DIGGING THE NEW BREED II

FLEXIHEAD

Flexihead’s debut single ‘Mine’ has taken up an almost permanent residence on my turntable since I got it. The three songs, ‘Mine’, ‘Nervous’ and ‘Scars’ are quite simply some of the best music I have come across in years. And having heard Flexihead play live on several occasions I know that they are no exceptions. Because I have yet to hear a Flexihead song which doesn’t have something very special about it.

Flexihead come from the hardcore, independent-minded tradition. Niall Byrne’s (guitar, vocals, lyrics) hero is Steve Albini. Right now, the bands he’s listening to are Vertigo, Crane, Minutemen and Girls Against Boys. However, there is another tradition — which in many ways inspired the American hardcore scene — which Niall and bassist Niall Bowden have a great love for, and that is of bands from the late 70’s/early 80’s; bands like The Jam and The Specials.

Flexihead music embodies an intelligent rage. They stretch and they probe into the extremities but they always know the difference between blowing your mind and blowing your eardrums. Because although the music, and the vocals in particular, can reach a nerve-fraying ferocity, they always maintain control over the animal. The riffs never bludgeon, the lead work is sparse but hypnotically effective and the rhythms are always a step off the beaten track. In fact, everything they do has a touch of class, a spark of genius.

Everything, and that very much includes the lyrics. Niall Byrne has that very rare ability to communicate an idea simply but with a gracious, rhythmic and unquestionably poetic style. In this sense, he reminds me of Shane MacGowan, and I believe that he has the natural ability to create a body of work of equal to that great poet.

Like MacGowan, Niall Byrne’s sings about the losers and abusers of life. Why is he attracted to the dark rather than the light side? “Because I’m a sad bastard,” he replies, laughing. “I don’t really know. I’ve no really set process. When I’m writing lyrics it’s just whatever comes to me. It all depends on the situation, what mood I’m in. Usually if I’m in a good mood and I write lyrics, I go, oh, they’re very good. And then I’d read them later and I’d go, Jesus, they’re shit. And I’d go into rehearsal, and they’d say, ‘have you got any lyrics?’ And I’d go, no.”

But his lyrics are not exclusively dark-centred, and even when they are they are not celebrating the ugliness they find, but rather chronicling, examining and exposing it. At other times his songs speak out against those who graze on the farm.

“There’s an awful lot of people around that are sheep,” he states, “they just follow leaders. ‘Nervous’ is about that. ‘Lines Already Traced’ is about that as well, like about people who will only do things that people have done before. ‘Identity’ is about the same thing. It just annoys me that so many people can’t think for themselves.”

Flexihead music thinks for itself. Yes, the American hardcore influence is evident, and Niall’s vocalising could have more Dublin flavour in it. But there’s nothing wrong with loving and flaunting your influences. After all none other than Bob Dylan walked, talked, dressed and sung like Woody Guthrie for about a year. But Dylan sucked in the essence and left the rest behind, which is exactly what Flexihead are in the process of doing.

Flexihead have the passion, the intensity and the intelligence. They are an experience. They combine raw life, rare style and an essential love of performamce. As Niall Byrne put it, “I really enjoy playing the stuff. I really enjoy writing the stuff. It gives me a great buzz.”

Flexihead give me a great buzz, and there’s no greater compliment I can pay.

Flexihead’s debut single ‘Mine’ is available from Voicebox Records, c/o The Attic, 1 Georges Quay, Dublin 2.

MEXICAN PETS

NOT MUCH more than a year ago Mexican Pets would have been one of Ireland’s left-field top tips . Their rhythmic hardcore with strong melodic hooks (Husker Du crossed with Teenage Fan Club, as they have been described) struck many a chord with patrons of the Underground and its ilk.

They had a track included on the ultra-credible Hope PromotionsStatement EP, received an offer of a release from a UK independent, and they were packing in the crowds at their gigs. . . so naturally, they called it a day and went their separate ways.

“The sound had changed so much and we didn’t really know where we were going,” explains singer/guitarist Pat matter of factly.

He re-emerged in Wheel, bassist Derek floated around with a couple of other bands and guitarist Jill kept herself busy and mused on what she was really looking for.

And just as suddenly, a couple of months ago, it all came back together again (although without a permanent drummer as yet). Why?

“Cos Aslan reformed!” Pat tosses back at lightning speed. “No, it’s just that when I was in Wheel I found that any time I picked up a guitar I was writing more Mexican Pets’ stuff. So I got in touch with Jill and Derek and they were both into giving it another go. If I thought we’d taken Mexican Pets as far as we could the first time . . . but we didn’t, and . . .”

“And now we’re two years older,” Derek smiles.

