All aboard the Davey train

Musicians need to redecorate every now and again. And Cathy Davey is no exception. “I changed my whole living space around last night,” she says, a little bleary eyed. “I turned my sitting room into my bedroom and turned this little box bedroom into my sitting room. I worked on it until about six in the morning and then I went to bed.” She sighs. “But then it turns out I didn’t like it, so I went back to sleep in my old bedroom.”

This is okay. Because artists are allowed to make mistakes. Davey feels she made a mistake with her first album (Something Ilk) which she doesn’t think completely represented her. This was understandable enough. When she first got signed by Parlophone she was controlled by industry professionals and was subsequently unhappy with the recording process, the live experience and what was expected of her. “I think they thought they were getting something else,” she says. “I hadn’t really performed in front of anyone else or had to record in front of anyone else. So those were fundamental problems that I’d say most musicians get over. But I had some problems getting over it. I think the record company were a bit disappointed at first.”
So Cathy Davey’s very happy she got another chance, and she returned in October of last year with Tales Of Silversleeve, an album she’s decidedly pleased with. And justifiably so - it’s brilliantly inventive indie pop music crammed with fun ideas and recorded in a much more organic fashion than Something Ilk. “My gut feeling for the first album was to do it the way I did this one, but I didn’t really trust my own instincts,” she says. “So this time I recorded in my house and my Dad’s house. I’d kind of proved that it just didn’t work in a professional studio with a producer. And I was also recording in Ireland, so I wasn’t around the record company, which I found quite daunting in the past. I work too much to other people’s needs when they’re around, so it’s best to do it on my own and bring people in when I need them.”
So what do you need to record? “Pro-Tools and a nice room and a half decent mic and that’s all I need,” she says. “I like technology, but I don’t really care what it’s recorded onto as long as all the other conditions are right. I had birds at the time I was recording, and I can hear them on about three tracks and that’s really nice to me. I like a bit of noise on tracks. It’s very natural.”
And because the material was created more organically, Davey’s also much more comfortable performing it live. Two weeks ago I saw her with her band playing in a small, full venue in the Eurosonic festival in Groningen. It looked like a mini school gym from the 1970s and before the gig, the enthusiastic compere ensured everyone (previously lounging around on the floor) stood up for his favourite act. It’s a culture lover’s festival with most people moving purposefully from venue to venue trying to make new musical discoveries, and a lot of people in the audience looked like they’d just made an important find. Davey’s learned to let the songs take over – she plays and sings with focused intensity, and her (excellent) band follow her lead with considerable energy and style. This is a new found confidence.
“I used to have a huge problem with performing but I’ve definitely overcome that now,” she says. “With the first album I was doing things because I had to and because it was expected and I really didn’t want to. I also realised that to be terrified of how you’re perceived is actually a real ego thing. I used to think it was a lack of ego... but ego is very complicated.”
She’s still not comfortable with some of the other things that go along with being a touring musician. She’s more likely to go to bed early to read or to draw, than to carouse into the wee hours of the morning with bandmates, fans and a big box of drugs. “No non-stop partying for me,” she says. “I sneak away. Some very interesting people have been addicts and it has been associated with a certain creative freedom with some people. But the obsession with drugs in rock 'n’ roll is a bit childish. I don’t like the touring lifestyle. Usually after a day or two of touring I start to feel really weird. I used to feel worried that people would think I was a shit when I didn’t hang out with them after a gig, but now I feel better about it because my friend is tour managing, and she’s kind of holding it down for me. I’m not too sociable. Especially on tour. I don’t know why. You’d think that you’d come out of your shell on tour, and get comfortable with people or something. But I start to feel really weird. I’ve always had that... I remember on school trips, if I went to the Aran Islands with my class and was with them for three days, the same thing would happen. After a day and a night – I’d start to be really strange around them.”
At this point she apologises for fidgeting after accidentally pouring a sachet of sugar over my dictaphone. I’m more curious about Cathy’s plans for the coming year. She’s nominated for the Choice Awards and has a mini tour coming up in February, but what about the UK? “I’m waiting to see what’s happening with EMI,” she says. “And with Guy Hand coming in everything has a bit of a question mark over it (Hand just bought and is planning to restructure EMI). So I don’t know if it’s going to get released in the UK. But I’m not worried in terms of making music. If I had my way I think I’d start doing my third album now. I’ve found my way of working – I don’t think it matters whether you’re in the country or the city as long as it’s somewhere you can cook a chicken... I need to be able to do other things when I’m recording.”
This immersive approach to life and music she says she inherited from her family. Her father is the composer Sean Davey, but she opted not to go down the classical route. “Well, I can’t read music,” she says. “But I can write my own type of notation which is all wrong technically. He definitely taught me how to write a melody and how to put instruments together. But really I learned other things. I learned a lot from growing up in a house with people who were not communicating in a normal way. My mum is an artist as well, so when I was young I was looking at people working away in their own rooms and then coming out and still being caught up in their own heads and not talking... I think I took that on board.”
So you learned how to communicate through art? “It was more about not communicating through art,” she laughs, before shaking the sugar off my dictaphone and heading off to a bookshop... or maybe to redecorate her house.

Tales of Silversleeve is out now on Parlophone. Cathy Davey plays Cypress Avenue, Cork (February 18), Electric Avenue, Waterford (February 20) and Tripod, Dublin (February 21).