I TIRE of people asking why/As a prelude to judgement. These are daunting lines for any interviewer to consider, especially when you ve just run them past the author. They occur one minute and 12 seconds into Rogue Gene on The Sunburn Index, the second album from The Plague Monkeys, one of the few remaining practitioners of an indigenous music that is neither dance-enhanced nor drivetime drivel, but something a little more, to quote Cale and Reed, amorphous and proud .
Yaaaay! is vocalist Carol Kehoe s response to her own lyrics. Read into that what you will.
That jumped out at me when she put it down as well, soundscaper Donal O Mahony admits. A lot of times sitting in the rehearsal room you can t make out the lyrics, and then there it was in your face!
Nevertheless, some of the new album seems characterised by an underlying suspicion of language itself. Fair comment?
Maybe it s suspicion of cliches, Donal counters.
When it comes to explicitness, especially when I do write about things that are intensely personal, I can t really confront them all in language, so I suppose it s an obfuscation in a way, Carol considers. But it s an effective one, to find some sort of metaphor or analogy to deal with it. Maybe sometimes it s little codes or riddles that might point to one individual who ll know what it s about.
But does Carol ever feel like she s sacrificing emotional directness for the sake of her private life?
Yeah, she concedes. I think that s why we wrote Over ( For every second I was beneath you/For every second/The heat of your chest . . . Hell hath no fury/Like this ). That s pretty direct, I think. But you see, there s also that element . . . if I were an actor, say, I would have great difficulty doing a nude scene because I d be afraid my mother would see it, y know? I suppose it s kind of an innate shame that you really have to tackle head on, not just my mother, but the Freudian thing about having to kill your parents before you re really free at least metaphorically!
Lock them away somewhere where there s no print media! Donal quips, before addressing the question:
I don t know whether there is a fine line between something that s disgustingly explicit or something that s horribly vague. I mean, do you really want to hear another Alanis Morissette lyric ever again?
That, dear friends, is what you d call a rhetorical question. And anyway, one of the Monkeys strengths is that they ve always been sussed enough to let the music finish their sentences for them: it s the difference between Hollywood moralising and arthouse impressionism.
That s what people still look to European film-makers for, Carol opines. The 3 Colours . . . films. Not one of those films has a resolution really. There s a different kind of resolution - it could be a point of reference in a visual thing, colour.
Here, one is reminded of Samuel Beckett s famous (in)conclusion, I can t go on/I ll go on a life lesson The Plague Monkeys have long reconciled with rock n roll s necessarily illusory veneer. These players understand that the muse won t speak if you have a choke-hold on her throat, and you can t always expect music to fill your head and your belly. In this respect, Donal feels that his recent enrollment in a Multimedia Masters course in Trinity represents no cop-out in fact, it nourishes and is nourished by his work as a musician, engineer and producer, not to mention the score the band recently completed for Conor McPherson s forthcoming film Saltwater.
I don t think it works if you look to the music to be your salve, Carol reflects. I always wanted to have a dynamic life that s almost too busy, and music s part of it. It takes away that angst as well, that anxiety about getting somewhere. You can just focus on making the music. And for me, getting somewhere is the next album.
And damn the begrudgers! Donal concludes. There are begrudgers out there who say, You took The Job! I think people are a lot more inspired when they actually have a life. We re still in The Plague Monkeys, making music that we adore. What s your problem?!! n
The Sunburn Index is out now on Crosstown Music.