Penetration Terrorists

by Caitlin Moran for Melody Maker (July 29th, 1995)

Therapy? almost lost their minds back there, ODing on women and drugs. So they changed—no more cartoon punk behaviour for them. Instead, as their latest album, Infernal Love, shows, they’ve gone all gut-wrenching and moodily explosive. Not that they’re not still up for a bit of banter about women and drugs, as Caitlin Moran discovers.

Knowing when to stop

“It all got a bit too much last year. I decided to pull back. All that on tour stuff—every weekend you’d lose your mind.” Therapy?’s singer/guitarist Andy Cairns makes a gesture. We know what going on tour with Therapy? is like—we went from Sheffield to Norwich with the band last year, and there were never less than three separate flavours of drugs available, plus enough booze to suspend The Boo Radleys in a floatation tank, and hordes of eager young birds with tonsillitis which could, seemingly, be cured by Therapy? spit. However…

“We were never as rock ’n’ roll as we could have been,” says bassist Michael McKeegan (drummer Fyfe Ewing is not present at the interview). “There were a couple of parties we didn’t go to that we could have.” When did you decide to slow down a bit? “There was one night,” says Andy, sniffing his vodka and tonic, “where I realised that I wasn’t enjoying it any more. That was a bit of a shock for a few minutes—finding out that this lifestyle which you’re told at every turn people envy you deeply for could become boring. No, more than that—heartbreaking. But I pulled back, and after a couple of sleepless nights I found being relatively straight was more fun. You remember stuff. That’s good.”

I don’t really give a f*** about all that chemical proving-your-worth shit now. I think we’re a pretty unique band. No one sounds like us. No one is trying to do what we do. I’d rather prove myself with the music these days.

Andy sniffs his vodka and tonic again, decides that it’s A Good Thing, then sips it. “Also, I started to realise that maybe part of the reason why we went overboard so often was to do with this image people have of us,” he adds. “This cartoon band from Ireland. Smelly cartoon punks. I can see why people might think we’re like that; but it always felt we had to prove ourselves. I’ve learnt a lot from the last year. For instance, anyone who goes on about or takes lots of drugs is really f***ing insecure, they were the kids who were picked on at school; they are the adults who still feel they might be picked on now, if they don’t have that kind of lamination drugs give you.”

“So anyway,” Andy concludes, “I don’t really give a f*** about all that chemical proving-your-worth shit now. I think we’re a pretty unique band. No one sounds like us. No one is trying to do what we do. I’d rather prove myself with the music these days.” “It’s easier to prove yourself with music,” Michael points out. “You get a return on your investment, you don’t have to hang out with wankers in toilets, and you don’t wake up with blood on your pillow in the morning.” “A toast to that.” says Andy, raising his glass.

‘Infernal Love’

Anyone who has ever been in (infernal) love—the endless hunger for reciprocation, the blind adoration that, when shunned, turns your devotion to acid, eating away at you until your legs give way and you collapse—has an absolutely tip-top Evening In coming to them: staring at pictures of your beloved while listening to the handily named, Infernal Love, Therapy?’s latest LP. You’re already acquainted with the vomitous swing-stomp and gutteral burping horns of first-single-off-the-album Stories, which inspired possibly the most pathetic stage-invasion of all time, ever, on Top Of The Pops a few weeks back. (Cairns: “They were nothing to do with us. We didn’t plan it or anything, which kind of shows.”)

The rest of the album is just as insidious. A Moment of Clarity is the highest of many high points. The same utterly crippled momentum as the most head-against-the-wall Afghan Whigs songs; a self-loathing half-ballad that reels on forever, stretching into the neon night down a dark and dangerous road. It positively writhes with physical longing. The guts twist listening to it. Me Vs You, with it’s New Order/Joy Division bassline and scope-y guitars, is horrifically compulsive, too. The only quibble with Infernal Love is that Loose sounds like the theme tune to Saved By The Bell: The College Years.

I’m really lucky in that I can write anywhere, under pretty much any circumstances, without letting it influence me. I feel quite proud that I can write on tour without all that ‘hotels/tour bus’ stuff seeping into the lyrics.

