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The Young‘Uns: “there’s great tragedy and despair, but also hope”

The Young‘Uns, comically, are no longer young. The folk act from Stockton in County Durham almost stumbled upon their genre of music and its storytelling traditions when they walked into a pub, found an ongoing session, and became regulars. Soon they were participating, too, the youngest of an ageing crowd, hence the name.

Years later, now edging into middle age as multiple winners of BBC 2’s Folk Awards, the trio’s latest album continues their recent theme of modern storytelling. Tales told on their latest record ‘Tiny Notes’ (out next week), see them explore the story of Lyra McKee and her Derry shooting, and Paige Hunter and the notes designed to prevent suicide she has spent years sticking to Sunderland’s Wearmouth Bridge, as well as many more.

“I think folk in England is very much an unknown sort of quantity really,” frontman Sean Cooney explains. “Traditional songs in pubs and folk clubs are an underground thing, or certainly were 20 years ago when we discovered it. It was a revelation. We had no idea that there were songs from the North East of England, or that people sung in a Teesside accent. To hear songs about where we came from was such a life changing thing. It never occurred to us that it could become a career, but it was something we wanted to do, something local and precious.”

“It was a natural progression. For years we tried to preserve the old local songs, and I felt like they taught us so much about love and life and loss, comedy and tragedy. There came a point about six or seven years ago where we consciously started trying not to write songs about the history of the North East of England.”

The result was their modern incarnation, a band that carries heavy folk traditions, but gathers modern stories and retells them, often tragic tales produced with the permission of those they are depicting.

“Now it’s stuff that’s moving me today,” Cooney says. “Within the stories that we tell, there’s great tragedy and despair, but there’s always some hope in there. The title track ‘Tiny Notes’, inspired by Paige Hunter, who saved thirty lives in Sunderland by leaving little hopeful notes on the bridge, it’s full of hope.”

“It’s easy writing songs about the past, because all the people in it are dead, obviously. It’s a strange and beautiful thing to write modern stories. In this album, we’ve got a couple of songs people requested themselves, like a song about Tim Burman, who died in the Lockerbie bombing, was requested by his sister, which gives a lovely personal connection.”

“Others are stories that we’d seen in the news or the media, and when embarking on these kinds of songs, really personal songs, it’s not something we do lightly. ‘Tiny Notes’ took about three years of thinking about it before I decided to have a go at telling this story.” 

“There’s been lots of times where I’ve thought about writing a song and then not, because it didn’t feel like the right thing to do. We take great courage in most of the stories being shared, and used many times, by the people involved. That feels like what folk music always was.”

“We take steps to approach the people concerned, and thankfully they’ve all given their permission to sing it. On one case, with three dads raising suicide awareness, we went and met them one day while they were walking through Cumbria on a mountainside, and performed for them. There’s a longer piece that we’ll release in the next couple of weeks. Those are really special moments.”

Tallest Man On Earth: “There’s not a genius in this little shell, it’s when I’m with other people I get inspired”

Swedish folk act Tallest Man On Earth was never meant to go places. Formed with the express aim of simply making something he enjoyed, and perhaps playing a little around his local scene, Kristian Matsson has instead found himself spending a chunk of his life living in New York, touring the world, and getting regular comparisons to Bob Dylan.

The Dylan comparison, by the by, he finds quite funny. “Journalists keep bringing it up, and it turns into this kind of cycle,” he says. “They often forget my female influences, like Joni Mitchell. But it’s very flattering, of course.” The point, I suppose, is that Matsson creates vocally distinctive folk music that almost seems to tell a story, and is rooted in tradition and place. There’s a new record on the way, Henry St, which is different, but will still take in all of those angles.

“It’s been done for a while,” he says of Henry St. “It’s a very special album for me. There are a bunch of people on it, which makes it the opposite of the album before it. For my last album, I was living in my apartment in New York in the Winter of 2018/ 19, and I decided to isolate there. I set up these rules, I was going to write and record everything in a month, and not see anyone. It’s quite funny in hindsight, with the pandemic.”

“I moved back to Sweden ten weeks into the pandemic, and I was just me in my solitude, and it wasn’t great for mental health. I was reminded of my own mortality all the time, and the playfulness disappeared. I couldn’t write. I just grew vegetables. When I was finally back, I went to North Carolina, and wrote eleven songs and invited a bunch of people.”