Mind you, the passage of time hasn’t tarnished their staunchly political approach (“personally political rather than overtly political”) to music, combined with a disdain for the country’s media organs which refuse to embrace contemporary output and attitudes. Radio, in particular, comes in for a certain amount of stick.

“There are a network of people who are out buying records not because they heard them on the radio, but because they read about them in Maximum Rock & Roll, and in the English papers,” says Jill. “I don’t really listen to the radio except for Radioactive, when I can pick it up, or John Peel. The rest just seems to be so far behind the times. Like radio has only really taken any interest in noise bands since grunge was invented.”

“For me what we have in Ireland is what I term second-rate radio,” Pat continues. ”At least some DJs should be playing stuff that is underground and that I don’t know about. I remember when Dave Fanning was doing a show from London and he had John Peel on as a guest. And Peel had brought along a few 7”s to play that he had just picked up that morning and not listened to. And one of them was a Helmet single. He offers accessibility to music and information on labels that you just don’t get from Irish radio.”

Then there’s bands themselves and their seeming lack of motivation coupled with what Pat regards as a tendency to assume that you can’t start thinking about putting records out until you’ve been going for at least three years.

“As well as that they think that someone else has to do it for them,” Jill jumps in. “And they sit on their arse waiting for someone to approach them and when they don’t they get pissed off and break up. If you came across a band in the States who had been together a year I think it would be very unusual if they didn’t have something out.

“There’s this mysticism here about putting a record out. It’s like it’s something they can’t do without somebody else’s help, and without being signed. There’s a real lack of do-it-yourself attitude. People aren’t doing anything!”

Ultimately, however, these are asides for Mexican Pets. What really matters, the only thing that matters, is the music.

“The problem in Ireland is that so many bands get a little bit of press, a little bit of hype and suddenly, the next thing is that they’ve lost sight of the music that’s carrying them along. And when they forget about that, when they think that the industry is more important then they’re lost, they’re finished.

“What it all boils down to, for me, is whether you believe in your music. All we’re interested in is writing songs, crafting songs to the best of our abilities. At the end of the day that’s what you’ll be remembered for. When you’re listened to in twenty years time, people will listen to the song, the lyrics and the way it’s played. If you want longevity, if you’re looking for stardom then you need to be looking to the songs that you’re writing.”

• Dan Oggly

THE GLEE CLUB

The Glee Club are a nucleus of two people: Joanne Loughman sings and writes the lyrics and Hugh O’Carroll writes the music and plays guitar and violin. Both used to be in a band called The Swinging Swine.

A solid enough outfit, the real pearl in the Swine’s musical purse was the silkily romantic voice of Joanne Loughman. For some baffling reason, however, the band insisted on making a sow’s ear out of Loughman’s vocals by either marginalising her to a criminal extent or else by drowning her vocals in a wall of sound.

“The thing about The Swinging Swine was that there were so many different personalities and everybody basically just did their own thing,” Joanne recalls. “I started as a backing vocalist for the Swinging Swine in Galway and then they eventually started using me in their songs but it was never our material. It was always Eamonn or Doug’s so we, I mean me and Hugh, were almost like session workers I suppose. To get away from it we started doing stuff on our own and we found that we had similar tastes.”

Was it an amicable or acrimonious split?

“Well, I wanted out definitely and was looking to see if anybody wanted to come with me and thought it could be Hugh. It wasn’t a very good split really. It wasn’t a very friendly one.”

The Glee Club, so called because the name is in contrast to their music, were formed eighteen months ago and an eponymous mini-LP was released in April ‘93 on Setanta Records. It received a lot of very good reviews but didn’t sell all that well.

VULGAR AND OBVIOUS

On the evidence of a Swinging Swine cover version of a Nick Drake tune, 4AD then got involved and agreed to back The Glee Club in America by releasing Mine Stateside, with the result that their first album proper has taken the college radio charts across the Atlantic by storm.

In spite of comparisons with stablemates The Cocteau Twins – of whom Joanne confesses she “poisoned” herself to such an extent that she can’t listen to them any more – it is, nevertheless, genuinely difficult to pigeonhole The Glee Club.

Compared to Hugh, she doesn’t really listen to all that much music,” she adds. However, it comes as no surprise, given tracks on mine like ‘Drives You Away’ and ‘Remember The Years’ that they both listen to quite a lot of classical stuff. Joanne cites Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky as favourites.

“My lyrics are not about me really,” she explains. “Some of them are stories about things that happened in the past, the things that’ll take you through. Others are just day-to-day things. I like lyrics to be semi-vague, like you can read your own things into them almost. If they’re too blatantly obvious then it’s like knowing the end of a story when you start reading a book.”

