Jubilee Lines

Seven years ago, an imaginary band was born in Phibsboro to brothers Niall and Fergus McCormack and Lee Casey. They were a rough and ready trio to beat them all. I remember the first time I ever saw Jubilee in The Rock Garden, and I was struck by Niall's plaintive chorus please don't give up on me/I need you to set me free .

Depending on which way you look at it, that is either the best or worst lyric of all time, but there was an unconscious innocence and a mysterious beauty to their mess of near-tuneless noise.
Jubilee's colourful career has touched upon almost every kind of record company scenario available to Irish bands from a self-produced first 7" to esteemed independents to major label subsidiaries and back again.
Along the way, they became Jubilee Allstars and Barry McCormack entered the fold, a man whose songwriting has become an increasingly vital organ pumping lifeblood into the band's music. Lee is now playing bass with Joan of Arse (but please note that he performed on the new album) and former Dot Creek sticksman Cillian McDonald has supplemented the current live line-up, along with new guitarist Brian Rice.
Seven years of dreaming out loud, seven years of gorgeous love songs, seven years of crafting the best ramshackle guitar poetry around. It could have gone very pear-shaped at any given moment, particularly when caught in the throes of record company inertia, but they've done it again and produced the album they always talked about. It s called Lights Of The City, and it is a testament to perseverance, resilience, friendship and love.

All The World's A Shed
"It was exactly two years between completely recording the first and second albums," begins Niall McCormack, crouching over my tape recorder in The Long Hall on a rainy Sunday night. "In the end, it was a very quick in and out job, which suited us when we finally got our shit together.
When we first ever went into a recording studio, I was totally paranoid that every button that was pressed would totally fuck up what we were trying to do! It got to a stage where nothing would be touched in the studio until it was explained to me what it did.
With Thom (Monaghan, The Pernice Brothers), we hit it off immediately. He put the tape on and we just bashed them out. We were recording in a suburban house in a cul de sac in Windy Arbour in a shed. The family of the house were always making us tea, and here we were trying to make a rock n' roll record! It was perfect, though so nuts and surreal.
We were up against it financially, but the recording hasn't suffered from that. After all the basic takes, we did the vocals in my front room because Thom thought the sound was better. So we packed up and went to my house! That s the way records should be made."

The Stars Are Underground
While I'm very reluctant to prematurely trumpet anything as a new scene, music lovers should take note that now you can walk into Road Records of Fade Street and find a full section of Irish produced DIY 7 singles.
The quality fluctuates wildly from the excellent to the downright awful, but these beautifully collectable artefacts (and it is only the likes of this and dance music that are keeping vinyl alive) are suffused with the blood, guts and soul of genuine lovers of music.
"The present scene in Dublin exists with bands because people can get reasonably paid jobs and still have some free time," enthuses Niall.
It's never been healthier as far as record releases are concerned. But it's all hobbies for people. I don't mean that in a bad way. In a way, it s a good wake-up call for the scene in Dublin and it'd be good if people picked up on that. It s quite healthy what is going on and it should be celebrated. In a city like Glasgow, that scene developed over fifteen years ago with bands like Teenage Fanclub, The Jesus And Mary Chain and Primal Scream releasing independent records. There is a kudos there because there is a background and history to it which we don't have in Dublin yet. Americans think of Dublin and think of U2. There has been no one in between a Dublin Teenage Fanclub or whatever.

The Lights Of The City
The title track of Lights Of The City is a classic. Barry McCormack's elegy to Dublin is a touching paean to "a million different cities in a million different heads" that gently encaptures the unbridled lunacy, sheer beauty and numbing pain of his home city in the least mawkish manner imaginable.
"I'm just fascinated by cities," exclaims Barry. "They re such an organism that you can't help being fascinated. I haven't spent enough time outside Dublin to really get a perspective on everything, but they are generally the same things that you both love and hate about it. I really like the fact that you can walk down Georges Street, bump into someone you know and go to the Long Hall. Then, of course, that can really piss you off and you feel it s too backslappy and parochial. It s a city in transition as well, with pubs aspiring to be something that they aren't. We've ended up with a slightly bastardized city.
"People have a lack of confidence in who they are," contends Niall. "We were always told that we were just a load of drunken wrecks who can't govern themselves, but we fought for that right and now we are governing ourselves. We are making mistakes through the inherent lack of confidence get rid of all the old pubs and make it more modern and appealing to continental Europeans so they can get real coffee . What I was proud of about Dublin was that you couldn't get real coffee. There is nothing better than an American complaining about a bad cup of coffee, and now they won't be able to do that anymore. That s what Dublin was about. It s like turning Dublin into the stage set of Riverdance and putting on a vision of Ireland as embracing the internet and modernity. There is so much stuff that we should be proud of, but when you look back at the 20th century anyone we should have been proud of got driven out of the country which is a disgrace.

