Some people journey through life like a doubled-over fist, energised by this impetus but eternally walking a knife-edge. One such person, perhaps, is Shane MacGowan. Another is his sister Siobhan, whose music was once described, by Bill Graham, as an extended emotional expedition around the deeper and darker side of the heart, beautifully bewildering, as if Janis Joplin had crashed a party where everyone was politely playing Cocteau Twins and Cowboy Junkie records.
On her debut album, Chariot, Siobhan crashes through that politeness more forcefully than ever before, sometimes as though she is trying to break on through to the other side, to quote Jim Morrison though in Siobhan s case, the space beyond body boundaries is probably transcendence, not merely death. In this sense, to cull a title from another of the 60s anthems she adores, Siobhan s album could even be called Expecting To Fly, if Buffalo Springfield hadn t got there first.
Chariot means much the same thing, she says, laughing.
But first Siobhan wants to address what she believes Bill meant with that quote about her music. I had a band at that time, called The Frantic and the music was quiet underneath me, laid back, but the feeling inside me was angst-y, a scream from the soul, so there was that contradiction. That s probably what Bill got from the gigs. And was drawn to in the music. Focusing on her angsty, balled-fist of a voice, Siobhan claims it is ballad-based, orchestrated, as in soul music from the 60s. Or, even more to the point, I hope, true to Elvis, who, to me, is one of the great soul singers and has the voice that touches me most deeply. As in those great 70s romantic ballads he did. That was real angst. And I still listen mostly to everyone I listened to as a kid, 60s, 70s music. That s the dominant influence on this album. Even in terms of, say, an odd break in a song, where I can hear Bowie coming across. As in some of my arrangements, which aren t formal, linear. I don t write one verse, two verse, middle eight. So I guess the album is like the culmination of a lifetime absorbing all the music I love, being obsessed by it and now, finally, that music finding a way back out.
But in this album I definitely do hear echoes of Elvis, Mott The Hoople, Buffalo Springfield, 70s disco, the bassy, gutsy sounds of the Kinks, even the huge orchestrated romantic ballads of Perry Como, who I love. As in And I Love You So , a beautiful song.
As for brother Shane, for whose band The Pogues she worked from the outset, Siobhan considers him less an influence than a peer.
We come from the same source, she explains. More parallel, getting the same inspiration. That s why I don t feel I m in his shadow. I m a bit too old for that! Though maybe if I was in my 20s I would. But what we share in common is this instinctual approach to writing and singing, this angst-of-the-heart. The form of the music may be different but, to me, the soul is the same. It s just that he discharges his darkness one way, I, another.
But what, exactly, is at the root of this darkness common to Siobhan and Shane MacGowan? A soul-dissatisfaction?
Probably, Siobhan responds. Soul-dissatisfaction rooted in the fact that we both associate love with anger, both have souls trying to reach out, connect, while, at the same time, not wanting to be tied down. And we were encouraged by our family, from an early age, to express ourselves in that way, to be rebellious, say what we thought, do what we want. We weren t fucked around with, mentally, ordered to do what you re told . We were allowed to speak, reach out, from the heart. And that s how we still are. And all this, to me, is healthy.
Surely not the association of love with anger?
I ask myself that question all the time. Because, yes, the truth is that I do still associate love with anger because I feel that if I love, I am tied, Siobhan continues. Well, only recently have I begun to think that may not be the case! But all my life I ve had this craving to go forward, not be held back and I always thought that s what love does to people.
But isn t this a very naive, hippie kind of notion? What about all those people who love and find that their spirit is neither broken nor tamed in the process, but soars?
Now, I believe that you do. But I didn t believe that for a long time. And, in a way, this is what Chariot is all about, this quest to fly, but finding out, in time, that your beautiful vision has been tampered with, by everyday life, and that this, in itself, is more the real thing. That love, whether it ties you down or doesn t, is perfect or imperfect, really is where it s at! I always knew that and responded to songs like, as I said And I Love You So , as sung by Como, or Elvis, where he sings you set my spirits free . But it s accepting this as true, as opposed to it just being some ideal in a song, has really been the problem for me.
It was only a couple of years ago I finally realised I do need that love in order to fly, properly. Before all that, I exhausted myself, found myself at the end of a tether, empty, which is why I originally went home to Tipperary, after years of city life, and my own kind of social madness. I had to get back my emotional centre and stop all this carnival life. What I was living was a freak show, to tell you the truth, total chaos.
