Entertainment Ireland

16 March 2009 (Music Interview)

Words: John Balfe

As I ascend the stairs to the open-ceilinged top floor bar of Temple Bar's Sycamore Club with Andy Cairns and Michael McKeegan, two-thirds of Irish rock band Therapy?, I comment on how this must make a most attractive smoking section to those burdened with a nicotine addiction and acknowledge to Andy that, yes, last night's Chelsea game against Juventus was particularly agreeable (we're both fans).

Therapy? are one of the most recognisable names in Irish music, yet have curiously flown somewhat under the radar in recent years. Perhaps best known for their work in the early-to-mid 90's when they flirted with mainstream success due to a sequence of successful albums, they are back with a new album called Crooked Timber, as well as a new mindset and a new approach. I sit down with them and we begin to talk about the making of the album, their plans for the future and, er, socks.


This album was produced by Andy Gill. Where is he based?

AC: Well he's based in London, but the first two weeks of it we did up in the North East in Newcastle, in a place that the record company own. The vocals, some of the guitar and the mixing was done down in Andy's place. It’s in Central London and he's done Killing Joke there and various other bands.

I was reading up on Andy a little and I saw that he did the first Red Hot Chili Peppers album in about 1984, something like that. It's been a long time since I listened to that album but I remember thinking that the album really captured the band's sound, but also amplified it to a point wherein they surpassed what they might have thought they were capable of. Was this the case with you?

AC: We sent him the tunes first of all and we had wanted to work with him for quite a while, we really liked the work he did on the Killing Joke album in 2003. We got in touch with him and he was available at the time that we had. So we sent him rough versions of the songs from the rehearsal room. He liked the songs and he didn't really have any major suggestions for the songs, he liked them as they were. One thing he said, though, was that he was familiar with the band from back in the day and he always thought that the drums sound and the bass sound for Therapy? was always integral. He thought personally that we had lost a bit of that. There used to be a killer snare sound and really dirty, grinding bass. He said he'd like to bring that back so it's more like a three-piece.

The bass sound was, for me, one of the things that really came to the forefront on about four or five of the tracks on the album. It was a real centrepiece.

MM: Andy Gill kind of runs with you. Because sometime you go, 'well, I've got this wild idea but it might not work' and some producers would shut it down, whereas Andy Gill listened to every idea we had and would pursue it to a point where it obviously was or wasn't working.

That sounds like a nicer, more organic environment in which to have ideas flow about.

AC: Yeah, much better. He also did stuff with the guitar. It’s heavier but, deceptively, the guitar is not as heavy as it initially seems. We let the bass carry the weight. You don't want to get a big, homogenised American metal sound. The other thing he said was that he'd like me to sing more. He seems to remember from the earlier records that it sounded more like me. I hadn't developed a 'singer' voice at this point in time and it kind of got 'Americanised'. He pointed out little things like that.

So basically he was allowing you to implement your own style into the music.

MM: With this record we were very well rehearsed and we knew what we were doing when we went in, maybe more so than the past couple of records. I think Andy Gill got off on that. He talked about previous sessions he’d had where maybe they hadn’t been as well rehearsed. He, being a good producer, was able to step back a bit and not get involved that much and just help it all along.

 

It seems to me that a lot of the songs must have been borne from the jamming process. Was that the case?

AC: All of them were.

So you just lock yourselves in a room and pound them out until you're happy with them?

AC: One of the unfortunate things about the dalliance with the fringes of mainstream that we had in the 90's with the Troublegum and Infernal Love albums was that we sort of went for a more traditional song based sound as opposed to the Babyteeth, Pleasure Death and Nurse things. What we wanted to do was to bring back something more like the way we would jam and play live. So we started from scratch and built it all from the ground up, rather than just going in with a verse and a chorus.

I saw the album described somewhere as 'a hard edged concept' and that it focuses more on the rhythm of a song than the melody. Why this approach now?

AC: I think, to be honest, the whole melodic rock thing has become so ubiquitous, whether it's the Foo Fighters or McFly. You watch kids TV now and it's pop-punk on the soundtrack. The Troublegum album was meant to be a once-off, hence the title and the approach of it. I think working with Andy gave us the confidence to change our approach because we made the record as a piece of music that we would want to listen to ourselves. I think what happened before with some producers we worked with was that they knew the commercial potential of the band and if we had come up with a song that was slightly catchy they begin to panic and think 'oh, this could be a hit'. You don't think in terms of hits and you shouldn’t when you’re writing music. Some producers panic and think that they have a big radio hit on their hands.

