The name might be on the same side of memorable as the capital of Qatar, but if you see the Dublin trio live, it’s not something you’ll forget in a hurry.
The reason? The flamboyance of lead singer Kyrz (not Chris, no way) Reid. While it’s not unusual to see boas adorning the mike stands or Kyrz traipsing around in a skirt, he’s adamant that the “image thing” is secondary.
“We’ve been compared to groups like Placebo and David Bowie, who inject a little glamour into what they do,” he explains, speaking from the band’s minibus which is headed towards Belfast’s Limelight. “It doesn’t bother me; I’ve been doing it for years so it’s not a terribly conscious thing, I just don’t want it to get to the stage where people say: ‘come down, he might be wearing a bikini’.”
A bikini, eh?
That said, he mulls over his somewhat ill-advised stage costume that night. “I want to wear a massive tricolour on stage, but the lads keep taking it away.”
The lads to which he refers are bandmates Carroll Reid (who takes on the role of drums and Kryz’s brother), and James Crossan (bass).
Their story started many, many moons ago, as the siblings had been playing music since childhood. Growing up in Lucan, Dublin they formed minor bands with schoolmates Damien Rice and the Bell X1 boys.
“We were friends with them in school, but the bands weren’t anything serious,” Kryz shrugs, though he audibly cringes as he remembers they were at one point called Wanted Not Needed (“it’s the worst band name ever”).
The loose nature of the projects made them disintegrate quickly, and after an ever-changing line-up, the brothers found Crossan through a mutual friend and gave up on finding a singer.
“It always got to the point that everything would be channelled through that person – they’d be singing and writing the lyrics but they were essentially my songs, and I was a little Hitler about everything,” he admits.
Taking on vocal duties himself after Carroll heard him laying some ideas down one day, the band embarked on a mammoth tour around Ireland in the summer of 2004.
As Kryz puts it: “We went out with the idea that we’d play every venue in the country, every shithole that could accommodate a band, and if they couldn’t, I’d do a solo gig. I’m never doing that again, though,” he insists. “They’d come expecting Christy Moore and they got me, with my nail polish and make-up.”
Their sound, too, might shock for those expecting your average singer-songwriter. Their current EP (A.F.K.), geekspeak for ‘away from keyboard’, confirms what their first release ‘Beautiful’ suggested: they’re rough as they are ready, as indignantly rawk as they are astute songwriters crafting the trade to the best of their abilities.
And then there’s a cover of Thin Lizzy’s ‘Dancing In The Moonlight’ to inject a little fun into the moodiness of it all. But believe – it came at a price.
“We spent a lot of last year recording songs, but then scrapped them all,” Kryz mentions flippantly.
Why in Satan’s name would you do that?
“I just didn’t think they were that interesting melodically, and people would just think it sounded a little amateur. We didn’t have any record company pressure, no deadlines, so I just thought this is our band, we’re allowed to wait until we’re totally happy with the results before we release it.”
It’s so crazy, it might just work. With their time finally come – they recently launched the single at Crawdaddy in Dublin, things are looking up for the band. “They’re the best recordings we’ve ever done,” Kryz enthuses. “The first song on it (‘Wait Don’t Wait’) may come out as a single in its own right but for the moment we’re just releasing it as a full EP.”
Have they got their sights on the further afield as well? “Absolutely,” he affirms. “Here, we could release and control it ourselves so we did that, but outside of the country we’re using it as a demo.”
With a spate of live dates to look forward to in June, they’re a name to bear in mind. Though that probably requires a little more effort than usual…