Interview (cover feature!) and album review in today’s Irish News. Website is subscription only, unfortunately, so here’s a cut’n’paste job:
BEING HUMAN
By David Roy
Genre blurring rock trio Therapy? release their brand new album Crooked Timber next week. Scene spoke to Andy, Michael and Neil about making one of the strongest records of their career…
Therapy? once sang that “happy people have no stories.” However, while the joys of fatherhood and general middle-aged domestication may have mellowed frontman Andy Cairns since his band’s heyday as purveyors of poptastic punk-metal angst, he can still spin quite a few entertaining yarns.
“When we play in Europe I always try to learn a couple of tropes in the local lingo out of politeness so I can talk to the crowd,” says Cairns. “But there was one time where we performed a Police song with Sting on a French TV show. I was interviewed afterwards and they had someone there to translate.
“Then they go over to talk to Sting and of course the s***ehawk starts conversing in fluent French! He made me feel like a real peasant!”
Andy also shares an anecdote about Therapy?’s headline performance at BBC Radio Ulster’s Do You Remember The First Time? show at the Ulster Hall, which went out live on the wireless last Monday night.
Cairns is long renowned for his foul-mouthed crowd encouragement. Despite being pre-warned to “keep it clean”, he unleashed a torrent of four letter words that had panicked producers throwing themselves on the faders as though they were smothering live grenades.
“To be honest, I just did it for badness,” chuckles Cairns.
Not that he got off scot-free. Indeed, the Ballyclare man learned the hard way that there are worse things in life than the ire of BBC Radio Ulster.
“Later on, I got into the house and my Mum was sitting waiting for me,” the 43-year-old admits sheepishly. “She’d been listening on the radio and I don’t think she was too impressed.”
Classic. Let’s just hope she’s been turning a deaf ear to some of Andy’s lyrics over the years.
Having landed a major label record deal thanks to the success of their first two independently released mini-albums Babyteeth and Pleasure Death and the ferocity of their live performances, Larne-bred Therapy? hit the big time with 1994’s Troublegum. A departure from the more challenging sound of 1992’s A&M Records debut Nurse, Troublegum’s heavy pop-punk vibe (best represented by singles Screamager and Nowhere) propelled the band up the charts.
However, the trio found it hard to cope with being caught in the mainstream spotlight. By the time of their next album, the darkly experimental and string-laden Infernal Love, behind the scenes the band were spinning out of control.
Drummer Fyfe Ewing quit in late 1995, with Cairns, bassist Michael McKeegan and cellist Martin McCarrick recruiting replacement tub thumper Graham Hopkins. His debut, 1998’s Semi-Detached, was an entertaining yet flawed affair that would prove to be Therapy?’s major label swansong. Given the turbulence which preceded it, 1999’s Suicide Pact – You First was an appropriately ferocious blast of jagged noise, the sound of a band venting its spleen at maximum volume.
New drummer Neil Cooper (formerly of The Beyond and Cable) properly re-ignited Therapy?’s once legendarily primal rhythmic afterburners in 2003, with the band reverting to their classic power-trio line-up soon after. Three albums, High Anxiety, Never Apologise, Never Explain and One Cure Fits All appeared in short order.
“Whenever we became a three piece again everything just clicked,” admits Cairns of the band’s recent sonic resurgence.
“The three of us got very excited just from playing together,” agrees Cooper. “It was working so well that it felt great to get in a room and make a racket.”
“It was almost gung-ho in a way,” enthuses bassist McKeegan. “You can hear it in the music we were making. I listen back now and it just sounds like ‘wooaah!’”
As the band look forward to their 20th anniversary next year, their latter day re-invigoration reaches its artistic climax with brand new album, Crooked Timber. Recorded with ex-Gang of Four man Andy Gill, it’s a cerebral, conceptual and wholly collaborative affair that plays to the band’s heavy-hitting rhythmic strengths while indulging their myriad left-field influences.
“It was genuinely a laugh to write,” comments Cooper. “We enjoy getting together and playing each other records. I think that’s part of the problem for most bands who are going for a few years – little niggles creep in between members and suddenly it’s not fun any more. If you’re not enjoying it, why the f*** should anyone else?”
McKeegan agrees. “We just enjoy hanging out, even talking about non musical stuff. We’ll talk about our pets and all sorts of random things. I think if you have that kind of solid grounding, it all builds from there very naturally. It’s not like, ‘right lads, what’s the agenda for the next record, what’s the chart position?’”