What’s your attitude then to the Riot Grrrl movement where the lyrics are unambiguous in many ways?

“I’m not really interested in that sort of thing where someone wants to make that sort of point and make it as vulgar and obvious as possible like that. There’s nothing violent in any of the statements that I’m making. Some of the stories are a bit scary and I like to get that across using vague images and then have the music work on that level as well.”

The Glee Club go to America in March where they will play at the South By Southwest festival in Texas. Since they are going down so well in the States they hope to take up residence in San Francisco. In the midst of all this globe trotting I wonder what place the old sod – Castleblaney, Co. Monaghan in Joanne’s case, Kilkenny in Hugh’s - holds in The Glee Club’s affections.

“There’s no place like home,” Joanne says.

• Patrick Brennan

IN MOTION

RECORD LABEL names, like band names, vary from the elegant (His Master’s Voice), to the purely functional (Warner Brothers), and beyond, to the cryptic and the witty (4AD and the inspiring Multifuckingnational respectively).

Then there’s Mucksavage Records, a name with all the charm and sophistication of a limp bacon sandwich, a label cocooned in a little category all of its own. But it’s on this label that you’ll find the ‘For An Evening’s Velvet Ending’ EP from In Motion. They’re from Crumlin, they’ve been around for quite a few years, and the A-side of the EP alone, ‘Hollow Blow’, is downright wonderful.

According to some people, it sounds a little like Chapterhouse, or Ride, or maybe McCarthy. But In Motion get understandably pissed off when you mention any of the above and tap their mugs of tea on the table in a manner that clearly indicates their annoyance.

“The funny thing about it is that nobody has pinpointed it as being original in its own way,” says John, clearly disgruntled. “Everyone that’s heard it has said it’s like Ride, or Durutti Column, or New Order, and those bands are great, but it’s my opinion that we went our own way. Even the stuff we listen to is more instrumental. The Cocteau Twins would be more influential for us than the Wedding Present.”

Mucksavage Records is the brainchild of Corkonian Shane Fitzsimons, and ‘For An Evening’s Velvet Ending’ is his first release. The communications gap between Crumlin and Cork meant that there was something of a delay between the single’s conception and birth - almost a year, in fact – but the band remain happy with the result. It’s pop music, they say, and as pure and simple and brilliant as pop music gets.

“Considering it was done a year ago, it’s kind of surprising that we haven’t actually changed our minds about the record,” says singer Alan. “We still think it’s as good as it was when we did it. Usually bands move on, which we have,” he laughs, “but it’s still brilliant.”

“We’re just pleased with the reaction, after waiting so long, having ups and downs, thinking it was going to come out one week and then nothing happening,” says John. “And it’s disheartening that people only really notice you when you’ve got a release. Not many people are going to gigs anymore.”

The single is accompanied by a video, which has been popping up on No Disco of late, that features drummer Liam zipping around the streets of Dublin in a lovely frock.

“I spent four hours flying around the city centre. Eamonn Crudden put it together for about £24.99, and he’s done another one for us for the b-side ‘In Daylight’, that has us perched on top of the roof of a pub, in the freezing cold. He’s got some really good ideas.” (The thought that he just mightn’t like them very much obviously hasn’t occurred yet.)

Are there plans for a new single?

“Well, we don’t know what it’ll be exactly, but whatever it is, it shouldn’t take as long as the last one. And it’ll be just as brilliant.”

Ah, the modesty factor. Exactly how brilliant are In Motion, then?

“Well, we don’t really want to start blowing our own trumpet, it’s up to other people to start doing that,” says Alan, grinning into his tea.

“We’re in a band to make the best music we can make. Obviously we think it’s absolutely brilliant. Every band should consider themselves the best band that’s going, and I suppose we do, and I don’t see anything wrong with having that kind of attitude.

I wouldn’t want to go to see a band that just thought they were alright.

“Certain people are taking an interest, because they realise we are different. The way the musical climate in Dublin is going, it’s getting noisier and heavier, and there’s a lot of people that aren’t into that, that want decent pop music, which is what we provide.”

And if the unimaginable happens, Liam’s forays into ladies fashions prove to have been in vain, and things just don’t work out, what then?

“Well, it depends what your definition of not working out is,” states Alan flatly. “We’re just going to make lots of records, and provided you make really good records, I think you will get somewhere. Just by some kind of Karma.”

You can laugh, but any band prepared to embrace roof-climbing and transvestism in the name of their art is bound to get somewhere. Even if it takes a little while. . .

• Lorraine Freeney

• ‘For An Evening’s Velvet Ending’ is available now on Mucksavage Records.