A Band You've Herd Of - Hot Press meets Buffalo Sunn

Two years ago, they were called Sweet Jane and had started work on their second album. What emerged was the debut effort from a band named Buffalo Sunn. Confused? So were they.

“It was a fucking nightmare,” says Daniel Paxton, frontman of the Dublin six-piece. “As soon as we began, it started to fall apart. Lydia (des Dolles), our vocalist, suddenly stopped coming into rehearsals, and things weren’t going anywhere. We were working with Pat McCarthy, and he told us it was all a bit unprofessional.
“It was a bit of a kick up the hole, to be perfectly honest, because it led us to what we’re doing now.”
The journey also owes a debt to good fortune; while plans for a possible release hit a snag over proposed album artwork, the band – minus the departed des Dolles – were booked to play an acoustic show in Galway.
“I’d been used to playing guitar in Sweet Jane, and content to stand in the background. Now, I was up the front singing. We were used to our sound, with fuzzy guitars turned up to ten. But we did this stripped back gig and it sounded really cool.”
It was the band’s Damascene moment. “We said ‘Hang on, why don’t we just do it this way?’ We decided that was it; we were going to change the name, and leave behind the rest of it. That was the birth of Buffalo Sunn.”
Not that the drama stopped there. The transition from their hard-rocking past to a new, more melodic incarnation took time. Lots of time.
“We went into studio up in Bow Lane, and must have been there for eight months,” Daniel recalls. He tells the story with a smile, but there’s no doubting that the memories are not exactly happy. “It was fucking ridiculous. It was time consuming, and it was constant. We were going batshit crazy, sitting in a room wanting to kill one another.”
One would assume that, with three of his brothers alongside him in the band, the natural tension of sibling relationships didn’t help matters. Daniel, though, insists that it was simply cabin fever that fuelled the aggression.
“It made the family thing look easy!” he laughs. “I’m pretty sure it would happen to anyone, if you put them together for that long. Donagh O’Brien, our drummer, is a psychiatric nurse, so he’s always taking an analytical view when a fight breaks out. Everyone knows the way that siblings fight. It’s incredibly intense, and five minutes later everyone is laughing. We’ve gotten used to it anyway. Once the fourth brother joined, it just crossed the line into being silly!”
Despite the album’s difficult genesis, there’s little sign of strife on By The Ocean By The Sea, which was finally released in October. A West Coast-infused slice of melodic rock, it has turned plenty of heads, both here and further afield. The Dubliners are just back from a string of showcase performances in New York — including a massively successful show at Webster Hall — where their newly minted relationship with United Talent Agency has seen them lined up for big things in the States. It’s the latest in a series of international trips which have seen the group taking big steps.
“We went to Singapore for another event,” smiles the frontman. “The heat over there is something deadly and we, of course, didn’t bring shorts. We’re all running around for the week in jeans, absolutely boiling! But everywhere we played, there was a big crowd who were really into it. We’d been talking to UTA beforehand.
“They didn’t have someone there, but somebody else went along for them. We were playing in a shitty little bar, the sort where you’d think, ‘Why did we bother coming all this way?’ But the guy loved it, and next thing you know...”
The traction gained in the US has the group lining up a tour and album release there next year. Daniel makes no secret of the fact that he would relish success away from Irish shores.
“You have to get out of here and have success somewhere else for people to take notice of you,” he asserts. “Ireland’s fucking strange like that. Someone called it ‘an encouraging begrudgery’. That’s nonsense; it’s just begrudgery. It’s definitely there, it’s not some type of paranoia. You see the digs go in.”
I mention that I’ve spent the morning reporting on The Script’s announcement of next summer’s massive Croke Park show.
“There’s an example. I wouldn’t be a massive fan of The Script, but a homegrown band playing Croke Park? That’s a huge achievement. And then you’ve got people queueing up to take them down. But it’s always been the way. It’s not so long since it was Glen Hansard and Mundy who were the big names, and people were dying to take them apart.”
It probably stands to reason that Buffalo Sunn look to distance themselves a little from the ‘scene’ in Dublin at the minute.
“I don’t know where we’re meant to fit in,” Daniel admits. “These scenes come and go with time, but we’ve never really felt like we fit in anywhere. That goes back to they days when we were dressed head-to-toe in black, thinking we were the shit. I don’t think we necessarily share much with anyone around – we’re lone wolves, I suppose! We’ll always just carry on doing what we do, because it’s easier than doing something to suit somebody else.”
Whatever they’re doing, it’s working. Singles ‘By Your Side’ and ‘Seven Seas’ have already attracted serious airplay on both sides of the Atlantic, and healthy album sales in Ireland have the boys preparing for a mammoth 2015.
“The record will be rolled out in other territories next year,” Daniel explains. “We’ll tour Germany, and the US. We’d love to get another album out next year too, because have so much stuff in the tank. I suppose that’s one benefit of sitting about and waiting for this one to arrive.”
It may be a hectic schedule, but there’s a determination that Buffalo Sunn will take the opportunities that present themselves. It’s a lesson learned the hard way.
“There were chances for Sweet Jane,” Daniel sighs. “We couldn’t get our shit together, so they passed us by. It takes time to get to a place where those chances will come again. We’re feeling good right now, ready to go all guns blazing. We used to be flaky, or perhaps a little half-hearted. We’re all in the right place now though.”
Not that they’ll stand still for long, mind you.
“I wouldn’t say we’re exactly where we want to stay forever. But we’ve definitely found our feet.”

By The Ocean By The Sea is out now on Reekus.