“I realised during the pandemic that the people around me were my life’s inspiration. Interactions, that’s what really inspires. There’s not a genius in this little shell, it’s when I’m with other people I get inspired. I invited super good musicians, and I built on these demos. I let people bring their own personality, and we recorded some of the songs live, as a band in the studio. It was literally a party, with a lot of the things we’d been missing, with dogs running around, high fiving, people visiting. It was lovely.”

“Some of the songs are sad sounding, but it was a beautiful piece of work produced with friends. It’s the first album where I come to the conclusion that you can’t just wallow in your own anxiety. There’s a hopefulness to the album, which is hard amongst war and injustice, but this is what the album is about.”

Touring, though – the act of communing on a stage – has always been Tallest Man On Earth’s main thing, his natural home. “I’m super happy to be coming back, doing proper shows again,” he says. “I did loads of shows and had to make up for all the cancelled ones, which was crazy. We did that into last summer, and loved it.”

“In the last six months, the winter, I had to deal with my personal life, moving, getting settled, stuff like that, and preparing for the album and getting a band together. The tour won’t have the exact people from the album, but two North Carolina musicians and a drummer from Sweden will make up a four piece, and they’re all very talented. We’re going to play new songs and band versions of old songs, and some parts that are just me. I can’t wait.”

Scalping (NOW Scaler): “I don’t know if this band would have existed somewhere else”

Some bands are distinctly embedded in the place they call home. Scalping, from underrated UK cultural hub Bristol, are one such band. Drawing heavily on the city’s local scene, Scalping fall somewhere between a swirling rock band and an instrumental techno act, drawing influences from scenes like metal-evolved ArcTanGent Festival to the vibrant local dance scene, and dabbling heavily in an artistic side that lights up their live performances. This month, they play their first ever Irish show.

“The songs that we play in our set, 70-80% are different to the recorded versions, especially for album tracks,” Alex Hill, who performs the band’s more electronic angles, explains. “We work out what’s working and not working, usually before we record the album, but as this one was recorded during Covid we did that process in reverse.”

“The show used to be very improvised. Now that we’ve got more recorded songs that people might be familiar with, we do stick closer to the parts and structures. We do push and pull sections that we recorded and move stuff around, but there’s not so much improvising melodies. Before we released the ‘Flood’ EP, we felt like we had the freedom to almost make it up.”

The live set up is, to say the least, propulsive. “Once we start up live, we don’t stop,” Hill explains, “so if something goes wrong or you ruin the flow, you have to save it on the fly. So we have scaled it down, but it’s still there.”

“Bristol is such a small city that you know everyone making music with anything in common with yours,” Hill says. “You end up all being friends. It has benefits and downsides. I don’t know if this band would have existed everywhere else, the majority of the music that influences Scalping, we only discovered by living in Bristol.”

“I mainly listen to pop music and hip-hop, so we’re not pure underground heads, but there’s so much amazing underground stuff, so many labels, that there’s a Bristol sound system that plays so heavily into what we do. Liberty Sounds was a big one for us, even the acts that aren’t from Bristol kind of connect to our sound. We use the city as a lens to feed our music through.”

Meltybrains?: “we intend to get people out of their comfort zone”

Creating a kind of music that’s hard to categorise, aside from to say that – as the name suggests – it sets out with an intent to challenge and shock, Dublin act Meltybrains? have taken the slow road to debut album ‘You’.

Described as an exploration of what it is to be a man in his 20s, ‘You’ explores anxieties and internal journeys, and examines what the band  view as a kind of symbiosis between the self and the universe. It is, for want of a better explanation, an attempt to put the bigger picture of their lives – the grand questions – to music.

The record’s been a process, so much so that Meltybrains? have only just made a post-covid return, meaning until recently it had been three or four years since their last show. “I don’t really know what to expect from our gigs,” Dillon laughs. “It’s mad music. I sometimes look at the audience and think ‘do they actually like this’?”

“We absolutely intend to be a bit jarring, get people out of their comfort zone. I think all of us would be into harsh noises, unpleasant music, especially in a live setting where volume is so important.”

“With ‘You’, we tried to use song structure a little bit more, but still the structures are quite unusual a lot of the time,” he continues. “There are a lot of moving parts in Meltybrains? and it’s been a while since this was our main thing. There are a lot of logistical, practical and emotional moving parts. We’re very comfortable with each other without offending anyone, it’s been a very personal process with no real main songwriter. Which is great but it definitely takes longer.”

