As anybody who witnessed their rapturously received set on the main stage at this year’s Electric Picnic can attest, Bell X1 are indisputably one of Ireland’s greatest bands. They’re also probably the most literate. The follow-up to 2013’s acclaimed Chop Chop, Arms is their seventh studio album and it opens with the Beckettian ‘Fail Again, Fail Better’: “Take the good luck/ take the bad luck/ take the good luck/ take the bad luck/ and mix it around.”
Humorously acknowledging the many peaks and troughs of their lengthy career (they’ve been nominated for the Choice Prize four times, but never taken the gong home), it’s a great, and somewhat trippy, opening call to Arms. Bell X1 may not have broken big anywhere outside of these shores, but they’ve still had a blast along the way. Furthermore, it ain’t over until it’s over. And judging by these nine songs, there’s still plenty of fire in these Bellies.
Chop Chop was so named because it was recorded in just a fortnight. Reportedly delivered more than a year after it was due, Paul Noonan, Dave Geraghty and Dominic Philips (keyboardist Glen Keating was also drafted in) spent more time on Arms than on any other Bell X1 album. Produced by the band, and recorded in Dublin and Donegal by Tommy McLoughlin (Villagers, Soak), it was mixed by Peter Katis (The National) with Ross Dowling mixing the beats-heavy ‘Out Of Love’.
If previous Bell X1 releases have drawn favourable comparisons with Talking Heads, they’re sounding a lot less poppy and fast-paced here. The overall mood is elegantly bruised, bittersweet and melancholic, but also spirited, determined and optimistic.
As ever, Paul Noonan’s lyrics are memorably sharp and witty. On ‘Bring Me A Fire King’, he croons, “Let’s ask what the markets would do/ Cos markets have feelings too/ But just might not be in the mood/ Sitting there, playing stick-man golf on his phone.”
Ironically downbeat, ‘The Upswing’ is Bell X1 at their melancholic moodiest, but still optimistic and hopeful: “One day we’ll meet trouble halfway/ And we’ll say ‘Why do you gotta be that way?’/ Trouble, look around you/ Everything is beautiful/ Yeah, now look around you/ What you go and do that for?”
All three members of the band are now fathers, and ‘I’ll Go Where You Go’ addresses the concerns of being a touring musician, who has to leave the kids behind: “What if they need us the other side of the world? Can our voice down the line really save them?”
Slow-burning standout track ‘Take Your Sweet Time’ was inspired by a video about a medical breakthrough that meant that people who were profoundly deaf were suddenly able to hear for the first time. The footage showed a 40-year-old Englishwoman reacting to hearing sounds for the very first time in her life: “Had she imagined the sound of her voice?/ Had she imagined the ocean of noise/ And was it all like what she had drawn?/ Like what she had imagined?”
‘Sons and Daughters’ addresses the trashy state of the planet and how our descendants will perceive us: “Oh my distant sons and daughters/ I hope you can forgive yourselves/ and I hope you forgive me/ Oh my distant sons and daughters/ There were too many distractions/ Too much good TV.”
Ultimately, Arms is the sound of master craftsmen at work. If Bell X1 have any failings here, they’re still failing a whole lot better than the vast majority of their contemporaries. This is a great record.