To be a semi-finalist – to sniff victory but never taste it – is surely the cruelest fate of all. So believe Semifinalists, the band, a London-based (mostly) American three-piece, whose shoegazer-informed, self-titled, debut has lately been causing waves among the indie fraternity.
“Even the phrase ‘semi-finalist’ has a sort of poignant quality, the kind of quality we’re trying to put across in our music,” explains singer/drummer Chris Steele-Nicholson, a zen character who, obscured beneath a faded hoodie top, suggests a sort of post-rock Jedi Master (the patter is pretty out-there too).
“There’s a strange courage and dignity in nearly succeeding,” he continues, rather mysteriously. “That’s a very interesting place to be, a fascinating state of mind.”
Fetching up somewhere between Mercury Rev’s tree-hugger phase and The Flaming Lips in the days before Wayne Coyne’s beard was calling the shots, Semifinalists certainly crank out a beautified racket. A heady cinematic seam runs through their songbook – hardly surprising considering the three members fell in together at London Film School, having, like the embryonic Rev, originally struck up a working relationship collaborating on short movies.
Rumours that their debut record grew out of an aborted score for a mate’s class project are, however, wide of the mark, explains Steele-Nicholson, tucking into lunch at a Rathmines café several hours before the group make their Irish debut.
“That’s a pretty good story,” he concedes. “The truth though, is that the album was born out of jams. That said, there’s no doubt that our film work has influenced the record. It’s a very visual album. I hear the music and it evokes pictures in my head.”
Two thirds of Semifinalists are from the US (Steele-Nicholson grew up in Chicago, vocalist Adriana Alba comes from Washington DC). Last to join was Ferry Gouw, an Indonesian who contributes woozy keyboard lines and – in Semifinalists’ starkest departure from the Rev/Lips template – staccato hip-hop wordplay.
“I came to the UK as a teenager, totally obsessed with Britpop,” Gouw explains in a voice so low it’s a minor miracle that my dictaphone picks him up over the background clatter. “Only as I’ve gotten older have I thought about Indonesian music. People have told us our record sounds exotic. Maybe they’re picking up on something we can’t hear ourselves because we’re so close to it.”
As ex-pats living in what is increasingly looking like a city under siege, do Semifinalists ever feel inclined to address the state of the world through their music? Steele-Nicholson, until now a picture of monkish calm, pulls a face:
“What we’re about is conjuring a feeling, not delivering a message. We don’t want to use the band as a platform. Not that kind of platform anyway.”