“The reason why we called the record The Year Of The Husband was because over the space of about 12 months we all ended up getting married,” begins guitarist/singer Dudley. “It seemed logical enough in our minds.”
Now before any of our readers put two and two together and come up with 138, let’s be clear about one thing – the reason why the record was delayed by nearly four years was more to do with the boys’ procrastination than interference from their other halves.
“It was never supposed to take this long to make. We just kept adding bits and tinkering with it. We couldn’t help ourselves and it kinda snowballed from there.”
In many ways we should be glad they pulled a Chinese Democracy on their third effort as despite its origins, The Year Of The Husband is their most cohesive and accomplished record to date.
“The idea was to work with lots of different producers and get the best from everyone,” says Dudley. “We recorded with some great people like Rob Bochnik from The Frames, Rocky O’Reilly from Oppenheimer and some other geniuses like Dave Odlum. The record has literally been made all over the world because we did a bit in France and some more in Washington too.You might think that it sounds all over the place, but that’s not true – it holds together really, really well.”
As if making the record of your career so far wasn’t enough for the band (completed by Joss and Mark) the Dudley Corporation enlisted the services of Drive Like Jehu/Hot Snakes legend Rick Froberg to do a specially commissioned piece for the art-work as well. On this occasion, clearly they were worthy.
“It was actually really easy to get Rick involved,” smiles Dudley. “He’s a working artist so it’s a matter of ringing him up and offering him money to do it and if he’s free he will. I’m a huge Drive Like Jehu fan. Their album Yank Crime is probably my favourite of all time and I still listen to it constantly to this day. Rick is a sweetheart too. My wife also got him to do me some artwork for my birthday without me knowing and when it arrived I was over the moon because his bands have had such a huge impact on me.”
The Dudley Corporation are no slouches when it comes to influencing people either. Lauded by almost everyone as being one of the best (and at times loudest) bands in Ireland, the trio have carved out a niche for themselves as Kings of the Underground. Their previous recorded material (2001’s The Lonely World Of The Dudley Corporation and 04’s In Love With The Dudley Corporation) has also won rave reviews across the board with this very magazine proclaiming In Love With... the 59th greatest Irish LP of all time and if Dudley has his way, we won’t have to wait another four years before we get to hear some new sonic assaults.
“The problem with taking four years to release an album is that in the meantime you’ve built up a backlog of songs. We want to get the next record out as soon as possible to make up for that. We’ve all these songs that need to be recorded, so we’ll do that soon. It’ll probably be a lot noisier than The Year Of the Husband but we’ll see how it goes. All we can say is that we won’t keep you waiting quite so long next time.”
The Year Of The Husband is out now on Absolutely Kosher Records