GROWING UP IN PUBLIC

The Unbelievable Children know what they want and they know how to get it. Having decided at one point last year that they'd like to play Féile, the Dublin band entered the Beatbox New Band Challenge and - with an incredibly radio friendly song called 'God Is In The Movies' - won the contest, and thus the chance to appear at Féile '93. Together only a short time, the foursome have played a mere four gigs to date and are currently practicing like mad for their Thurles performance.
When I arrive at their rehearsal room to chat with the band, lead singer/guitarist Tim has gone out to buy lunch. I talk with the other three members in spurts, but we soon establish that the interview can not and will not commence until Tim returns. "Please, Tim, hurry up," one band member moans aloud, and another explains that "Tim does most of the talking."
Indeed he does, and it immediately becomes clear where The Unbelievable Children's aggressive get-up-and-go nature comes from. He insists on switching on the PA to say a few words of greeting through the microphone in a distorted voice despite moans and groans of resistance from his bandmates. He shoots at me with a plastic gun and says something I don't understand then complains when I don't answer.
Now, Tim, if you're not going to behave, I'm going to have to send you to your room.
Powerplays and control freaks aside, this is an exciting time for The Unbelievable Children, who one might liken to a newborn being slapped around a bit to get it breathing.
Having been nursed in the studio where Tim and singer/keyboardist Louise met (they're both sound engineers) The Unbelievable Children were only planning on recruiting a full line-up this summer. Entering the Beatbox challenge precipitated the adoption of Joe on bass and Gary on drums a bit sooner, and winning has hastened the band's development.
"It got us to where we were going to be," Tim says, "but a lot faster."
"It's a strange level to enter on," he explains. "Our name has gotten about very quickly whereas a lot of people have to really work for that. It's funny that it should have happened now, with the band just starting, but we're still confident that we'll do well.
"In some ways that kind of thing can be a hindrance," he continues, "because we're still very young, we're still developing. We're just coming to terms with this whole idea of rehearsing every day."
Still, the band like the changes that constant rehearsals are bringing about and are intent on milking their new found profile for all its worth - within reason, of course.
"We're all aware that if it's going to happen it's going to happen on the back of the music only" says the band's manager, another Gary. "I'm sure there have been bands who've made it on the back of the hype only, but . . ."
The band respond with individual groans and headshaking, collectively taken to mean, ". . . we're not interested in that."
Funny, one has to note, how the name The Unbelievable Children so perfectly suits a band that have been thrust into the limelight in what some would deem a premature state.
"You can delve further into if you want to," says Tim, "about people getting drunk and stoned just to get back to their childhood, through acting stupid and acting the bollocks."
"A lot of people say it's a bit long," says Joe, "but people generally call us The Kidz anyway. Also, we're kind of the last generation of children that had any sort of innocence in their childhood and we're sort of blowing that all up now. So we're unbelievable. We're never going to grow up basically."
"Kids today are growing up with a lot more obscure images," Tim goes on. "For example my nephew is six and can deal completely with Sonic The Hedgehog, deal with the graphics and the ideas behind it all and I know for a fact that when I was that age I wouldn't have been able to cope with those kind of things. I had little blocks where I had to fit squares in squares."
"People are growing up a lot quicker these days," Louise adds.
For all this talk of innocence and youth, however, The Unbelievable Children have a fair idea of what they want to be when they grow up.
"What we're discovering here, obviously, is that we're a band," Tim says, "and things are starting to sound similar in a band sense. We want to ride over that after we've experienced it. We'd like to constantly sound like a different band. That's sort of the long term plan. We'd like to be able to say 'this is our song, it's a ballad, this is our song, it's a thrashy thing', but keep it so it's not too alienating."
"Colour is something we want to keep," Tim asserts again later. "Colourful clothes, colourful artwork . . ."
But he forgets an obvious one: colourful hair. Tim, you see, boasts red, white, blue, purple and yellow dreadlocks while Louise's hair is purple with a tuft of golden orange. Gary is meant to have a blue spot and Joe is teased about having grey.
So maybe what they say about warm hands and hearts somehow holds true for colours and music as well - colourful hair, colourful music?
The band's demo shows an impressive emotional and musical vibrancy and range not easily likened to anything that's currently charting. That Petrol Emotion meets The B-52s may be pushing it, but it's as close as you get. That may all change very quickly, however.
"It's not really evident in the band yet," Tim says, "but we do mess around with samplers, using them in an earthier way than most, trying to get some interesting sounds so that will come out in the future. Hopefully we'll get to the stage where we can release an album then a second one and then after that go very experimental - not alienating people - just trying to discover more about music and being different, without intentionally being different, just naturally trying to find new ways of doing things. It's very hard, you know, there are only thirteen notes and a lot of music has gone beforehand."
Féile-goers will get a double opportunity to see how The Unbelievable Children are developing; as it turns out, not only will they play Féile's opening slot on Friday but they will be back for more with an appearance on the Hot Press stage on Saturday.