At home with... Matthew Devereux

As frontman with The Pale, a band that always took the aesthetics of music seriously, Matthew Devereux has a reputation to live up to and maintain. He lays his hat – when it’s not perched atop his head that is – in Kilmainham, near the centre of Dublin, where he's lived for the past six years. He shares this abode with his “long-term lady friend” a cat, dog and collection of 1980s memorabilia.
“It’s your typical three-up, three-down kind of house of the period,” he says. “What I like about this area is that it hasn’t changed all that much since the 1950s, apart from the arrival of the Luas. I’ve always wondered what Dublin would be like with trams while touring around Europe. It’s brilliant, I’m all for it. In fact, there’s a whole new culture with trams. Any time I’m on one I bring a notebook in case I get an idea for a song.”
Trams are one thing, but what’s all this about the 1980s? “Oh, I’m a hoarder at heart and the house is full of stuff that just happens to date back to that particular decade,“ he laughs. “I love ‘80s stuff, music, technology – even my Vespa scooter is an ‘80s model And I love those stack systems with huge speakers – the kind you could hide a child in. Let’s face it – Walkmans were much better than iPods. I have MP3s somewhere on a hard drive but I can’t see them, can I? The clothes were great too, apart from leg-warmers, though I’m afraid to say I think there might be a few pairs hidden away somewhere around the house.”
When they first emerged in the early ‘90s, The Pale injected a much-needed sense of fun and excitement into a scene dominated by a post shoe-gazing, pre-grunge earnestness. Their almost theatrical stage presence and canny blend of rootsy textures and Eastern European rhythms saw them described famously as coming across “like a drunken Ukrainian wedding band.” They enjoyed huge success at home and abroad with irresistibly catchy numbers such as ‘Dogs With No Tails’ and ‘Butterfly’ scoring hits in Turkey, France and Israel.
“We almost single-handed invented Turkish ska,” Devereux laughs. “The main thing about us is that we had a fear of earnestness. Unless a track had a bit of a wink or its sense of humour was in the right place, it didn’t make the cut. We were image-conscious too. I still think that’s an important part of the music. Even the most unlikely image, say the Pixies looking remarkably ordinary, is as contrived as anything.”
In the middle of the ‘90s the band seemed to disappear off the face of the earth, though they never officially split up. “We kind of retracted from the scene,” Devereux explains. “We stopped being interested in the commercial aspect of the group. I think the idea of going below the radar and being commercially redundant helps. Starting around 2002 we gradually got together and then two years ago we made a conscious decision to go out on the road again.”
A new deal with 1969 Records (home of Pugwash, Dave Couse etc) sees the release of a new album, The Contents Of A Shipwreck produced by Colm Quearney, preceded by a single, ‘Elizabeth In Rags’. “We wanted to make a definitive Pale album and I wanted to record it analogue on reels of tape,” Matthew explains. "Shane [Wearan] went back to acoustic mandolins and fiddles and we wrote the bulk of the material while touring. It’s the old story of trying it out on the audience first.”
You could say that domestic life “pales” in comparison with life on the road, but Devereux admits to being something of a homebird. “I love cooking,” he enthuses. “One of my first jobs was in Bad Bob’s back in the ‘80s. I served Johnny Cash an Irish stew once and he gave me a 50-quid tip. And I’m not bad in the garden either. We have this large tree which I’d like to build a treehouse in – you could invite people up for drinks. We recently got one of those garden umbrella things which has become home to several families of insects.”
With a new album and single to promote, the rest of the year looks busy for The Pale. “It’s going to be busy alright; we’re doing gigs all over the place, including the Spiegeltent, which should be fantastic. And we’re going to Turkey in June to headline a festival of 30,000 people. ‘No Tails’ has become a disco-hit over there. Basically I’m trying to dispel the idea that Johnny Logan is the only big Irish act in Turkey.”

The Contents Of A Shipwreck is out now on 1969 Records.