“The writing process now takes longer but it’s more satisfying in the long run,” adds Cairns. “I know that all the records we’ve taken time over in our career, I can still listen to now and feel really proud; Babyteeth, Never Apologise, Never Explain, Suicide Pact – You First. I know for a fact that in years to come it’ll be the same for this new record.”
Crooked Timber sees lyrical musings cribbed from Immanuel Kant, Samuel Beckett and Greek mythology colliding head-on with musical steals from genres spanning classical, jazz, krautrock and dubstep. Troublegum part II it ain’t.
“When we were looking for a new record deal, a few labels said they’d only be interested in signing the band if we were to make another album like Troublegum,” Cairns reveals.
“Now, I’m in my 40s with grey in my beard. I’ve got a nine-year-old son and every bit of TV he watches has a pop-punk soundtrack. What’s the point in a 43-year-old man writing a teenage angst record and competing with The Jonas Brothers?”
With a chuckle, he adds: “Even if it was the most incredible record in the world, kids would take one look at our photograph and say, ‘f*** this!’”
* Crooked Timber is released on Monday. Therapy? play The Nerve Centre, Derry on May 14. Visit http://www.therapyquestionmark.co.uk.
***
Album review:
START CHOPPIN’
By David Roy
Therapy? - Crooked Timber
(DR2 Records)
Twenty years is a long time in rock and roll. Since recording their first demo back in 1989, Therapy? have put out nine full-length albums and explored many different sides to their notoriously hard to pigeon-hole sound.
Evolving from their roots in buzzsaw guitar holocausts driven by animalistic techno beats, they’ve done pop-punk metal crossover (Troublegum), stripped back rock and roll (Shameless) and all-out frazzled noise tinged with the odd gothic country moment (Suicide Pact – You First) to name but three ‘new directions’. No one could ever accuse Therapy? of playing it safe.
The arrival of drummer Neil Cooper in 2003 steered the band’s sound back towards the frantic rhythms once pounded out by founding member Fyfe Ewing. His presence helped make 2003’s High Anxiety feel like a defiant rebirth for the band. After finally ditching cellist Martin McCarrick and slimming down to a three piece, the energy levels on Never Apologise, Never Explain from 2004, and 2006’s One Cure Fits All reflected a band rediscovering the joys of the power trio.
However, while these records certainly captured their re-kindled enthusiasm for making an unholy racket, sometimes it felt like the song writing was lacking the edge that once set Therapy? apart from their peers.
Happily, for Crooked Timber they’ve once again looked for inspiration in unexpected places. You’ll hear Charles Mingus in the cheeky jazzer swing underpinning the Pantera-like crunch of Enjoy The Struggle, while a dab of dubstep atmospherics add shade to Exiles and Bad Excuse For Daylight.
As a result, the band sound more edgy, experimental and viciously vital than they have in a decade or more. It’s also great to hear Andy Cairns’ Northern Irish accent cutting through the mix loud and proud once again, delivering some eminently memorable lyrics on the likes of Sonambulist and Clowns Galore.
Producer Andy Gill has used Therapy?’s formidable rhythmic bite as the building block for a rock record that’s both engagingly dynamic and delightfully off-kilter. As well as offering up the clattering nine-minute long space-rock wig-out of Magic Mountain and bruising bass-heavy post-punk dirge of Exiles, the LP provides a few expertly honed catchy/crunchy numbers like Blacken The Page, I Told You I Was Ill and Enjoy The Struggle that should become bruising mosh fodder as part of their live show.
Accessible enough to draw in casual rock fans while providing plenty of engagingly idiosyncratic depth for the hardcore to sink their teeth into, Crooked Timber is the first Therapy? record in a long time that lives up to the promise of the band’s intriguingly punctuated monicker. It’s a classic – no question.
Rating: 9/10
Taste test: Enjoy The Struggle, I Told You I Was Ill, Magic Mountain.
For Fans of: Helmet, Jesus Lizard, Isis.
WIN SIGNED THERAPY? ALBUMS
Therapy? fans will have the opportunity to catch the band live and acoustic at HMV Donegall Arcade, Belfast on Monday March 23 at 5:30pm. The band will also be signing copies of their new album, Crooked Timber.
HMV have provided us with 10 signed copies of Crooked Timber to give away. For the chance to win, just answer the following question:
What’s the title of the new Therapy? album?
Answers on a postcard to Therapy? competition, PO Box 473, Belfast, BT1 2NS or via email to competitions@irishnews.com.
Please include your name address and telephone number. Usual Irish News competition rules apply, closing date is Friday March 28.