Hot Press Meets Bell X1

Paul Noonan's mind has wandered back to 22 St. Peter's Square, London. It is over a decade ago. Bell X1 are in the basement, mixing up the medicine.

"We were with Island Records at the time," the singer reminisces. "They had a studio in their basement called 'The Fallout Shelter', which was full of character. It was an old laundry and had all of these incredible features. They had a huge chimney stack and they'd placed a microphone on top of it. They used to record a lot of Bob Marley's reverbs on that - recording his voice going up the chimney. Steve Winwood's Hammond was there. Great touchstones."
A touchstone, too, for his band. They were cooking up the album Music In Mouth, which would give them their first real taste of chart success, setting them on the road to Irish No.1 record Flock - and every long-haul flight and sold-out show since. It is a strange thought. Music In Mouth, the Celbridge band's second platter, has turned '10' just as they return with another musical offering.
"Yeah, it was a July release alright," a sharply-dressed Noonan smiles, looking for, and getting, a nod from bandmates David Geraghty and Dominic Philips. "Does it seem like a decade? No. But then... in ways it does. Around the time of recording we were living in Chiswick, West London, for a good few months, staying in the Chiswick Hotel, a totally Fawlty Towers sort of joint. It definitely was a fixture in the life of the band, and I suppose my life, that summer.
"Music In Mouth was the record that really endeared us to people here. It's something people say a lot: that it was a really meaningful record. The next, Flock, sold a lot more but we were having a lot of hit singles in a way that we hadn't had before. People who fell in love with Music In Mouth... we were their band. And then we became this much bigger band. It was that 'we loved the early demos' factor; they were in at the ground floor. Even though Neither Am I came first, it did take Music In Mouth to get us going."
Things change. The Fallout Shelter is no more. But Bell X1 are still flying. They've continued their medicine-mixing - even if Noonan confesses that they often seem to "bumble from record to record." Not that we should believe him: there was scarcely a bumble or a stutter in the creation of their seventh studio effort, the recently released Chop Chop. Recorded in a flurry of confidence over two weeks at the Connecticut home of The National's producer Peter Katis, it eschews once-favoured production quirks and sonic trickery for a more stripped-down sound that puts the songwriting to the fore. It is undoubtedly a work of art...

Today, the three meet Hot Press in an unusually tropical Dublin. We gather around a coffee table in a city centre hotel for some caffeine-aided analysis of self and sound. With the attention focused on Chop Chop, multi-instrumentalist David Geraghty points to the live, acoustic takes of old songs that were eventually gathered together last year as Field Recordings, as a key influence on their new direction.
"It reminded us of the power of the song," Geraghty proffers. "Just voice, guitar, simple arrangements. We really enjoyed getting back there, hearing each other's harmonies, the sentiment in the lyrics. So it gave us comfort: 'it's really going to be ok, we don't need to tart the songs up in all the contemporary blips and blops'."
Noonan sees it as a new era for the band.
"Bloodless Coup was about momentous change by stealth, or taking stock having reached a certain point. With this record it feels like we've reset a few things. It was a more traditional approach that shook the palette, not to get hung up on proficiency or exactitude."
Exposing their back catalogue in front of big audiences for Field Recordings, they realised the strength of their songs, as well as their collective ability as players. It instilled a self-belief that was crucial, working to strict deadlines for Chop Chop - even if that belief wavered marginally on occasion!
"Peter works Monday to Friday," Phillips says of their time with Katiss and co-producer Thomas Bartlett at Tarquin Studios. "He's based in his house, he has his family, that's his structure for himself. That was the window; he was busy afterwards and we were touring afterwards. So it was a question of having to get it done. I don't know about the other guys, but I just assumed we wouldn't finish it!"
And did Phillips share his feelings with the group?
"No, because it would have been 'Oooh, now you've said it, it's going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy!' In the back of my mind I was thinking that maybe we would have to record another song after the fact or do some more overdubs. The thought of that was awful. But we got it done."
The results sound in no way rushed. Quite the opposite: this is an album that moves in elegant slow-motion.
"We had a little studio in my place," Geraghty says of the initial writing phase. "All the gear was there and we had creature comforts. It was homely. It just really lent itself to the casual nature of working. There was no stress involved. For me, obviously, because it was my gaff all I had to do was put on slippers and a dressing-gown!"
Phillips interjects with a smirk: "Sometimes he didn't even bother to do that!"
And then, at the start of 2013, it was off to Bridgeport, Connecticut.
"Recording with Peter and Thomas, we've definitely upped our game," notes Noonan. "Having looked at Peter's CV for a long time, to work with him was intimidating initially. But he was just a great filter, and very diplomatic. He knows how often we get bogged down in exhausting all avenues and entertaining all ideas. Where as he seemed to have a strong over-arching view of what would work or not. And be quite dogged in his pursuit of that."
So instead of Geraghty's "blips and blops", echoing pianos dominate (a haunting synth is allowed on one highlight, 'Careful What You Wish For'), as Noonan weaves his eagle-eyed words over spacious bass and drums. It might seem like the kind of retreat into "real" instrumentation Daft Punk have made with Random Access Memories (where they "went back to go forward", to quote Nile Rodgers) but the Irish trio weren't looking to the slick, monolithic albums of the '70s for inspiration. They wanted something raw.
"They had some amazing session players on that," Noonan says of RAM. "When I first heard 'Get Lucky' I thought it was just generic funk, I didn't really get what the fuss was about. On repeated listens, listening to how the stuff was composed, you realise it's amazing. But it's very accomplished. I've been into more ragged music lately. I'm probably late to the party, but there are bands like The Walkmen who I've really grown to love."