Still, the shadow of Screech and Brad notwithstanding, it’s not really the “Happy Happy, Joy Joy” album your press releases have been suggesting, is it? “Nah. He made all that up,” Andy giggles, pointing at his press officer. “It was his stab at a themed press campaign. We’re still the old, loud, bleak Therapy? you know and love. There are a couple of shifts in attitude from Troublegum though. We used Martin McCarrick for the strings—he’s worked with Kristen Hersh, This Mortal Coil. I like the idea of us using someone so arty. And I’m glad you noticed the Afghan Whigs influences—they’re a f***ing top band, probably Therapy?’s favourite band.”

Was there a change in the way you went about writing the songs? “Nah. I’m really lucky in that I can write anywhere, under pretty much any circumstances, without letting it influence me. I feel quite proud that I can write on tour without all that ‘hotels/tour bus’ stuff seeping into the lyrics. There’s quite a lot of nostalgia and romanticism on the album—for instance, Moment of Clarity. I went to see an art exhibition in Dublin by Marie Farrel-Parse, who’d died about three months previously. To be quite honest, most of it was shite, but there was one line in one poem that hit me right in the guts: ‘I thought of you tonight’, and I felt immediately nostalgic, because I’d been touring so much, I’d been away from home for far too long. And I know it’s a terrible cliché—missing things from home—but it rattled me so much that I wrote Moment of Clarity in 20 minutes.”

“More generally,” Andy takes a breath, “I get inspired by little soundbites, headlines, sayings and phrases. I think we all thought that Troublegum got a bit formulated, and we wanted to change that on this album. I think we have.” “Yeah, the tunes are different and everything.” Michael deadpans. “Aye, they are, too,” Andy concurs, smiling.

But…

But where does this stuff come from? You don’t come up with stuff like Femtex or Moment of Clarity—music so intense you become subject to G-Force—out of a flat-start of a happy childhood, untroubled adolescence and an easy slide through your twenties. Something, somewhere is tangled. In Therapy?’s case, we have the British Crown’s empire-building tendencies to thank. “I don’t think I realised, until recently, how shit it was growing up. People in Northern Ireland of my age—27, 28 and younger, have only ever known violence, that’s all there’s ever been; that violence is our inheritance. I grew up taking it for granted—the soldiers, the guns, the roadblocks. My everyday life was that—it never occurred to me there were places in the world where there weren’t soldiers on the street, where there wasn’t an undercurrent of mistrust and resentment and hate. It’s made me a survivor—you learn to laugh at the hardship. And you try to find something else to take your mind off it all.”

If we’re on Top Of The Pops and I haven’t shaved, my dad gets very upset. I did an interview on TV, where there was a can of beer on the table in front of me, and he was on the phone the same night …

Grim, urban, run-down industrial areas don’t offer a lot of distraction. You have two choices: 1) Standing in shop doorways in the pissing rain with your mates, sharing a can of cider. 2) Music. “I chose music—in my bedroom with my record collection. But staying in had it’s own problems—I mean my parents are good, solid family, but I didn’t really connect or get on with my father; there was no communication. His father died in the Second World War when my dad was five, so he had to be the man of the house, bring up the whole family cause my grandma worked. I never saw my father show any emotion, save on of my most vivid childhood memories.

I was in Ghent, in Belgium, in a field where, for as far as you could see, there were white crosses, almost like a white mist, there were so many of them. This was where my granddad was buried. My father just broke down, and my mother asked me to leave—I don’t think she wanted me to see him break. I wandered away, among the crosses…” Andy sighs sharply, like he’s been hit in the gut.

I decide to wait a minute before asking what has been the worst moment of his life. “Watching my aunt die of cancer,” he says without hesitating. “She was a beautiful, strong woman, someone you could always rely on—she was my hero when I was young. I went into the hospital to see her, and she couldn’t speak—cancer had made her mute. She was withered where she lay, hallucinating from all the drugs.” Andy turns his face away. We stop for a while before continuing.

What do your parents think of what you do? “If we’re on Top Of The Pops and I haven’t shaved, my dad gets very upset. I did an interview on TV, where there was a can of beer on the table in front of me, and he was on the phone the same night: ‘it’s a disgrace—Alex Higgins, George Best, they’re all the same, you’ll end up like them.’ Ah, it’s a small-town mentality—someone will come into work and tut about your children. They’re very aware of being let down.”

