Three and a half years ago, at a time when they looked barely old enough to rent a Harry Potter film, Shane Meghahey and Brian McFerran were hawking around an EP from their band Edgeweather that was staggering in its precociousness.
Melodically elegant, intermittently ferocious – of all the Nordy wannabes out hustling at the time, Edgeweather seemed clearly to be the boys most likely.
Fame and fortune, of course, subsequently kept a discreet distance, but in retrospect this had as much to do with the age of the main protagonists (they had all just started university courses for the first time) as any lack in the band’s material.
It was a sad day, therefore, when news filtered through that Edgeweather had called it a day. They really could’ve been contenders, you know.
Not all young talent is squandered, however. And early last year when word got round that the boys had regrouped with an altered line-up, and a smart new name, there was cause for some small celebration.
Maybe Fast Emperors could go on to finish the job that Edgeweather (almost) started.
And so, we hook up with Shane and Brian again, noticing a bit more stubble on their chins and an awful lot more conviction in their talk. Casting their minds back to Edgeweather’s prodigious debut, there’s a sense of lessons that have been painfully learned.
“Other people had lots of ideas about where we were going to go when we first started out,” admits Brian.
“But unfortunately we didn’t really have any of our own," he says. We worked with some people and they encouraged us to rock out.
It wasn’t that they were evil or anything – they were good people and had our best interests at heart - but that kind of direction just didn’t suit us. You have to be really great players to do the big rock thing properly, and that’s not the kind of band we are.
We’re not interested in the balls-out, obnoxious approach. We listened to those early songs and decided that it was a direction that we didn’t want to travel down – we wanted something more organic.”
Interestingly, the best tracks on the early Edgeweather EPs were those that the band had recorded themselves as demos.
Amazing Pilot, Paul Wilkinson (a name that is cropping up more and more often on this page) has taken control of the first Fast Emperors’ sessions and, judging by their debut release, ‘Tapdance Junkies’, decided that the band benefit from the less-is-more approach.
With the emphasis on subtlety over bluster, it’s noticeable that Shane has never sounded better – having reigned in many of his vocal excesses from the past.
“I’m a lot less flamboyant than I used to be,” he says. “I’m a bit more restrained now, not as full-on. There are definitely much fewer falsettos than there used to be.
“I think I was just testing myself when I was in Edgeweather. I deliberately wrote songs that I could only sing at the top end of my vocal range.”
“I’d end every gig with a raw throat. I’m glad I did it that way – it taught me plenty of lessons. Now there’s an awful lot more self-control. I only really go for it when I really need to.”
“Although I’ve smoked far too many fags in the meantime to even attempt some of old notes.”
The odd cig-enhanced vocal isn’t the only example on the EP that Fast Emperors have grown up – judging by some of the tracks on offer, the boys have had their eyes seriously opened over recent times.
Shane: “This EP pretty much documents a time in our lives when Brian and I both broke up with our girlfriends, left university, moved in together and faced-up to the reality of trying to make a success of the band.
It was a pretty fraught time and it comes out in the songs. There are times when I’m on stage thinking: ‘I can’t believe I’m singing this’.”