Groom On Fire - Groom Interview

When a bunch of old muckers leave their significant others behind for a weekend in London, certain activities are a given. Recording an album of literate folk-pop would not be one that jumps to mind. While it doesn’t exactly scream ‘LADS ON TOUR’, that’s exactly what Groom did.

“It was a really nice time for the band,” says creative guiding light Mike Stevens. “We’re a little bit older than other bands, so we have various commitments in terms of families and stuff. We don’t get to spend a huge amount of time together just as mates. We enjoyed being in London and having a few nice curries.”
The majority of the time was spent in Soup Studios, banging out the tracks that would come to comprise Bread And Jam. Having gone big with 2010’s Marriage, the band shrunk down to a quartet, intent on capturing live lightning in a bottle with their dream engineers Simon Trought, Giles Barrett and Davie Holmes.
“They’ve been behind really lovely, warm-sounding, folky-but-rocky records. That was perfect for us, that’s our sweet spot... We just went into a room and all faced each other. When we made mistakes, we didn’t feel bad about it, we just got back on the horse.”
A stylistic choice but also one partly out of necessity – these are hectic times for Mike Stevens. His young family recently welcomed a baby boy into the world, and as one of indie pop collective Popical Island’s founders, other people’s music has become his priority to boot.
“There’s a good gang of us so we can share the work out. But it really has been a lot of work, especially this last year as we got a grant from Guinness and set up our Pop Inn headquarters. We were painting the place, doing everything physically ourselves. Myself and my wife had a baby in the middle of that and our bassist Will and his girlfriend had a baby around the same time. So we couldn’t really play as a band. We’d recorded and were waiting for the mixes to come back. It meant we could do our paternal duties while we waited.”
Popical Island has been a going concern, and roaring success, for four years.
“We thought there’d be a couple of us who were enthusiastic about it and it would peter out. It’s been quite the opposite. People have come in and brought their own enthusiasm to the collective. The really great thing is the friends I’ve made from it. It is very much about people. Some couples hooked up through Popical Island.”
So there could be a second generation of little Popical Islanders in the near future?
“You never know, maybe there’s a few out there that we don’t know about already!”
Aside from a love for all things ramshackle and rock ‘n’ roll, what unites the majority of the acts is the uniquely Irish bent to the music. Everyday life on this isle is encapsulated in their lyrics, sung in their own accents.
“I really believe in singing in your own accent and I always try to do that. The guys in Tieranniesaur and Big Monster Love feel very strongly about that as well. But not just the accent, also the subject matter. You have to be honest about where you come from and that should come through in your songwriting.”
Why does it seem like such a novel concept – an inherent national self-esteem problem?
“Yep. There’s an embarrassment about being Irish. Especially with rock music; maybe not so much with literature and poetry. Possibly because so much great music came from America and England and people latch on to that. You get influenced by what you listen to. I grew up in the ‘80s and it was a wasteland at the time. So my generation is still quite cynical about Ireland. Possibly rightly. Whereas I’ve found, with Popical Island, that people 10 years younger than me don’t have that cynicism. They’re really positive and have a can-do attitude.”

Bread And Jam is out now