A man stands still in the middle of main street, frozen in the commotion, yet his face is relaxed, devoid of anxiety or angst. There’s a sign hung around his neck. It says Gone Fishin’.

That, if I may presume to assume, is the gist of Pierce Turner’s current album 3 Minute World. Time after time, on songs like ‘Sunday’, ‘Busy Man’ and ‘Fishin’s Just An Excuse’, one hears Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘An Apology For Idlers’ as rewritten by Brian Wilson, the testimony of a guy who has taken his watch and mobile phone and tossed them under the nearest sports car. The closing song ‘More’ acts as the moral of the story, a plaintive warning that, “We’re starting to drown in taffy” while “surging on full speed to our tombstones”.

The author of these lines is sitting in the lounge of a Donnybrook hotel, reflecting on the last time he was in Dublin, his voice a peculiar hybrid of Wexford sing-song tempered by New York drawl.

“People were so stressed lookin’” he recalls, “and they were runnin’ around in a hurry, they were very unfriendly – all the friendliness in people seems to be disappearing. Irish people are very cute; I would say we’re a pretty smart race. That’s a generalisation, but I think Irish people have incredible common sense, and that common sense applied to aggressiveness is frightening. Like saying ‘Sorry’ while they push you out of the way, a passive-aggressiveness, as if you’re too stupid to know they’re not actually sorry. America’s having too much of an impression on Ireland in a way.”

This is a view Turner expounded on that last trip to the capital during an appearance on TV3’s breakfast show. The singer opined that America is the child of the world, and for a culture as old as Ireland to be taking its cue from an infantile Uncle Sam is sheer folly. The irony of such comments being made on a station that specialises in importing bad TV movies and 60 Minutes specials from the US was not lost on the singer.

“There are some things to learn (from America), but no more than there are to learn from a child,” he reflects. “It’s amazing, and what is even more amazing is Americans themselves let their children rule the household. If you go out to dinner with an American couple and there’s a child there, that child rules the table. And then the child has to order, and you think, ‘Oh Jesus, could you not just look at the menu for the child?’ But they’re trying to teach the child how to be commanding and worldly, and then this thing grows up and becomes big and obnoxious and no-one knows how to deal with it.”

But rather than reacting to such bugbears with Dylan-esque invective on the new album, Turner has instead opted for celebrating the genius of being happy doing next to nothing. ‘Life In A Day’ for example, was inspired by the feature in the back of the Sunday Times magazine which profiles twenty-four hours in the life of workaholics who never sleep and seem to subsist on fruit and adrenaline alone, making the rest of us feel like worthless underachievers. Turner responds by praising the dosser’s life, one that would “break the heart of any politician”. Similarly, ‘Fishin’s Just An Excuse’ is a paean to the drinking man’s therapy.

“I’ve seen people down in Wexford,” he testifies, “and they mightn’t catch anything for hours on end. Even on Christmas night I was drivin’ by the bridge and there was a man fishin’ there – that’s amazing, he just wanted to be alone and used the fishing as an excuse. Time slows down and there’s just you and the sea and a fish and a fishing rod. It’s a great way to cop out. They’re geniuses, people who can do that in a world where we’re afraid of silence.

“That’s very much the American thing too, no silence,” he continues. “There’s always got to be music blaring, the TV has to always be on, conversation has always gotta be soundbites, quick-quick-quick, giggle-giggle-laugh, it’s a fuckin’ sit-com. The first time I went to America and someone said, ‘What’s happenin’?’ to me, I actually thought I was supposed to answer the question, and I would go into a fuckin’ quandary trying to think of what was happening! And the guy would be gone off onto the next subject, and I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t have to answer ’cos he doesn’t really give a fuck what’s happening!’.”

3 Minute World is out now on Punctual Records