Reconnected

“Groupies? Drugs! Fights? Erm. . . sorry. Most of the bands we’ve met are a bit like ourselves, to be honest. We go for a quiet drink after the show and chat about the crowd or the sound system or something. Then we usually head home.”

Director are pretty rubbish at doing interviews. Or so they claim. Certainly, bespectacled and bookish-looking singer Mark Moloney and boyishly handsome guitarist Eoin Aherne seem like quiet, earnest types, aren’t into playing any silly stereotypes, and have no juicy revelations about any decadent rock ‘n roll related antics. Rather than trying any attention-grabbing gimmicks, they’re happy enough to let their music say it all.
Which is fair enough with an album as focussed, powerful and elegant as I’ll Wait For Sound in the bag. The Malahide band’s second long player – the follow-up to 2005’s platinum-selling We Thrive On Big Cities – is about to be released and the guys are quietly confident about it. Having said that, they’re under no illusions about the fickleness of contemporary audiences.
“We worked on the songs for a long time,” says Aherne. “It’s been almost three years since the last album came out and we had most of these songs for ages before that, so it was nice to finally get it done. But I think it can very easily happen, it happens all the time, where you see a lot of UK bands that release a second album after a successful first one and there’s absolutely no guarantee that it’ll do well. Especially these days when people’s tastes move on very quickly.”
Although Director’s debut came out in the UK on the prestigious Atlantic label, things didn’t work out. While they toured fairly extensively and played some of the big festivals, they claim that the lack of an immediate radio hit caused the label’s enthusiasm to wane somewhat.
“I think Atlantic were hoping that they could build on the success and build a story out of Ireland and then transfer that to England,” says Aherne. “I mean, obviously we weren’t an English band so we were coming in as sort of strangers and without that initial following that say a UK band would have when they started playing – just like we or any other Irish band would have over here.
“It didn’t happen straightaway for them – that sort of transfer of success – and I guess there was a period of them pushing the album release back every couple of months. Then there was a while where they were talking about recording some new songs and that kind of thing. When you come out on a major label, especially today, it’s about having a hit straightaway. You know, a hit radio song that will go straight to daytime Radio One and that’s what they were looking for.”
So were you dropped or did you decide to walk?
“Well, I guess they didn’t put the album out and therefore there was a thing in the contract where we were able to get out of it. I think if you’d asked us a year-and-a-half ago around the time it happened, then yeah I guess we were pretty frustrated. We’d had a hit album here and we felt that, if they’d given it a try, it would’ve done what we would’ve been perfectly satisfied with. But I don’t think that’s the way it works for a major label anymore. They’re not prepared to put in the time for touring and letting things build up and things like that without a big single. I mean, The Script are having that sort of success at the moment. But now we don’t rue the day that we were with Atlantic or anything like that [laughs]. We don’t get up and go, ‘Oh man, if only we were still on a label!’
“The new album’s coming out here on Warners again and oddly enough we’re working with all the same people. We also have a fairly heavyweight distribution deal which means that it comes out with all of the Warners partners across Europe. It’s exactly the same thing that Bell X1 have done. In fact, it’s the same company – ADA Global.”
But enough about the industry, let’s talk about the music. “There’s a much harder sound than the first album, but mixed with some of the softest, most delicate tracks we’ve ever recorded,” says Moloney (who, despite being from Dublin, speaks in a pronounced American accent – and sings like a mellow Cathal Coughlan). “I think we’ve captured more of the live essence of Director this time round.”
Aherne agrees... sort of: “At the time of the first album we were very focussed as a band on the songs all working live and stuff like that. And then when we went in to record, we didn’t really add anything other than that. So the first album is really just two guitars, bass and drums and one vocal all the way through. I think that maybe if there’d been a producer it would’ve been slightly better. But now we’re better musicians and the songs are better and, in some ways, we’ve got the experience to take it a step further.”