What would your favourite song on the album be? I know you’re very close to all of them, but is there any one that particular stands out for you?

AC: It sort of varies. I like Exiles because I was listening to a lot of Code 9, Benga and a lot of dubstep. Obviously we're not going to use a lot of electronics, so we did it all with guitar and bass. I like the groove of it; it's something like 130 beats per minute. I like how the guitar is kind of sparse apart from certain places where there are little effects on it.

MM: I Told You I Was Ill. That was one of the first we did. Andy had been jamming with Neil and they'd sent me a tape of it and I just thought 'this is really good!' It came about quite naturally. It was one of the first songs and you often get more excited about the later songs, but just listening back to the record now it's one of the ones where I think 'this is really good!' (laughs)

Have you had much of a chance to play these songs live yet?

AC: We haven’t played a show for nearly a year. We did a TV session yesterday. We arrived at the studio and we hadn’t actually played any of these songs since we recorded them. We’ll be going into rehearsals very soon. We do plan to play as much of this record as is possible.

Crooked Timber, what is the significance behind the title?

AC: It's from Immanuel Kant, the philosopher. He said, "from the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made". I found that quote indirectly from doing a little research on Samuel Beckett, because I like Samuel Beckett. We needed an album title and we didn't have anything at that point. We liked Crooked Timber but didn't know if we wanted to go with a title track. I like it though, I find [the quote] kind of life-affirming. It's almost like saying "yeah, everyone is different but you make the most of what you're given".
 
Do you see some sort of direct application of that theme to the music on the album?

MM: I think so. I think each song individually really holds its own but also as a concept altogether. I think maybe in the past certain songs will be in a certain way. Maybe on one record there might be three faster songs and two slower songs. Whereas on this one, each song is its own little unique entity and it goes back to the initial concept behind the song and lyrical approach and what inspired it.

I saw a quote from the band recently in which you said that this recording was a way of celebrating people's quirks. Were you consciously searching for some sort of individuality that might set you apart from other bands?

AC: I think, with this record, we just thought 'well, what are we listening to?' Every track we didn't have to think about the verse/chorus verse/chorus thing. We made that decision right from the very start. There we little things, like the dubstep thing we already mentioned. The last track Bad Excuse For Daylight we were reading "The Rest Is Noise" by Alex Ross (music critic for The New Yorker) and because of that we dug up Rite of Spring by Stravinski. There's a cello section with all these weird pulses going on in it and tried to replicate that for the guitar. Whereas before we might have worried and thought that 'how am I going to sing over this?', rather than to just sing what feels natural at the time.

That goes back to the almost improvisational nature of a lot of songs on the album. The very first song The Head That Tried To Strangle Itself, that was the one that kept jumping out at me when I listened to the album.

MM: As Andy said, you can do certain obvious things with songs to push buttons with listeners but I think that, in this day and age, people are pretty aware. You don't necessarily just have to listen to heavy music all the time. You can be as informed by electronic music as by rock music. There are little elements of it that creep in.



I think that's more acceptable these days than perhaps it was in the 90's, where everything was pigeonholed. If you liked rock music, that was it.

AC: I remember we got David Holmes to remix some of our stuff in the 90's and it just made us realise about how some of our fans weren't that open-minded. We were listened to all this stuff and we thought that because we love it, the fans will love it. I kept hearing "what the f*ck was that?!"

MM: Then you also get that thing where people go "I like rock, I like rap. Let's do a rap/rock band!" It never works, you know what I mean?

That accounts for popular music from about 1999 to 2001, doesn't it?

MM: Yeah, exactly! But there are obviously elements of it you can use in your own way. Ghostface Killah and  the Wu-Tang. Great sounds and very dirty sounding records, but we're not going to start rapping!

AC: Yeah, I'm not going to start free-styling in the middle of a song!

I think a lot of people have lost the idea that music all comes from the same place. There are about four or five different roots for each genre. It all goes back to, say, Robert Johnson, things like that. Everything springs forth from a similar place.

AC: Yes, absolutely.

I hear the first single is going to be Enjoy The Struggle?