The themes, too, are complex. “The album looks at a person as an analog for the universe,” Dillon says. “We thought about that while we were writing. One song, ‘Yes Man’ dates back to 2013 or 2014. I guess it’s a recollection or a reflection of our lives over the last ten or so years. Not many tracks were created just for the album.”

The Magnetic Fields: “I have to have a theme for each record”

The Magnetic Fields frontman – or in some senses, only man, given he is in full control of the outfit’s music – Stephin Merritt is something of an enigma. Having written records that are casually short and records that are extensively long, he has a distinct tone of voice, an unusual style, and a massive, cult fanbase.

In the middle of lockdown, though, Merritt almost gave up the concept of writing music entirely. While he’s back now, including an extensive 2022 tour, he’s still struggling to put metaphorical pen to paper when it comes to what is normally prolific songwriting. 

“I’m not finishing any songs, but I’m able to perform. I have the environment back, and I’m trying to keep to my routine. Nobody knows how it works,” he says. “Traditionally I’d put in the hard work and get rewarded for it. Now I put in the hard work and nothing happens.”

“I have thousands of song fragments. Once I learn how to stitch things together again, there will be songs. I like to have a theme for each record,” he explains. “I like to react against the previous record, so all the songs on ‘50 Song Memoir’, for example, were of a certain range or duration because they had to fit into this 50 song grid where they all had some kind of equality to each other. I think they were all between 3 and 4 minutes long.”

“Reacting to that, in ‘Quickies’, all the songs are really short. I haven’t quite figured out what to do next. But it needs to be as different and new as possible.”

“The whole point of ‘69 Love Songs’”, Merritt says, reflecting on his most iconic album, “was to establish a calling card, and I’m happy that I did that.” Like his most famous record of a quarter of a century ago, much of what The Magnetic Fields do is largely outside of time, place, and obvious influence.

“Everywhere I’ve lived, I listened to a wide selection of music, but I have a hearing disorder in one ear that prevents me from going to rock concerts,” Merritt says.

“That means that the live music I’ve seen tends to be very quiet. I also perform that way. When I was a 14 year old I was what I’d now consider a very good guitarist. I was able to play everything Yes would play, for example, though of course not with as wide a variety of tone and approach.”

“Then I went to Phys Ed and discovered a game that savages play called Dodgeball, a game that I felt was intentionally designed for bullies to break the fingers of guitarists. I broke my left pinky, and it’s never quite worked as well since. I’m also double jointed. So my fingers don’t perform exactly as I’d want them to. That prevented me from being a great guitarist as an adult.”

“My main instrument is the ukelele, which doesn’t really need the pinky, so I’m not as disabled on it as I am on the guitar. I’m comfortable with it.”

Merritt famously has never loved playing live, and that hasn’t changed. “Maybe in an ideal world, I’d be making records that were editions of only 10 or 20 copies, with phenomenally beautiful packaging, in a brocade sleeve with gold leafing on the label. And with candy, artisanal candy to have once and never forget,” he says.

“I guess Stockhausen wanted to have something similar, very expensive and very low volume record sales. He wanted a kind of record that you’d only be able to play once. I would rather have a record you can play an unlimited number of times. Just hardly any of them.”

Ruth Mac: “Something about those empty streets stirred up this heavy sense of disconnect that I’d never felt in Dublin before”

Having left behidn her native Galway for Berlin, Ruth Mac has, like many who have departed these shores, found herself reminscing about what she’s left behind. Describing her sounds as ‘slacker rock’, the lyrically inventive sound behind debut album ‘Living Room’ saw Ruth support Hot Chip and tour her homes, new and old.

I spoke to her around the release of her new track ‘Home From Home’, a whistful look back at her former home Dublin, penned from a distance…

So, you step away from Dublin for Berlin and end up writing an ode to Dublin. How did that come about?

Yeah it is kinda funny when you put it like that, though it’s a song that could only have been written from the perspective of someone that has been away a while. At its core, the song describes my evolving relationship with a place that once felt like a home, rather than being solely about the city itself.

I’ve been watching Dublin change for 15 years now, so I can relate to your alienation. What in particular stood out to you when you were writing ‘Home From Home’?

