A pinch of salt

Wexford four-piece Salthouse aren’t the first band in the world to include three brothers and a first cousin in their line-up – The Beach Boys being the most infamous example of keeping it in the extended family. They are however, quite possibly the first ever such outfit to include a lighthouse foghorn as part of their instrumental armoury!

“The studio which we built for ourselves is in a loft in the middle of a field just down the road from Hook Head Lighthouse,” explains vocalist/guitarist Niall Colfer. “When we were recording our album, it would go off regularly so we decided to include it on one of the tracks, ‘Heard A Sound’. Hopefully we won’t have to pay a sampling fee or royalties to the Commissioner of Irish Lights.”

Comprising of Niall, Liam, George and Stephen Colfer, Salthouse would appear to be anything but conventional in their approach to their craft. In fact, the lighthouse plays a fairly minor role on their aforementioned debut, Hanging By A Thread, which combines a compelling blend of acoustic-folk and ambient indie-rock, imbued with subtle elements of electronica.

“It’s quite hard for us to describe our sound,” agrees Colfer. “Just because we’re from a small place doesn’t mean we haven’t been exposed to all kinds of music. We’ve been compared to The Palace Brothers in the past but I’d probably say it’s more Beck meets Portishead with a bit of Dr Dre thrown into the mix. I’m into everything from Neil Young and Pavement to Frank Zappa and we’re all into people like Steely Dan and J J Cale. The low-key sound on the album has got a lot to do with us playing around with 4-track machines in our bedrooms – it’s just the way it comes out. But live we’re a lot louder and the next album – which we’re demo-ing right now will probably reflect that.”

Despite the fact that the album is deliberately introspective and doesn’t have an obvious commercial sound, Hanging By A Thread has notched up impressive airplay to date.

“The reaction to it has been great so far,” says Colfer. “Slowly but surely it’s getting out there. RMG are distributing it for us and Stevo Berube has come onboard on the promotional side. We got a positive review in hotpress and the title track did well on Tom Dunne’s Witness Rising slot. Apparently, Maxi has been playing us off the air on her RTE morning show as well.”

Released on their own Hook Records label, the album is entirely written, produced and financed from the band’s own resources.

“It wasn’t a hard decision for us to make,” he says. “All of the people we admired were independent-minded so we decided to do everything ourselves. We’ve got very used to working that way now and bringing in someone from outside in would be hard, unless it was someone like Daniel Lanois or DJ Shadow. As for the day job, I wouldn’t mind being able to give it up at some point. But being an archaeologist isn’t too bad for a musician – I think about songs while I’m digging holes.”