Kodaline pay tribute to their tragic Angel
The Irish rockers return to their roots with a heartfelt ballad on their new album to honour a teenage fan who died after sold-out concert
IT has been six years since Kodaline burst onto the Irish music scene, winning hearts and minds with their upbeat folk rock and quirky music videos. Over time they have gone from playing small clubs and venues to selling out Malahide Castle but — more importantly — they have taken time out to mature as artists.
If you’re looking for proof of this then look no further than their new album: Politics of Living. The record blends acoustic guitar and traditional Irish instruments and fuses them with electro pop sounds.
The end result is a full-grown album of hit singles alongside some heartfelt ballads and a personal track that pays tribute to one of their fans who tragically passed away during their Marlay Park show in 2016. Ciara Lawlor, 17, from Kilkenny, was rushed to hospital after passing out at the July gig but was pronounced dead a short while later. The band felt bound to attend the funeral and sang Love Will Set You Free at her requiem. Lead singer Steve Garrigan told It’s Friday how they came to immortalise her memory through the track Angel on their new album.
‘Angel is a special song’, he explains. ‘When we played Marlay Park in 2016 it was our biggest show to date. It was sold out and there were 38,000 people there and you can imagine how we felt after it.
‘We were just buzzing on cloud nine and high -fiving each other, taking it all in. Then our tour manager said he had some really sad news and told us that a girl in the crowd had passed away during the show. When we heard that it knocked us for six. It really stuck with us. So we didn’t really know what to do but we felt that we had to go to the funeral and meet the family. We were really welcomed by the great community down there. We played a song at the funeral and paid our respects.
‘Then one day we were all in a room together and it had a real effect on us so we decided to write a song for her family. We wrote Angel to remember Ciara. We played it for the family and they loved it. We weren’t going to include it on the album at first but they really wanted it on there. So we felt it was the right thing to do to honour her.
‘And you know what? There is nothing that we can do to change things. It was just this horrible thing to happen. All that we really can do is to write a song about her because it is all we’ve ever known. The song and the lyrics are all about celebrating a life. It is a very touchy thing to try and do but her family were extremely happy and they came to the show in Malahide. It is just this sad thing and this is our way of dealing with it.’ The album attempts to focus on various dayto-day acts that make up the politics of life — the ups and downs, disagreements. Loss is one of the many themes tackled by the group. Temple Bar focuses on feelings of selfloathing and inadequacy.
‘Temple Bar is just this song about feeling down and going to a pub to drown your sorrows,’ Steve says. ‘Trying to reassess your whole life situation and feeling sorry for yourself and trying to figure out where it all went wrong. We actually got a choir from Dublin, they are the LGBT choir called Gloria, and they sang on it which was pretty awesome. It is a little ballad about feeling sorry for yourself and doubting yourself but pushing forward though it all.
‘I Wouldn’t Be is one of those songs that everyone can relate to. It is about the people around you, be that your family or friends, and how they shape you as a person.
‘They make you who you are and it is cool and I love how it is like an old Irish song that you would hear in Michael Collins or something. We got an uilleann piper to come into the studio — he is on the track and that was incredible to watch. We were all just standing in the studio listening to him and it was awesome. It is a typically Irish song and I like it.’
LAST year the group took a collective decision to cancel a string of European dates to focus on finishing their album. This slowly started to dripfeed singles, before they finished on the final 12 tracks that is mighty impressive.
‘We didn’t even promote them as singles,’ drummer Vinnie May says. ‘We have just been putting out a song here and there. It is just the way the industry is going. It is like Spotify people don’t listen to albumsn they just want songs. I feel like any album we have ever done has been a bit like that. We’ve never really made an album as such.
‘We changed our sound a lot. We were interested what our fans would think but so far it has been really positive. The most important thing for us is playing live. I don’t think we have ever really got any good reviews on any album. The first album was slated, I think. You can’t please everyone and we don’t write music to please music journalists.
‘We write it for ourselves and the fans — when you go to a show and people are singing every single word of your song back to you, that is the most important thing. That’s why we do loads and loads of shows every year because the fans want to see us play live.’
This record boasts a mix of heavyweight producers including Wayne Hector (One Direction, Westlife) and Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid and is a definite departure from the Coldplay-styled songs of their earlier two albums. Perhaps it’s the six years spent honing their craft or the life experience garnered along the way but their third production is by far and away their strongest body of work to date.
‘We did put a bit of time into this,’ Steve says. ‘The main difference between this album and others ones is that we worked with different producers which really influenced the sound. We introduced a lot of different electronic elements which took more time than the straight-up acoustic stuff. ‘We did spend a good bit more time but life also got in the way. Vinnie got married and Jay our bass player did as well. We took a bit of time off, mainly for the weddings but we had things going on.
‘We all moved out of or parents’ houses and got our own places which was a big step. We started doing real world stuff and then quickly realised that the real world was as scary as s*** and went straight back into the studio and just wrote about it. Now we are going to run away on tour. That’s what music is, escapism, at the end of the day.’
After a whistle-stop promotional tour in Ireland and England, Kodaline are back on the road, hitting mainland Europe where they have amassed quite the following. So much so, that they were recently honoured in Switzerland with a plaque on the Swiss version of the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.
‘We have had some really bizarre stuff happen to us recently,’ Vinnie
says with a smile. ‘We got a star in Switzerland. It was part of a festival —they had a big ceremony and there was a traditional Swiss band. Then the whole town turned up. The Mayor gave this speech and we were looking around wondering “how the hell this happened?”
‘It was so strange — they put this big piece of granite with a Kodaline star on it down on this Walk Of Fame pavement.
‘There was a guy on an accordion playing a version of Brother from the album and for a second we weren’t sure if it was real or some joke. No other job gives you those bizarre days so we know how lucky we are.’
The band will soon take off on a comprehensive tour of America which will bring them up to the 2FM Jingle Ball in December. But don’t fool yourself. This is anything but a comfy ride in the States and Kodaline remember only too well how hard you have to work to avoid going back to playing to crowds of two in Nashville dive bars.
‘This is our sixth tour America and you really have to work over there, Steve says with a laugh. ‘When we started out we were playing to 100 people and now we have thousands in the audience. I remember we played a show in Nashville to two people. We were trying to sell CDs after the gig to stay afloat. If we didn’t sell CDs, we couldn’t put fuel in the van.
‘Our sound guy, who is still with us, was doubling up as the driver and it wasn’t even a tour bus. It was so old I would be amazed if it was roadworthy.
‘We have gone from that to a proper tour with real production. It is the same with anywhere.
The first couple of shows we did in Ireland were like that as well. We played a gig in Cork to two people and one guy walked in and walked right out again. Going from that and now we’re playing to 5,000 people in Switzerland, the growth has been amazing.
‘There is something weird happening in Asia as well. We’re getting huge crowds over there. We played a festival show in the Philippines and it was mad.
‘Singapore was the same — the fans were chasing the car as we left at the end of the gig. That was our first time there and they knew every word of every song.We couldn’t get over it.’
OKodaline’s new album Politics of Living will be released on October 10.