Yes, it was definitely a feeling of alienation that sparked it. It was one particular trip during a lockdown. Most people I knew living in Dublin had scarpered, I think it was something about those empty streets that stirred up this heavy sense of disconnect that I’d never felt in Dublin before. I had been away for about three years at that point, maybe that’s enough time to start feeling like a stranger, not enough for it not to hurt? I was simultaneously thinking about the changes I’d felt on each trip home – probably similar pain points to the ones you have felt – and also coming to terms with the fact that I can’t expect it to stay the same and hold me the way it used to, you know? As much as I’ve been moving on with my life, so too has the city.

How has Berlin infused its way into your music?

Sonically, I actually don’t think the impact has been huge – yet to enter my techno fusion era – but of course my environment influences how I create and who I create with. Berlin introduced me to all my close collaborators who naturally impact my music. Berlin has also presented me with opportunities to explore new perspectives, topics and concepts in my lyrics, from the more obvious themes like home to observations on cultural quirks. Like why do Germans hold flowers upside down when they are carrying a bouquet around?!!? Show those flowers off! I had to write a song about that.

How does performing and writing in Berlin compare to being back home?

I honestly feel quite lucky that I get to do both, as well as be well positioned to play in other parts of Germany/Europe. It’s always special to come back to Ireland and play for the home crowd – the reception is warm and, yes, there’s always a bit more craic with the Irish crowd. Writing in Berlin has been great though. I share a special little studio space with three friends just outside the city. Having a dedicated space to write, demo, record in has been a game changer, and something that would be hard to come by (/afford) in Dublin

Coming back for something like Ireland Music Week feels like a chance to do the ‘industry’ thing a bit. How helpful are those kind of events in terms of getting the word out there?

Yeah, it’s a great opportunity to get the music out there and to start new conversations, as well as connect with other Irish artists. First Music Contact have built Ireland Music Week to be a really great event/opportunity.. and they have really worked hard to do it, fairplay. I had a lot of fun, though the self-inflicted pressure to meet people, pitch yourself, network, get the word out…. is intense! I slept for a week after that.

Conor Miley: “there’s a lot of hope, trying to take the lessons from heartbreak”

Formerly of the band ‘We Raise Bears’, Conor Miley‘s debut solo record ‘Thousand Yard Stare’ is a spectacularly personal record, one devoted to an unexpected road to fatherhood and a love of his son. Riddled with emotion, Miley’s album has deep highs and lows, and draws in a collection of his friends in attempting to summarise his feelings and experiences.

Miley himself confesses this might be something of a one time album, a product of circumstance. However those circumstances felt, the album is beautiful. Below, Conor tells me the stories behind it…

First of all, congratulations on Thousand Yard Stare. I understand it’s close to your heart. Can you tell me the story behind the record?

Thank you. The album came directly out of what was happening in my life at the time. My previous band, We Raise Bears, had ended and I was in a new relationship. This ended and I found out I was to be a father a month later. I won’t go into the specifics of what happened out of respect for my son’s mum but it was a very emotional time. I wrote the lyrics and the basic tunes over about a four or five month period. Lockdown then hit. I set up the house I was living in as a recording studio and went about recording and arranging the tunes in painstaking detail.

I moved in with my cousin and finished the job there. It’s an album directly about a breakup with someone you still loved but knew it couldn’t work. It was written at a time when I knew I was to be a father and recorded after he was born.

There’s a lot of hope in it, trying to take the lessons of heartbreak and all the pain that it brings and be appreciative of the result of it – a beautiful boy who has made everything worthwhile.

It must have been particularly difficult to create the record given parental responsibilities. How long has it taken and what were the main challenges?

From start to finish the record took the best part of 3 years. If lockdown hadn’t happened I’m not sure where I would have gotten the time to get it done. My son was a baby and living with his mum a good distance away. I didn’t see him for a couple of months and just recorded to keep me sane. I recorded when I could.

When I took paternity leave from my job as a teacher I hired a cottage near where he was. When I wasn’t spending time with him I just recorded.

The cost of producing an album was another challenge. I got some equipment and did it nearly entirely by myself mainly for this reason, but also the independence that it brings. I then wrote all the string and trumpet parts. The drums and strings were recorded in Monique Studios with Christian Best who does Mick Flannery’s stuff. I recorded the trumpets myself with Paul Kiernan, one of the guys from Booka Brass Band. I regard the parental responsibilities as my only important priority. Everything else is just stuff. Everything – gigs, recording, promotion – is fitted in around that.

