No shortcuts to glory for We Cut Corners
It should have come as no surprise that the latest album by Dublin duo We Cut Corners was a spellbinding delight. Their previous two made 2011 and 2013’s respective ‘Best of ’ lists and both Today I Realised I Could Go Home Backwards and Think Nothing were nominated for the Meteor Choice Music Prize. It will be a shock if The Cadence Of Others is not on the list for the newly minted RTÉ Choice Music Prize when the nominees are revealed in January.
Conall Ó Breacháin plays drums and sings while John Duignan plays guitar and backs Ó Breacháin’s marvellously expressive voice, one of the best you’ll hear in any Irish band right now. Their recent gig in Dublin’s Button Factory to launch the album was at times mesmerising. To see the two of them successfully recreating the passion-filled alt-rock of their three albums was very special. Yes they give their heart and soul to their music but they are practical too.
In recent weeks, we’ve heard the sad news that three notable Irish bands, Fight Like Apes, The Funeral Suits and Enemies have decided to split up. The financial strain of trying to be an independent band in Ireland today contributing in some respects to each calling it quits.
Conall and John still work as teachers. Though enjoying huge acclaim they are not in a position to definitively say that school’s finally out.
‘If we didn’t have jobs as well we couldn’t afford to survive,’ Conall says.
‘The record company we are signed to, Delphi, help enormously in terms of paying to put out our records but it is myself and John’s project and we have to fund most of what we do.
‘Fight Like Apes, Enemies and The Funeral Suits felt that they couldn’t go any further. As well as the financial stresses I can understand the problems that goes with the logistics of bringing four members together regularly – even to just rehearse. To then also have to establish some kind of consensus I’d say is very challenging. It’s always been just the two of us.
‘John and I are lucky we’ve been working with each other for a long time. We met in our first year in college. We know each other so well that our vision for the band has evolved in tandem. It doesn’t mean that it is always plain sailing, there is a creative tension that drives it but being a two-piece is just so much easier.’
Conor also cites the difficulties of getting airplay on mainstream radio stations as a huge factor in whether an Irish band can retain its financial viability.
‘Non-mainstream bands, who aren’t on heavy radio rotation find it very difficult to get people to come out to their gigs,’ he says. ‘There’s this myth that has developed over the past few years to the effect that it doesn’t matter if someone buys a band’s record because they make so much money playing live.
‘In reality an independent Irish band would be lucky to break even after a tour.’
It’s a shame to put it in such cold terms but that €10,000 on offer for the winners of next year’s RTÉ Choice Music Prize would go a long way towards keeping a band such as We Cut Corners afloat.
If the music on The Cadence Of Others wasn’t sublime enough, the band invited Conor O’Brien from the equally excellent Villagers to play on the album.
In what might appear a bizarre move, they didn’t ask the possessor of a voice that induces tears in hard men to sing; he played bass.
It’s a bit like asking Lionel Messi to tog out with your team and asking him to play in goals.
‘Conor is a friend of ours and we knew that he plays bass on most of his own records,’ Conall says.
‘We asked him to play but then if we had asked him to sing, would we then have asked him to write a song for the album? And where do you stop? He is brilliant. He recorded the bass for 10 songs with us in one day.
‘Sitting with him is something to behold; you could almost see the creative cogs turning as he was listening to the tracks for the first time.
‘We are huge fans of his, we always have been.
‘In 2011 when he made the video for one of his first tracks Cecelia & Her Selfhood in Whelans, we were standing in the centre of the front row in awe.’
I would be amazed if one or more people attending any of We Cut Corners’ shows aren’t similarly inspired.
We Cut Corners’ The Cadence Of Others is out now on Delphi Records.
‘If we didn’t have our jobs as well, we couldn’t afford to survive just making music’