Life O'Reilly

The recent re-emergence of the singer songwriter in the eyes, ears and national top ten of the Emerald Isle (think David Kitt, Glen Hansard et al) has been accompanied by a wealth of underground folkists, clambering on stage with an acoustic guitar, a soft, quiet voice and the odd bongo in countless clubs, pubs and theatres countrywide. In this case, the man holding the guitar is one Paul O’Reilly, a softly spoken, modest young chap from Swords who seems utterly convinced that I got the names mixed up and that he should not be at this interview at all.

O’Reilly plays the kind of music your mother would approve of. It’s soft, gentle, inoffensive and wrapped carefully in folksie acoustics and whispered vocals. O’Reilly posesses the uncanny knack of capturing a moment and setting it to music perfectly, engaging his audience with songs so honest and brutally heartfelt that you can’t help but pick up on it. This being a rather unlikely comment, considering his musical heritage.

“From about seven to about seventeen I was a full on metal kid. I was a huge Slayer fan… I still am a huge Slayer fan.” He adds, rather defensively. “I kind of went from Megadeth through to Guns N’ Roses to the Pumpkins, through to Slipknot and Slayer. Then I found Nick Drake and Mogwai somewhere along the way.”

That’s quite the transition. “It is. When I heard Mogwai first, they just blew me away. There were these guys, playing music with no words and it was just really really strange. Guns N’ Roses had the big lyrics and Slayer had the growling and then here’s this band who just had nothing and it was just really strange. It intrigued me.”

Having gotten rid of the distortion pedals, a task somewhat aided by Nick Drake, (“That’s quite possibly the worst thing that I could ever admit”), and the statutory Jeff Buckley obsession, (“Grace is the Nevermind of real music”), O’Reilly got on his way to crafting his own songs and honing in his distinctive style.

Coerced somewhat by longtime friend, musician, collaborator and official confidence booster Steve Fanagan, he got out of the bedroom and onto the stage for his first gig in the Blue Room Café.

“From there I got asked to play more gigs with Steve, The Redneck Manifesto and Kittser, and it all pretty much landslid from there.”

O’Reilly has quite a back catalogue of support slots, having opened up for Glen Hansard and David Kitt. “I played with Glen at a gig for charity. Me and Steve (Fanagan) played together on the one set, him singing some of my songs and me singing some of his, and Glen and Kittser were playing together aswell. He’s called me up to sing with the Frames about five times now, it’s such a head fuck. It was pretty much Glen and Kittser who were the main influences behind me. They made me think, ‘I love music and I love writing songs, so why not do the both together and start playing gigs’. For Glen to ask me up on stage, it’s just crazy. Really crazy.”

He has been playing more and more solo gigs of late, including a slot at Witness.

“I was first on in this really really small tent, the café tent, possibly about the size of this place,” he says, arms waving in a vain attempt to encompass the expanse of the back lounge in the Long Hall pub on George’s St. “When I walked on it was about a quarter full, but by the fourth song there were hundreds of people in the tent. It was jammers in there. I was stunned by it. I was like ‘I can’t believe there’s people there, and there, and there!’”

His debut album First Thing in the Morning, so named because “it sounds pretty”, is set for release on Volta Sounds on September 21st. It was quite the home effort, recorded as it was in Fanagan’s bedroom over seven days between October and January.

“It was pretty much just two blokes in a room jamming. There was no real concept behind the album. It was more like ‘Oh, I’ve got some songs, let’s go in put them down, put them together and release them.” As release date draws closer, the nerves are setting in. “I’m sooo nervous! It’s a nervous excitement. Half of me is kind of like ‘Oh shit. These are my songs and they’re gonna be open to be bought by people and listened to and criticised’. But then the other half is really excited about the fact that it’s there to be bought, and maybe liked. Walking through a record store and seeing my album there is gonna be the greatest feeling in the world. The album was made when I was nineteen, and it’s pretty much my first attempt at songwriting and recording. It’s very flawed for an album, and it’s very raw. It was all done in one take. There’s this bit in the last song where I cough, and it’s there, on the album. But I am kind of scared that people are gonna listen to the album and go ‘You sound like Nick fucking Drake! That’s crap!’”

As for the future, he has no plans for world domination. “Maybe Swords domination for a few months! I want to do the whole rock thing, really heavy, stoner rock and I also want to make a quartet kind of album, and a country album and a dance album. Because I’m a fan of so many kinds of musics there are a lot of areas I want to explore, as well as doing the whiney-arsed folk thing.”