One massive misconception about Siobhan s brother, Shane, is that he, too is in total chaos on the perilous path to self-destruction. However, anyone who has spent more than five minutes talking with the man will know that beneath all the poses, and the tendency to over-indulge in drink and in drugs, there is a steel-like centre to the man. Siobhan suggests that she is pretty much the same.
I can be self-destructive but I always come back at the finishing point, she says. Dad always says I m like this horse that gallops to the finishing post then, just before I get there, gallops all the way back again! And you re right about Shane. I do think he is the same. A lot of his characteristics are strong, go-getting, life-enhancing, not the opposite, though, yeah, people may think they are. He definitely has a great sense of humour and that life-asserting force inside him, though, like all of us he s human. But I believe Shane would have lived as he s lived, drink or drugs or not. That s just how, and who he is and that s been inside him from the beginning.
But isn t it true that whether it applies directly to Shane and Siobhan, this feeling of associating love with rage and life with angst, can lead to a need to self destruct, tear the skin off one s soul inch-by-inch rather than feel the pain? Or turn to drink, drugs, excessive sex in order to kill that feeling, kill all feelings?
It does apply, definitely Siobhan reflects. And I ve had those moments. Years. That was me, is me, in a way. On the other hand, you can sing. And that, to me, is what my singing is, a punch from the heart. And though it can be anger it s not just anger, it s more enthusiasm, passion, wanting to touch, prove you are alive, assert life. That, too, is how I see myself and Shane operating, in life, in our music. That s really what it s all about. Asserting the life-force, in whatever way we can. And this album really does come from that source.
On a more functional level, Chariot also comes from Limerick s Murgatroid Independent Recording Company and was co-produced by Pearse Gilmore, who previously worked with The Cranberries and The Hitchers. For anyone who may be interested Siobhan stresses, less than subtly, that the album is available for licensing deals! And no, she got no great advance and is still on the dole, all of which, of course, adds to the hunger at the centre of her music. Then again the upside of going with a smaller record company is that a major label might not have let me make this album, might think it s strange, ask me to clean it and polish it a little which is not the style of music I want to create or, indeed, even listen to.
Laughing again, Siobhan continues, I really do need that fist in my music, which is there, say, in something like, my soul-ballad, Trust Me. I couldn t do that song any other way, wouldn t want to. A major record company also might have wanted me to make something like The Trip less psychedelic, whatever. But Pearse let me present the music exactly as I hear it, and want it to be heard.
Expounding on her view of music and her love of soul Siobhan returns to the theme of what she sees as central to Chariot.
The thing about soul music is that it was always about yearning, though yearning for what, is up for grabs, she reflects. It s like you want to get back somewhere you belong but you have this distance from it. That s very Irish, too, because of our history. And that just about describes my music.
And psychology. But what is Siobhan s response to Bono s suggestion, in Hot Press a few years back, that the Irish psyche, though aching to get home, knows home is gone and should just accept that this state of uncertainty, and fluidity, is its natural condition, that the journey itself is the home?
Well, he s obviously smarter than the rest of us, because I only realised that really recently last Saturday! Siobhan jokes. As in I finally accepted I m not going to get back to that elusive place so I m happy! And I wish I d read that quote by Bono, instead of having to suss this out myself!
Likewise, does Siobhan feel that Shane may have much to learn from the emotional truths in Chariot?
Well we don t analyse things together like you and I are today, she says. But he heard the album and said he loves it, a lot. And he is loyal to me, very. But that s all he d say. He and I probably wouldn t talk about these ideas of settling for uncertainty, the journey being the home, any of that. Because Shane and I come from the same place, in terms of working from the gut, the heart. It s more instinctual than intellectual, though I m sure he identifies with many of the feelings I express on this album. I ve no doubt about that. Something like Welcome Child is about leaving behind all those devils that plague me and Shane, all that darkness and embracing, instead, the love, the light and purity. Same thing in relation to Shoot Through. And the final song, Celtic Lullaby, which is about Ireland.
As I said earlier, in relation to love, to feel you are in love you have to feel you belong somewhere and yet, at the same time, feel a distance from it. That s where me an Shane are absolutely the same. We both love, but feel distant from Ireland. But the difference is that I came back here to live and he hasn t yet. Though I believe he will, eventually. Even if, as we said earlier, we all know in our hearts that home is an illusion, or rather, more the journey back than any point of arrival. n
Chariot is out now on Murgatroyd Records.