being like, ‘Yeah, it’s pretty good’… ‘IT’S NOT PRETTY GOOD, IT’S FUCKING AMAZING!’ and he’d written the intro guitar line so that was it!”
“The song names are crap,” volunteers a candid Panama. “I get given out to a lot, by Vinny, for naming them. There’s a thing of when you name a song you’re putting a label on it and you’re naming some lyrics or poetry and you’ve given it a label, you’ve given it a title and you’re implying something by it but because of the nature of our songs that haven’t got any vocals or lyrics, anything you get from the songs should be completely taken in by you.”
A busy run is set to continue with a 20-date UK tour alongside Alarmist next February. Having already gone down a storm on a brief jaunt across the water earlier this year, the lads are itching to return. Before that comes more music as they lend their talents to a very noble cause, teaming up with Dublin-based production company Bold Puppy for a documentary on motor neuron disease, in conjunction with the Irish Motor Neuron Disease Association.
“That track will be up online soon, and it will be the first track we’ll be charging for,” Panama explains. “Everything else has been free but all the money from this will be going to the charity and as well as that, a percentage of the physical CDs will go to it too. If we’re going to charge, we might as well give the money to somebody who needs it.”

Lads With Sticks and ‘Mr. Dog’ are both available now via Eleven Eleven. For more information on forthcoming releases and dates see [link]overheadthealbatross.tumblr.com[/link]