It’s wham, bam, thank you — Ham!
Ahead of their much-anticipated big Christmas concert in Dublin next week, Barry Egan hails Irish indie kings — and queen — the incomparable HamsandwicH
IT was an intriguing beginning: a “crucifixion party” in bass player John’s house to “give birth” to their band, HamsandwicH. Asked exactly what a crucifixion party was, chanteuse Niamh Farrell said at the time: “For some reason, John had a picture on the wall of the crucifixion that his sister had painted.
“It was Good Friday so we decided to have a party. Podge was there too and we decided, there and then, to form the band,” she explained adding that: “Ollie [Murphy, drummer] met Bono at the Chili Peppers gig and he told him he was in a band called HamsandwicH. Bono laughed, and said we should change the name. But we’re not going to change it now. You get to the stage where you don’t want to be a band where you have to have ‘formerly known as…’ on the posters.”
Eight years on, you could put some very high praise on the posters for HamsandwicH’s end-of-year shows at the Academy in Dublin next Thursday or the following Thursday (December 29) at Dolan’s Warehouse in Limerick. Like. . . their third album, Stories from the Surface, is one of the most compelling Irish albums ever recorded. Or that their 2008 debut album, Carry the Meek is a classic. Or that White Fox is almost as good. Or that Ants is one of the great Irish singles. Or Niamh (who incorporates the best bits of Patti Smith, PJ Harvey and Kate Bush) is an incredible performer both on record and onstage. Or that guitarist Podge McNamee is as mad (if brilliant) as a box of frogs. And that HamsandwicH are so brilliant that it can’t be long before they’re taking over the world. But just don’t take my word for it. Take Win Butler’s. When the Hams were special guests to Arcade Fire — and The Pixies — at Dublin’s Marlay Park in the summer of 2014, the Arcade Fire main man was straight over to Niamh and the gang when they came off stage after their show-stealing performance.
“He came over to us when we were finishing up,” Podge told Hot Press magazine’s Olaf Tyaransen in 2015. “It was mad. Win Butler was just standing talking to most of the girlfriends of the band. He’s a giant! He really is crazy tall, but it was weird because he was actually genuinely friendly. It wasn’t like he was doing this big celeb kind of being patronising: he was actually the leader of the good chat.
“He wasn’t just being nice for the sake of it, he was really genuine,” Niamh added. “He came over to us, like, ‘You were in the band that were just up there? We were listening in the dressing room! We opened the windows and could hear your whole set and it was really good!’”
Most discerning fans of music felt the same listening to Hamsandwich’s most recent album Stories From The Surface. It was difficult not to be moved by it, once you had listened to it more than once, not least because it was full of the emotional stuff that most of us have been through at some time in our lives: heartbreak.
“Maybe it’s a bit too autobiographical,” Niamh told me last year “The last album was definitely in the 90pc bracket of heartbreak,” Podge says referring to White Fox in 2010. “I know I was single. So all the lyrics I wrote were quite mopey.”
I asked Niamh what was Podge like to be around at the time. Was it like hanging out with a black cloud?
“Ah, no. He was great craic,” Niamh laughed.
“It was all on the outside,” retorted Podge. “It is like we are synchronised in our relationships. Two or three of us had... not bad break-ups, but do you know those weird, sad break-ups? But they fuelled a lot of lyrics — which is good. With this album, we’re all in happy relationships. So there is a good bit of positivity.”
Asked about the song, All Worthwhile (with the lyrics ‘Because we only used ourselves/We were the only ones to get the joke’,) Niamh said. “We wrote that sitting in Podge’s house. It is kind of about that there are only two people in the relationship; so you are the only two people in the relationship that knows how each other feels. So you are essentially the only two people to get the joke.”
Podge added: “And no one is hurt in the process.”