This Is No Country For Dreaming
"The most visible export we have now is music, says an animated Niall. "But you've just got to laugh at the industry in Ireland's attitude. They have no self-confidence. Unless they sell millions of records and can say, Ronan Keating is great! He is a voice for us! or The Corrs are brilliant . No, they're not. They're shit.
We engage in real issues and write real songs, which The Corrs or U2 don't do. But we'll always be seen as wilful, unambitious, lazy and all the rest because we haven't sold fuckloads of records. I don't give a fuck if we sell shitloads of records, but if you say that, immediately it s Uhh?! They obviously got a knock on the head when they were younger or something.
"If you were in a band in the eighties, there were no jobs anyway," observes Barry. "Of course you wanted to get a deal, of course you wanted to sell records and do things in the most commercial way possible because there wasn't any other option or money available to make your own records."

The Loves of the City
"I've always written love songs," states Niall. The theme of the album is love whether it be love/hate for Dublin or love/hate in your personal relationships. Your relationship with a city is like your relationship with a woman or whatever you're into. There is a struggle there, but the reason you stay there is because you have a connection and a love for it.
I see this album as being quite positive and upbeat," he continues. The theme of it is positive and it celebrates resilience. When I write love songs, there's no great thing behind them. They are what they are. 'Lamplight' is a song about me meeting my girlfriend and there is nothing more to it. I'm proud of it because it is simple and the lyrics are sparse, but I think I got across what I was trying to say with the minimum of effort.
"When people hear a love song, it s translated into their own lives," adds Barry. "They're not thinking about the songwriter. Those songs, 'Lamplight' and 'Take Good Care of Me' are quite self-deprecating, 'I've been lucky to stumble upon you in this world' kind of songs. Take what Dylan does on his last album for a man who is proclaimed as an icon. There's all this stuff taking the piss out of himself hitting fifty, looking lecherously at girls and thinking he could have them if he was younger but he isn't and all this kind of stuff. That's just Dylan singing as a guy, not some kind of rock god in a hotel room with groupies at the door in love with some bogey self-mythology."
"We're not supermen," smiles Niall. "We're just another bunch of clowns who are part of the circus act."

Guess Who s Not Coming To Dinner
As masterfully wonderful as Jubilee can be, they are certainly not populist pop for the masses.
"I can't see anyone having a dinner party with 'Do You Know What It is Sir (To Have Nowhere to Go)' playing in the background," laughs Niall. "The record is quite upbeat, but I'm not sure if the newly established middle-class who like mochas and cappuccinos til they are blue in the face and buy stuff in Habitat would think that. I don't know what kind of lives these people lead, but they don't want to listen to us going on about what it is like to live in real Dublin. They'd rather listen to whatever the latest coffee table album.
There is a network of those dinner party people who say I got that Moby album and it s brilliant . It s the David Gray syndrome. If we get one of those people in that circle to say I got the Jubilee Allstars album , the next thing you know we'll have sold 100,000 albums overnight! Then you couldn't go to a dinner party without hearing the Jubilee Allstars!
The renegade liggers turned songscraftmen drain their pints and disappear off into the night, happy in the knowledge that they have finally translated their adventures in wonderland into a heartachingly beautiful collection of songs that reveals more shades of subtle gorgeousness with every listen.
It won't sell by the truckload or become the future of Irish rock, but its rich cornucopia of sights, smells, loves, fears, dreams, tears and laughter will enrapture and enrich many an everyday life.

Lights Of The City is out now on CD/vinyl on Independent Records. Jubilee Allstars will be performing at Witnness on Sunday August 6th.