"We actually got together to play a friend’s wedding,” explains ex-Saville man Ken O’Duffy of the background to his new group, The Citizens. “I had been living and performing in the UK, plying my wares as The Citizen, and had just returned to Ireland. The guys asked me if I had any songs and as soon as they heard them they said, ‘Ken, we have to get them down!’”
The singer is seated with bandmates Tosh Flood and Vinny Duffy, who are equally enthusiastic about The Citizens’ debut, Songs Of Absolution.
“As soon as we did the demos, we were just buzzing on them,” says Tosh. “We recorded them in my bedroom. Ken redid some vocals, but we actually ended up keeping a lot of the material for the album.”
For songs that were written primarily by Ken in the UK, this is a particularly Irish record.
“I think the second half of the album is very Irish,” nods Ken.
“It is,” agrees Tosh. “I love ‘This Town Will Be The Death Of Me’, that’s a particularly Irish song.”
“For me, The Radiators’ album Ghosttown has always been a huge influence, that’s the biggest template for me. I love songs like ‘Faithful Departed’ and ‘Kitty Rickets’,” enthuses O’Duffy.
Indeed the beguiling ‘Midnight Mass, Christmas Eve’ and several others here echo the sentiment and humanity with which Philip Chevron infused all his songs.
But the inevitable question is, how similar is the outfit to Saville?
“I think there are lots of sister songs,” muses Ken. “I find myself thinking, ‘Oh, that’s a little like that, that’s a little like that.’ So, I don’t know really. We wouldn’t have made that album if we hadn’t made the others, do you know what I mean? So maybe it’s a continuation.”
Tosh is best known as a fulltime member of Thomas Walsh’s Pugwash. Does this role let him unleash untapped creativity?
“The way I look at it is, in The Citizens, they’re Ken’s songs, so I get to paint his songs. In Pugwash, I get to paint Thomas’ songs. I’m happy enough doing that,” he says modestly, although charming number ‘Tabernacle’ on this outing is his own composition.
Happily the bands will be co-existing indefinitely as tracks are already written for the next Citizens outing.
“We’re hoping to record soon so they’ll be fresh,” says Vinny. “Most of the songs are new but some are left over from the current album.”
“There’s no grand plan, but the idea would be that we could become self- sufficient,” states Ken. “If we can sell enough copies we can go in and record the next album. I have written some songs and so has Tosh. Once we heard the current record, we wanted to write so much. You just want to better it.”