With Katis and Bartlett producing, a shift towards the sound spectrum occupied by The National was always a likely outcome. But it is one that clearly works for Bell X1's music, and which may yet pay bountiful dividends in the US. Chop Chop is a record with enough beauty and brilliance alike to take the American charts by storm. Interestingly, Matt Berninger and his Cincinnati band have fashioned a form of rock 'n' roll that attempts to deal with adulthood and all its potential mundane cul-de-sacs, a territory which Paul Noonan has also been mining.
"Peter does have a signature sound," Noonan observes. "You can hear that on the record."
"Everything sounds big," Geraghty adds. "It's brimming sonically. It's beefy, bulbous, and yet everything is in the right place. That American thing, you know what I mean? Very, very well put together. It was amazing to watch him work. The studio was his laboratory, the way he was scurrying around and you know... almost in a white coat. Hardly any knobs in the studio moved, he just went, 'This is the way I record things'."
Lyrically, we have bird-watching on Brighton Pier, but we also have 'Diarama' and 'Motorcades'...
"The perception of a motorcade is very American," Geraghty agrees. "An 'Americanised' thing. It was actually JFK and the awful events of that day that forever crystallised in people's minds what a motorcade meant. It's probably why this girl in the song cries at motorcades. It's the downfall. The bursting of the balloon of hope that America had with JFK at the time: 'What do we do now?' They put a bullet in his head, y'know? It's a real tragedy, but there's also a strange sense of celebration about a motorcade. Flags flying, grandeur, a sense of pomp and ceremony."
In much the same way, Chop Chop juxtaposes the worries of the world with a strange sense of optimism. It's a 'yippee, the world's going to hell in a handcart, let's gather our nearest or dearest and make the most of the time we have before it spins off its axis altogether!' kind of thing. Although Phillips sees it differently...
"I think it's really optimistic," he proffers. "I don't know if it's because we're so bogged down with the recession. I could see why you'd hear how the song 'End Is Nigh' (essentially a party anthem for the apocalypse) is immediately pessimistic, but really it's positive. It's about catching yourself thinking about people you want to spend the end of the world with."

