Teenage is Andy White s sixth and latest offer of appeasement to this big, bad world of ours. He says it s dark, melancholy. I say it s shiny, happy. He says it s weighty, I venture airy. I guess you could say that we ve got a difference in perspectives here . . .
We aim to thrash it all out over a pot of coffee in Bewley s of a morning hardly a promising start for a man who s just spent the previous night thrashing it about in Whelan s.
Sometimes it s really exciting to play all new stuff, like we did last night, he offers, sensible to the qualms old fans have about hearing none of the old favourites, and that s what I want to play in these live shows because I think this album is a real change in direction for me.
A change in tone, too. Listening to Get Back Home and It s Gonna Be Like This All The Time , there s no denying that Andy White s a happier camper these days. Teenage is personal where Himself was global, out there . His past life, musically, reflected a lot of what went on without. Teenage reflects far more closely what s happening within. His previous signposts were mostly geographical. Now they re largely emotional. It s as though Teenage is the adolescence that Andy never allowed himself experience as he hurtled from one corner of his musical universe to the other.
I think that Teenage s songs are so strong, the structures and lyrics are so strong that they demand a tight band. This record is all about harmony. They all have their own identity but they all add up to a whole story too.
So, let the story begin. Teenage s opener, Acoustic Guitar , has traces of the old Andy White, words tumbling from his lips, images jostling for position, six strings telling six stories and one all at the same time. Ironically, it s a track that immediately undermines the cohesion that epitomises the Spiritual Supermarket. To what does it owe its lineage?
That came out of a William Carlos Williams poem called Man with a blue guitar , he offers, and it s about how poetry can change things. And so can music. Anyone can play an acoustic guitar, yet it s got the power to change life into art.
So much for shiny, happy theories of his latest album. But what is Andy White s own take on his music then? Can he pinpoint the genesis of Teenage?
I think it s about happiness out of times of hardship, he suggests, and out of a mood of melancholy. By that I don t mean sad or depressed. I mean reflective and I think there s an autumn feel to it too, so I m really glad it s coming out at this time of the year. I think that while the initial impression might well be one of happiness and that s not a false impression that the theme and the tone are real thoughtful and reflective.
Certainly, the nihilism of teenagehood is lurking there betimes, never more so than on I Couldn t Do It with its incomparable opening couplet: If I had a car crash I want to have it with you/And when I meet my maker I want you to be there too. Truly the stuff of a Montague/Capulet tryst, that.
That s a very gentle song with a weird lyric and a really massive rhythm section, he notes, and the whole record puts all sorts of opposites together. Opposites of tone and meaning and sound. If you listen to Whole Thing it s so heavy, that I almost couldn t listen to it myself.
Whole Thing is a weighty piece alright, heavy duty lyrics courtesy of a committee of penmen, including Peter Gabriel, Tim Finn, and Karl Wallinger. Is he really surprised that he was almost crushed under its weight?
Well, that came out of a visit Tim and I made to Womad, which is Peter Gabriel s festival. Afterwards we spent a few days in Realworld, his recording studios in Bath, and while we were there we discovered that we were the only ones writing lyrics. We were surrounded by these incredibly talented musicians playing these weird instruments: things with 13 strings and 42 pipes. It was the real A list, and we were very lucky to be there, doing things like watching Johnny Depp and Kate Moss snogging on the balcony! It was amazing!
Anyone whose ears have been bent by the instant hummability of Teenage s first single, Get Back Home may wonder whether our man in Dun Laoghaire has a hankering for his northern home, or whether he s more preoccupied with the question of our collective memory, that folk inheritance that fools us into believing that we were all there, on the grassy knoll in Dallas in 63, outside the Dakota buildings in 80, slithering under the bushes in Bial na Blath even.
It s really about the nature of memory, he explains. It s about disconnected images, Polaroids from our childhood, memories that they conjure up. It s about growing up in Belfast, watching an anthology of old film of John Lennon in the Sixties, a time that s gone, but a time that had such a naiveti. Lots of people feel nostalgic for things that they never ever experienced directly which is amazing to me.
Stories. Stories about stories. There s one behind every song, every melody that floats free of his braincells. The outright live show stopper is Don t Be Afraid , a plea for peace devoid of clichi and unutterably poignant, particularly when he tells of its birth at the time of the ceasefire in1995:
I remember it was the 31st August and I was lying in my bed in Belfast where I grew up, and I couldn t get to sleep. Then I realised that it was because it was so quiet, there weren t any helicopters, so I wrote this poem about the sound of no helicopters: a Zen poem! Then by coincidence Liam (O Maonlaom) and I played a gig in the Warehouse in Belfast on the night that the UDA called their ceasefire, and a lot of people showed up that night. At five to 12 I played 20 Years which is about the 20th anniversary of the troubles, and I said I d never play it again. And then at midnight that song turned into Don t Be Afraid , with its opening lyric of I hear the sound of no sound . Every strata of society was there, it was a magical experience.
Inevitably with more recent turn of events, White has had to add a bridge to the song, which alters its inescapable optimism to a more ambivalent and edgy mood. Have IRA bombs and events in Drumcree, scuppered his hopes of any further laying down of arms?
Well, you know I used to think it was only a tiny minority of the people who feel so angry, but now it seems now like that s not true. There s loads of people who revel in this. It just needs a messiah to figure it. Those two sides just seem immovable. It d actually be disrespectful to those stone statues on Easter Island to suggest that they re as movable as the statues, because those stone statues are acrobatic in comparison to the political leadership in Northern Ireland. It needs somebody with an incredible vision to work it out.
Belfast s no longer home to Andy White. He keeps his guitar in Dun Laoghaire these days. I wonder if he s invested in a return ticket, should the climate up North improve again? He shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head, with more than a hint of ambivalence:
I think it was Scott Fitzgerald who said that an artist should be able to hold two opposites in his mind at the same time. I think I can do that, and if you live in a place where people can t do that, after a while it gets really frustrating. On the one hand I know that what I do can change things, and yet it can t change things at all, so that s too weird to deal with. I don t really feel part of it any more, he concludes. n