FROM ETERNITY TO HERE

The Shane O'Neill investigating the possibilities of a cup of coffee in The Factory today is a different man from the Shane O'Neill I met a few months ago.
First off, his once-bleached blonde hair has taken on a reddish tint and now filters light in a most peculiar way. More importantly, his band's album - The Blue Angel's Coming Out of Nowhere - has finally been let loose on the public after months of tedious record company delays. Shane is incredibly relieved and it shows.
"The surprising thing," the band's frontman admits after we've settled down to talk in an empty office, "is that I still really like the album. Generally you listen back to stuff and hear things that you want to change. I don't know when it happened," he continues, "maybe about a month or so ago I just realized that I liked it as a work.
"At the time we were recording it, I kind of felt that there were parts of it that were nothing to do with me. If I had my way, if I had been let loose I probably would have gone right in there and tried to get it a bit more perfect but [Producer Jimmy Miller] just wouldn't let me do that and I'm really happy about that now. Because those bits that I overwork are the ones that I tend to not like.
"We actually wasted time trying to overdub stuff because we had it in our heads that we wanted to do a really good album. And we ended up scrapping all that and just coming back to what we had done the first few days. That took courage but Jimmy kind of forced us into it. We had no choice.
"What he did was make us live up to our own convictions about what kind of band we would be and didn't allow us to stray off into any other thing and always made us stick to that point so that if I was worried - and you do get worried about stuff - about my playing on one track or something he would give me the courage to leave it as it was and not fix it. That's what I like about the album."
Shane's satisfaction with Coming Out of Nowhere has been echoed by many critics, but he understands that it's not meant for all audiences.
"We were trying to make an album that had a mood to it and that's what it is. It isn't an MTV album, it hasn't got any of those type tracks on it. That's what it is and it doesn't bother me too much."
He describes the album as "listenable," a quality he tends to seek out in the artists and records he listens to. But the singer is perplexed by the number of reviews that call attention to the difference between the Blue Angels live and their recorded work, expressing a particular preference for one or the other sound.
"To me it doesn't seem that different," Shane says. "Maybe in terms of the level of acoustic stuff, in terms of a gig it's more difficult to mix the guitars in such a way that you can hear them but I'm glad about that because I don't exactly want people to go into their house and sit down and have a cup of tea and stick on a gig!".
The fact that Shane still likes the album after having to live with it through a trying period is not the only positive result of the aforementioned delays. The band have also somehow managed to gain a new sense of purpose and determination.
"Obviously waiting for an album to come out for such a long length of time is going to be depressing," Shane says, "and you're not going to want to do loads of interviews if the ones that you did last time had never been put out. But we've kind of come through that period and it has strengthened what I wanted to do. I just got some stronger ideas."
In the sense that he's got strong ideas, the Shane O'Neill of today isn't so different from the Shane O'Neill of the mid-'80s. Back then, as the lead singer of Blue in Heaven, Shane was reknowned for lashing out at what some would deem arbitrary targets with a vengeance. Modern-day Shane has calmed down a bit.
"I certainly wouldn't say something negative about other bands unless I was completeley happy with what I was doing myself," he says now.
Also note that he did'nt expose himself on the cover of the last issue of hot press whereas a few year's back, Shane's pelvis featured prominently on that page. Today it is very clear that Shane's serious musician aspirations have outlived his rock'n'roll star ambitions.
"We're musicians," Shane asserts, "we play music that is supposed to be interesting and have some appeal about it. Sure the other image end of it exists, but I don't think about it."
Part of this new found assurance stems from Blue in Heaven's somewhat negative experience with a major label and The Blue Angels' contentment with their more low-key arrangement on Solid.
"I think there's a lot of focusing in on the idea of 'sign the deal and away you go','' Shane says, "and it's not really about that. It's still about making music and doing gigs. And what happens when bands get dropped is that they're allowed to go back to that idea instead of just trying to make records.
"We didn't really have trouble with Island," he clarifies, "we just wanted off. It was down to the stage - which I'm sure most bands know - when the record company start encroaching on what you're doing. And we knew that what they were trying to do - and we could understand it - really wasn't for us. And that just made us ask ourselves what did we want to do, so that's why we decided to cut it out, to change."