Chop Chop does indeed find Bell X1 expressing their love of life's little treasures. And yet, Noonan has always been a social commentator, and an increasingly irked one of late. While they're busy creating their own personal paradise, he's keeping an eye on his country and its hardships. Which is where hte pessimism comes in...
"I suppose I've been thinking a lot and becoming far more interested in the idea of a 'State'," he reveals. "Nationalism in general. The idea of a State, at its fundamental level, being a group of people who get together and try to put structures in place to facilitate the best quality of life for everybody. Be it health care, infrastructure, education. We put governments in place to execute these ideas but we've come so far from those ideals. Few people feel like they're actually a part of the execution, pro-actively involved. The relationship is in some ways toxic now.
"The State is sort of seen as some external force that's imposing its bullshit on your life. We'd love to claw back some of the original ideas on what a State is - I suppose that's socialism to some extent, at least for the even distribution of wealth. And a song like 'One Thousand Little Downers' touches on that."
You think of how Bell X1 ripped into the "cute hoorism"- as Noonan calls it - in the Fianna Fail tent during the boom-time Galway Races on a song like 'Reacharound', and you wonder what the band make of the recently released Anglo Tapes. The 2008 recordings, made public by the Irish Independent, find former Anglo Irish Bank chief exec David Drumm talking to then-head of capital markets John Bowe about how close Anglo was to breaking liquidity rules. "Embarrassing," Paul Noonan announces. "Farcical. But of course these conversations happen. I don't think it's particularly revealing in that sense. There's an element of pantomime villain about them now as well."
Geraghty says he too was taken aback. "They were being so frivolous with what's not only going to be the downfall of the country, but of individual people who are struggling to put food on the table for their kids. That's what's stomach-churning and enraging.
"How could you be so frivolous about this?" he expands. "I know it's a broad sweeping statement to make but these people come from money and they play with money as if it's never going to really affect them. But on the ground it affects people. That are 'inferior' to them, it seems. We need to put intelligent people who have come from a place without money, in positions of power. People that understand what money actually means."
"What I found hard to believe," Noonan interjects, "is that they can play with money in the knowledge that if it all goes tits up, they'll be bailed out by the State. That they can play their games in the knowledge that they won't pay the ultimate cost."
If Bell X1 talk about a nation disenfranchised, does that extend to the music scene? Do they see any new bands coming through with a unique voice, with a social conscience? Is there a dearth of musicians articulating young Irish anger?
"I don't think they necessarily should have to," counters Noonan. "There's plenty of time for that. You look at a band like The Strypes who have this incredible energy going on. And it's all heart. You don't want to dilute that with too much head."
It is still a curious one: teenagers harking back to music first played half a century ago.
"True. And the fact that most of their set is covers still... But it'll come. I do think there's something special there. In that Arctic Monkeys kind of way. Of course, your man Alex Turner has both going on. He's a great lyricist, he does write social commentary. With their early stuff when they were in their teens, they really chimed with teenage life and teenage troubles. It's write what you know. But they also have that incredibly visceral thing going on as well."

When they talk about the young pretenders, Bell X1 seem very statesmanlike indeed. They're a mature outfit now. Looking back to Music In Mouth, Noonan admits they never anticipated all that was to come. But they hope to be doing this for years to come, stalking those stages in their late '60s like the Stones at Glasto.
"As long as you stay skinny," the singer smiles. "That seems to be the thing: no matter how old and fucked you get, as long as you stay skinny people seem to buy it."
"That," quips Phillips, "is what the heroin is for!"
In terms of the practicalities of maintaining this career, as family men, are they all forced to get the instruments out of the house and go play in a garage somewhere now?
"Forced?" asks the bassist, "Or 'just want to get out of the house?!'"
"We don't have a strategy to do it," explains Noonan. "But then we don't sit around waiting for the gods to strike. Sometimes you do have to force it. I find I have to put myself in a room with a blank canvas and try to squeeze out some songs. Keeping office hours? A little more so now, since I've had children.
"I'd been looking for a work space, a writing space mainly, for quite awhile. In my quest, I met up with a few similarly-minded souls like James Vincent McMorrow, Cathy Davey, Glenn Keating who plays with Jape... We finally found a wing of the National Concert Hall where we all now have writing rooms. It's on the second floor, a block that runs along the side of the building and it's called The Writers' Block."
Phillips laughs: "So they all sit in there looking at blank canvases!"
For Dominic, it is the music that counts. He is weary of too much travelling.
"I like the idea of flying, of being a pilot," he says. "But now going to the airport just feels like you're being strip searched. And you probably are!"
Still, the airport beckons. Having introduced Chop Chop to Ireland in the National Concert Hall - Noonan once played there as a 15-year-old in an orchestra before he traded his flute in for a drum-kit - they head off on a North American tour in October. Before that, they're Mitchelstown-bound as they headline the Indiependence Festival.
It might be an idea to grab a ticket. They may not have achieved the large-scale success yet that their music deserves - but Bell X1 are only ever one movie soundtrack choice away from that, and Chop Chop has potential hits in abundance. All it needs is for a smart music supervisor to spot them. It'll be fascinating to watch this one play out...