Mortars Of Invention
When dreams of breaking the UK didn’t pan out The Walls decided to break all the rules and do things their own way. The former Stunning men have followed the same unconventional path ever since.
Olaf Tyaransen, 20 Mar 2012
Sipping pints of stout in the Library Bar of Dublin’s Central Hotel, brothers Steve and Joe Wall are pondering the inordinate amount of time it has taken their band, The Walls, to produce their third long-player, Stop The Lights.
“Basically the album took us waaay too long,” Joe laughs. “It was fucking ridiculous!”
Steve nods his head in agreement. “We were working on and off for about six years. We’re very slow, and always have been, and maybe we have to accept that. Even with The Stunning we were very slow. The Stunning only had three albums.”
Nobody could ever accuse them of rushing their recordings. Having first formed in the mid-Nineties, The Walls’ debut, Hi-Lo, was released in 2000. Five years later, their acclaimed sophomore album, New Dawn Breaking, finally saw the light of day. Stop The Lights has taken the longest gestation period to date. Fortunately, it’s been worth the wait.
But we’ll come to the new album in a minute. First, some retrospective...
Born in Dublin, but raised in the west of Ireland, Steve and Joe have been making music together professionally since the late ‘80s. Steve is the elder brother, but they both laughingly refuse to divulge their ages. “We’re children of the Sixties, let’s leave it at that!”
They first found musical success with The Stunning, but despite being one of the most popular Irish acts of the early ‘90s, the band never achieved success further afield. “We never had international success with The Stunning,” Joe admits, with a shrug. “So we haven’t been able to reform the band and tour the world. When we reform The Stunning, we do Dublin, Cork, Galway, Askeaton...” He trails off and sighs.
Despite successful tours, No 1 albums and regular airplay on their home turf, The Stunning found local fame but very little fortune.
Steve: “At the height of The Stunning we did make good money but the pie was being sliced up by a lot of people. We did okay. When we broke up at the end of it in 1994 there was a divvy-up and I think we got around £1,250 each. Not a lot of money at the end of seven years work.”
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