"If we were in a race I might agree that a major would be the way to go. We might have been in a race a few years ago but we certainly don't feel like that now. Now it's just down to whether people like the record or not, whether they like the songs. And we're more happy with that. We're just busy trying to do something we like and think is good. And at the same time trying to better what we did before."
But isn't it possible to be in a race, even if you're not consciously competing? Isn't it true that there are only so many record deals to go around and way too many bands trying to get them?
"What do you want to do?" Shane counters, "Cut a few out? Who knows, maybe all of Ireland will be bands - in the year 2010 people will just come here to hear music. They'll tape it from our houses and put it in satellites all around the world.
"I find it funny when people say there are too many bands around," he adds. "What are they going to do - get a machetti and hang out at the Rock Garden?"
(Not the worst idea ever put down on paper, you must admit.)
"It's kind of funny that there's so much interest around the whole issue of bands being dropped," Shane continues. "Journalists are so preoccupied with it, but I mean if you liked a band, right, and you thought they were the best band you'd ever heard, and you went to a gig and thought they were brilliant - if they're dropped the next week, what are you going to do? Run home and burn your records because of some A&R person whose shoes you would puke on if you met him when you were drunk?
"And it may not even be his opinion, it may be down to finance. Because you have A&R trying to be 'creative' (in very inverted commas), and then you have the suits at the back saying this band is costing this much and we could get three bands for the price of that one. I'm not particularly amazed when a band gets dropped or doesn't get dropped," Shane concludes matter-of-factly.
"I don't see that there's any kind of direct competition between bands," he offers after a moment of silence, then makes a smooth segue back into criticism of the music press. "I find in particular that reviews that treat bands as if they're in a horserace or on a football team - 'they done well' and all that - are really useless.
"The point about it is that the job of a rock critic is to tell people what they need to know about that band and whether or not they should go and see them or buy the record and give some reference points. The cult of personality that some journalists will try to build up around themselves really interferes with that process."
Still, Shane doesn't see the point in offering any alternatives.
"I think it's just the way it is," he asserts. "You are here because you want to sell your paper, that's what you're doing, that's what your paper is doing. Each paper has its own guise as to what it is, what it's doing, its manifesto.
"But when you suddenly realize that journalists who write for the Melody Maker or NME have to go out every week and discover a new band otherwise what's the point in buying their paper if they're going to say everything is crap, you start to see the whole thing differently.
"Everyday those poor guys go out and try to find these bands and try to find some angle on them, so once you suss that out it gives you a different slant on it. I'm just amazed at the small amount of writing there is that gives me any indication of what the record might be like, or should I go and see that band live.
"I like Fanning's reviews because they're honest and straight forward. He likes Bob Mould and he'll tell you 'I've always loved Husker Du so bear that in mind because I'm going to like it anyway'. And so it's informative. He's not playing that political kind of game whereby journalists try to play one band off another band because they're trying to make it interesting, trying to create scenes, create an anti-Dublin scene.
"For me it just comes down to music," he concludes, "and I wouldn't mind knowing whether a band is good or not."
Okay, Shane, let's give it a shot. And just for the hell of it we'll talk about the Blue Angels.
Coming Out of Nowhere is a driving album. Not an album for bumpy, narrow, winding roads, mind you, but an album for long stretches of highway that disappear into the horizon. Not an album for clouds, rain and premature autumnal temperatures either, but an album for blistering sun made bearable by the slightest of cool breezes.
Falling somewhere between Chris Isaak and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Blue Angels are at once atmospheric and bluesy, with distant swirling sounds and soulful harmonicas taming and spicing up rauchy guitars in turns. Coming Out Of Nowhere is an album of songs with the potential evocative power of Don Henley's 'Boys of Summer' and the like, an album that drops anchor here in the year of its release and which will be able to tranport you back to this point at any given time in the future.
Coming Out Of Nowhere is more at home in the American heartland than any UK charts, and it comes as no surprise that Shane himself admits to feeling that many of their songs felt "summery" when the band played Slane Castle.
In spite of the fact that summer and Ireland are nearly antonyms, the band are currently touring their homeland and, depending on the album's reception, hope to release it in the UK and eventually in the States, where Shane is particularly keen on doing a club tour.
In the meantime, the band are happy gigging here in Ireland, and working on new material. "The songs I'm writing at the moment - I don't know exactly what they are yet," Shane says, "but the desire to do them is huge which is the main thing."
"It's a longing," he concludes, "or something."