Which tracks stand out to you as containing the core message of your music on this album?

There are many facets in the album. ‘Lost Honeybee’ would be the best representation of heartbreak and trying to make sense of it all after a breakup. ‘Thousand Yard Stare’, ‘Getaway’ and ‘In the Undertow’ would be quite introspective and about figuring out things in a time and space of turmoil. ‘Father’s Day’ would be quite an angry reflection on the role and place of single fathers in Ireland. It’s something I could speak at length about but the realization of the reality of the situation and being in the middle of it came out in that song.

At the end of it all there is a hopeful thread that comes out in songs like ‘Dreamer You’, ‘Slowly’, ‘I Return’, ‘From the Ashes’ and ‘Paean’ – that these things that happen to us are lessons and that there is a wealth of love and support out there if we choose to take it.

There are recordings of your son on the album. Did deciding to include those help conclude the message for you?

I wanted him on there in some physical way considering he influenced so much of it. I had the idea for introducing the final song with a conversation between the pair of us – he was 2 at the time. It didn’t really work so I swapped it with two recordings – one a voice mail his mum sent me when he was a baby and the other a recording I made on the sly while we were making lego boats and putting them in a basin.

I finished that song with a distant recording of us talking and me showing him the main piano figure of the tune. I thought it was a perfect way to end the album – an audio recording of us as I sing “It’s a paean to the story of our love” over it. It represented the album perfectly for me. That line was written for his mum and our son is the product of what we had – he is the paean in some metaphorical way!

Banríon: “I always write about what’s close to home”

Formerly a solo project out of outgoing singer-songwriter Róisín Ní Haicéid, Banríon have developed into a really strong jangly alt-rock band, a Dublin act with a message, and distinct Irish elements, but that feel like the natural sister act to the likes of Vampire Weekend or Phoebe Bridgers.

Now a four-piece fronted by Ní Haicéid, Banríon are both quirky and accessible, and while there’s only a single EP on the market so far, tracks like ‘End Times’ and ‘Yesterday’s Paper’ give a real sense of promise. 

Ní Haicéid’s songwriting style has both personal and social elements, but it’s not so much a planned process as a reflection of who she is. “I guess it’s an extension of what I spend my time thinking and talking about,” she says. “My lyric style is very verbal, or maybe the word is colloquial. I can’t really write poetically or anything too complex, so I always write about what’s close to home. It doesn’t feel like activism much because there’s not an end goal or awareness-raising motive, it’s just singing how I speak.”

“So much of our sound and songwriting is inspired locally, by my friends. Our guitarist Robbie Stickland has been instrumental in planting the seeds that maybe I could do music too. His shows introduced me to the Dublin indie music scene when I was about 18/19. Diarmuid O’Connor (Passersby), who produced my last single End Times, is another musician whose early encouragement made me pursue music and whose music and approach to it continue to inspire me.”

As something of a ‘covid band’ – much of their lifespan so far fell under the times of the virus – the four-piece are really enjoying making their way into the live scene, with a series of shows lined up over the summer. 

“We’ve Only Just Begun [a Whelan’s festival taking place in August] is absolutely up our street because of the ethos,” Ní Haicéid says. “There’s been way too many gigs where I’m the only girl in the green room. Forever being the minority creates a horrible feeling in the back of your mind that you’re being booked as the ‘token girl’ on the line up, even though I know we get booked because we’re good. I’m so excited to play Ireland Music Week as well! Both shows have such amazing line ups and I’m really excited to meet the other bands who I’m huge fans of.”

Shortly, they’ll be a second EP to join debut ‘Airport Dads’, though a full length is still some way off – at this stage, it’s building blocks.

“​​It’s the next natural step from Airport Dads,” guitarist Robbie Stickland explains. “We recorded out in a studio in Wicklow called Meadow Lodge which was a whole lotta fun. It’ll be a much more lush sound than what people are used to from us. It’s Phoebe Bridgers, it’s Snail Mail, it’s Soccer Mommy, all with the unique wink of Róisín’s songwriting. It’s gonna knock your dang socks off!”

“It’s a bit of a time capsule of songs I had written in 2021-2022, which are about falling in love and looking back on what I maybe thought counted as love before,”  Ní Haicéid adds. “There’s one about how it feels when your friends are all moving away and another about how putting on a brave face sometimes fools no one. It’s our first studio recording so probably a bit better quality sound than our other stuff!” One to look out for.