Radical Dance Action

Making Ireland safe for electronic dance-pop, that’s what Métier are at. And about time, you might say, because, excuse me, but isn’t it two decades since Kraftwerk happened, to be closely followed into the Hit Parade by Dare and Lexicon of Love and ‘Enola Gay’, and isn’t it ten whole long years since ‘West End Girls’, to name but a few blindingly obvious references?

If a week is a long time in politics, then ten years in pop is eons, but you wouldn’t know it around here, where the non-brandishment of geetars is still regarded as a crime punishable by that most dreaded of torture devices, the excruciating axe solo.

Métier are a two-piece, one piece being Dave Byrne and the other being Graham Murphy (“I work the computer, Dave makes the tea”, claims Graham in a shocking and perhaps premature attempt to fiddle all the royalties, but their actual contributions are as follows: Dave, lead and backing vocals, Graham, piano, keyboards and programming. Beverage-supplying duties are split 50:50). They sing songs, good songs, with the aid of synths, samplers and sequencers, and are a trifle puzzled as to why, with dance records clogging up both the singles and albums Top Ten, they are alone in knowing what a bpm is.

Graham: “We were just talking about this the other day. It seems almost like a phobia in Ireland for people to admit to liking dance music or pop music. Pop is a four-letter word, except it’s only got three letters.”

Dave, unsurprisingly, concurs: “Ireland is Indie Nation.” This notion appeals to him. “Sounds like a movie, that, doesn’t it? Where you arrive on this planet and everyone’s got hair down to here and lumberjack shirts and they’re all looking at their shoes and they all love S-S-S-Suede. (To approximate the distaste in his voice as he malevolently drags out the S-word, ask your friendly neighbourhood Man Utd fan to say “Galatasaray.”)

Hoors and riffs

But Métier are not here to prolong the genre war. They love all types of music, being classically trained and, in Dave’s case, having sung with metal bands for five or six years. He was in Assassin and Friday’s Child, whose names sort of ring a bell, and supported Def Leppard and played the Marquee, and, now this is interesting, sees no fundamental difference between what he was doing then and what he does now.

“Initially I did, but thinking about it more and more, there isn’t any, because what we try to convey in the tracks that we’ve done is a sense of energy, and rock guitar and metal is all energy as well. So, in that way they’re very closely linked, it’s just that you’re using different instruments, you know? The rave scene, to me, is almost the same as the thrash and speed metal scene. There’s the same kind of intensity all the time.”

The “met-ee-ay” e.p. is out now on their own Pure label, which they set up specifically so that they could get it released without having to wait six months for some outside label to get it together. It is their first recording, and unlike many bands which knock out three songs, record and mix them in six hours and hope to fob them off on a not very diligent A+R man, they have, like John West, insisted on the best. Chris O’Brien, whose list of credits is too long to fit in this here page, produced, and they hope that he will produce their album, which they plan to have out in April, if they record it in Ireland and “if he’s all we can afford . . .”

Equally remarkably, Steve Averill’s Works Associates designed the sleeve, so if it bears a resemblance to Zooropa or Junk Puppets you know why. Steve also named the band. “He’s only named one other band that we know of, and they did alright,” says Dave.

The e.p. is doing exceptionally well, having got excellent reviews from nearly everyone who has lent an ear, and “The main track off the e.p., ‘On This Day’, d.j.’s are buzzing about it. It’s getting a lot of airplay,” smiles Graham.

Things are indeed looking up for this band. It looks like they’ve found their métier .