AC: I'm not sure. We made a video for Crooked Timber. I think what originally happened was that one video company really loved Enjoy The Struggle, so that was going to be the single but then he buggered off to LA to work on something else. The new company that we were working with, a bunch of young lads from Manchester, really liked Crooked Timber. We don't really mind, we're not trying to get into the top 40 with it. It's just something to have out there and to let people know what the band is about. I'd be happy with any of the tracks though, but maybe the 10 minute long Magic Mountain might be pushing it a little!

I was going to ask you about that actually. I could be wrong about this, but I don't really remember any sprawling 10 minute long songs on any previous Therapy? albums.

AC: It was originally longer too! Neil (Cooper, drummer) was listening to Secret Machines. I quite like them and Neil loves them. I said that it reminds me of a bit of Krautrock. You can really see where Queens of the Stone Age got some of their early influence. We just started jamming on these riffs and harmonics and we cut it down and put in a little bit of stoppages and changes. There's a really mad Andy Gill mix of it somewhere and it's about 14 minutes long and it goes absolutely to the top of the effects pedals!

You should put that up on the website.

AC: Oh yeah, it'll surface at some point.

Does it say something about how comfortable you were in the process of making this album that you had no problems with adding a 10 minute song to your repertoire?

AC: Yeah. We just took it back to the rehearsal room and listened to the raw version and thought it was really, really good. Then we knew that we had to put it on the album, but if we put it on the album we have to be able to play it live. So we were all in agreement about that. It's bizarre, I took it home and my wife's taste in music is different to my own and she absolutely loved it. It's come up in quite a lot of the interviews that people like it.

Another thing that I immediately thought when I listened to the album was that a lot of the songs are going to sound great live. Was that something you were conscious of when you were writing them?

MM: I think what we have done throughout the years, since we stripped back down to the three-piece again; the process we write with is a lot more organic. We don't actually have that many bells and whistles. I know the album sounds well produced and sounds quite big, but there's actually not that many overdubs on it. It's surprising, the whole sonic trickery thing. We were using more space so it sounds bigger than it actually is. I think that was what we learned when we got back to the three-piece, we started using space a lot more. I was thinking 'maybe in this verse, I'll just not play bass'. When the bass does kick in, it gives it a lift. Whereas before, especially when you're younger, everyone is playing all the time!

In terms of influences for this record, were they more diverse than on previous albums?

AC: We did it track-by-track. The Head That Tried To Strangle Itself originally came from a techno record called Doomsday. Enjoy The Struggle was Charlie Mingus. There was a bit of Stravinsky and the krautrock thing on Magic Mountain and Crooked Timber itself. Some of the vocal effects came from Dubstep but we had to tone it down a little bit because I could get a little carried away! I really like that track Archangel by Burial off the Untrue album. They were going that this is like the thing that Cher used to do! Andy Gill was saying 'well, let's make it sound like you but let's not go down the f*cking Cher route!' It had to be reigned in a bit so people weren't thinking 'who's that f*cking alien singing for Therapy?!' (laughs)

What's in store in 2009 for Therapy? fans?

MM: We're going to do a European tour after the album comes out. Quite a short one, but we're going to do a lot of festivals, one major festival in Ireland which we can't name yet.

Well, it's either one or the other, isn't it?!

AC: Yeah (laughs). We're playing The Academy on May 15th. We're trying to get as many festivals as we can this year and work the album on the festival circuit. The record comes out in the States and there are plans to take us there at some point but not sure whether it'll be later this year, or early next year. Next year is our 20th anniversary, so we've decided to treat ourselves next year and make a big song and dance about it! We've never done that before. We didn't do it for the 10th or 15th anniversary, so next year will be the one!

MM: Yeah, a celebration of us! (laughs)

Speaking of touring and the festival circuit, what is on a Therapy? rider?

AC: It's been the same for years. Lots of soft drinks, lots and lots of water as well as a good premium can of lager. We don't really touch the spirits, they get taken by the crew. There's always Vodka and bottles of wine around and lots of fruit. Socks are the only extravagance that we go for. When you're on tour, playing sweaty gigs every night you really can't be arsed looking for socks in TK-Maxx in Northampton in the rain.

Wow, socks. How rock and roll of you...

MM: Yeah, exactly!

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Crooked Timber is out on 23rd March and Therapy? play Dublin's Academy on 15th May.
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