How would you describe Therapy?’s music? “It’s Uglification. Y’know, that bit in Alice in Wonderland where Alice is talking to some monster who says he’s qualified in Reeling, Writhing, Aritmathic and Uglification—the opposite of Beautyfying? We’re all qualified in Uglification. Beautiful things have never reached me, never really touched me. I was always inspired by books—not film, or, or…images. I distrust images.”

The De Rigeur Moran Shagging Bit

“Meaningless sex is only good in retrospect—you use the memories like pornography, replay them when you’re wanking. But that’s the only time it’s exciting. While you’re doing it, your mind is pretty much blank.”

It’s much later in the day. We’re in the coolest pub in London—the lock-in goes on until the last punter feels like leaving. The Guinness, the shabby hominess, the early Eighties jukebox (Visage! Yes!) and the weird dog who barks every time you go to the toilet are The Good Things. The tone-deaf folk guitarist in the corner is The Bad Thing.

I don’t fancy obvious people—I like finding the hidden beauty, the concealed attractiveness in a woman. People who tell stories with their faces. And I prefer foreplay to sex.

“The sheer luxury and sensuousness of f***ing someone you have respect for are pretty addictive,” Andy continues, adding more vodka to his body. “Meaningless, perverted, twisted sex can be brilliant—but I prefer shagging with spirituality . Just revelling in the way they smell, the way they feel. Burying your head in someone’s belly and just absorbing their scent. I don’t fancy obvious people—I like finding the hidden beauty, the concealed attractiveness in a woman. People who tell stories with their faces. And I prefer foreplay to sex.”

Andy takes another nip from his glass. “Penetrative sex becomes too laddish, too much of a performance, too restrictive, too much, ‘Look! I’m still doing it!’ Foreplay is Infinite Sex—you can stay on the brink for hours. Everyday I get knocked out that there’s so much beauty and grace in women—the most amazing thing in the world is going down on a woman. The way it tastes, feels, smells, the submission.” Andy’s smiling an “I’m thinking about an ace shag” smile.

“And aren’t sex hangovers the best? You get up the next day to do something and you have aches and pains and rawness—your hips feel blown apart, and you still have the smell of your lover on your face. I don’t like to wash it off; I want to keep her smell on me, like a ghost. I hate hygienic, carbolic sex. People think I’m weird because I keep my eyes open when I kiss—they like to lose themselves, have it all dark and mysterious. I like to look in their eyes—and it becomes comical sometimes, which adds to the enjoyment.” Talking of shagging…

‘Blind Date! Blind Date!’

“I tell you one thing I’ve been really obsessed with recently,” says Michael, looking up hopefully from his pint. “A girlfriend. I really think it’s time for me to get a girlfriend.” Fantastic! Melody Maker’s Cilla Black (ie: annoying half-ginge TV bird) at your service! Worraya lookin’ forrin a bird, hen? (Excuse us for 10 minutes. Michael is having second thoughts about appealing for a soulmate through Melody Maker’s pages. There is some persuading to be done…Slap. Slap slap slap…OK. He’s ready now.)

“Age would be around 21, 22 I guess…” Michael begins, hesitantly. “I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Andy says, burying his head in his hands. “…and build would be quite petite. Long dark hair is good. Bony face, y’know—nice bone structure.” OK, you basically want a bony, hairy girl. What do you have to offer? “You’d have the house to yourself when I’m on tour, I’m tidy, I buy lots of presents, and I’m a good seven out of ten in bed.” So there you go—bony, hairy girls, this attractive young Michael could be yours! There will be Michael Vouchers in the next three weeks’ Melody Makers—simply snip them out, put them in an envelope, and send a whole lot off to the usual address. Closing time: 11pm.

Beard

So, Andy—why did you cut off that beard? It was Therapy?’s logo, more surely than the f***ed squiggle on your backdrop. And now it’s gone. A nation mourns. But why, Andy? Why why why why WHY? Please explain the significance. Was it a meaningful gesture—the transient nature of human existence? “No, I was just bored.” Oh.

Therapy?’s latest single, Loose, is available now (on A&M), as is Michael McKeegan.

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