When I ask if they’re part of any band scene, they look at each other and laugh. The answer is obviously ‘no’. “I guess the band we would know best would be Delorentos, but that’s only because they’re from Malahaide and we went to school with Ronan,” Aherne explains. “We don’t really know any other bands now. In the very early days, we kind of knew a lot of the other bands who were starting out around that time, and we would’ve played with some of them, but that sort of faded out. So no – we don’t really know anybody. We’re definitely not part of any scene.”
I’ll Wait For Sound was recorded over seven weeks last autumn in the Los Angeles studio of veteran producer Brad Wood (“We took advantage of a very favourable exchange rate!”). While Wood has previously produced albums for the likes of Placebo, Liz Phair and Smashing Pumpkins, he was apparently eager to work with the young Dubliners.
Aherne: “Smashing Pumpkins and Placebo are kind of the big names that you throw in so people know who he is, but he’s a bit like Steve Albini or someone in that he’s done 300 albums or something like that. He’d had various studios and worked with lots of people so he had this kind of attitude of taking every band or project as it came. It didn’t have to be a big project or a small project, he views them all the same. He even said to us, ‘I’ve made all of these albums but, if you’re lucky, you’re going to make ten throughout your entire career. So I know it’s really important to you guys.’”
But their California dreams almost went sour when a highway patrolman pulled the band over on their very first day for breaking a stop sign. They were expecting a grilling – but on hearing their Irish accents the cop suddenly ditched the hardass routine and started to inquire as to their favourite beer.
All of the new songs were ready and extensively rehearsed well before their LA trip, though. Initially, Director spent several months writing and playing together in a dark room above a dodgy pub near the Four Courts. “Our rehearsal environment was a windowless room above an early house,” Moloney sighs. “It really wasn’t the nicest place to spend your days.”
Fortunately, some members of Aherne’s extended family owned an old cottage deep in the Leitrim countryside. Tiring of Dublin and early house drunks, Director decamped to ‘Lovely Leitrim’ for 16 weeks of intense rehearsals. The countryside revitalised them and allowed them to develop the new songs more organically.
“The house was secluded and there were no neighbours,” Moloney explains. “It wasn’t a big house or anything - it was a cottage, and there were three bedrooms and four of us. Which meant that one person had to sleep on the floor of the rehearsal area-stroke-living area. So it was a really close and focussed experience.”
They maintain that being holed up in Leitrim with fuck all else to do completely changed their approach to how they wrote.
“There’s a song called ‘Hold Up Now’ on the album,” says Aherne. “There was a certain point where we decided that instead of playing it for a minute and then moving on to something else, we’d just really work on it and work on it and work on it until it was right. We’d stick with the song and literally spend like a month on the one song. And that’s what set the standard for the other songs.”
Moloney: “There was nothing else to do anyway. It was Leitrim. You’d go for a walk . . . but then you’d have to come back again.”
He tells me that thematically the new album picks up where the old one left off. “The first album was about going off in search of something that you feel is missing in your life, and just the whole idea that that’s a little bit of a fallacy because you’re only gonna bring your problems with you. And I guess this new album is a little bit about what happens when you get there. The way that reality is a little bit different to what you expect.
“There are songs on there about singledom and loneliness and jealousy and stuff like that. And about the reality of a relationship as opposed to what you thought you were getting into. That’s what the title song ‘I’ll Wait For Sound’ is about. So I guess it’s about what you find when you get there. It’s a little bit disappointing, but there’s something redemptive about it. You learn what the truth is.”
Now that the listening public no longer has to wait for sound (so to speak), Director are obviously anxious to hear the initial critical response. Not to mention slightly wary . . .
“People often say that we divide critics so there’s obviously a hell of a lot of bad stuff out there somewhere,” Aherne smiles. “But I haven’t seen it myself. I tend to stay away from online so I imagine that’s where a lot of the negativity exists. But a lot of online stuff is written anonymously so it’s hardly worth considering. But I’ve certainly read bad stuff about us, and good stuff as well. The good stuff is always encouraging and the bad stuff maybe makes you stop for a second. But anyone who likes any band, I’m sure there’ll be two people who don’t – and they’ll be vocal about it. So it doesn’t impact greatly on us.”