Back to the garage

Picture this – you’re the member of a lauded rock band who have enjoyed not inconsiderable mainstream success while staying true to your musical roots and enjoying critical acclaim. Then your record label folds and you find yourself back on a small indie label, watching bands taking your sound to the top of the charts around the globe. So people – glass half-full, glass half empty?

For Andrew Cairns, the glass is most definitely not just half-full but overflowing. And not without reason. His band Therapy? have, in the shape of the album Shameless (their second for Ark21), released one of the best twisted punk metal rock records of the year, as well as being a glorious nod to Therapy?’s halcyon days. Andy certainly agrees.

“A lot of the best records were the ones we made quickly and on our instinct,” he says. “The only times that Therapy? maybe lost our way was when we bowed to record company pressure and tried to do things in a slightly mainstream manner. It never worked, we’re not that kind of band. The new record label gave us a sense of creative freedom.”

Clearly unperturbed by their various industry upheavals (“I don’t think that we’d still be together if we’d made another album on A&M”), Shameless finds the band sounding as alive and wired as ever. One of the key factors was a return to their short, sharp shock school of recording, with the record taking a mere six weeks to make.

“To be honest,” says Andy, “six weeks is still too long for me. We initially did Shameless on a four-track demo and I wanted that to be the album. The band were going, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, there’s lo-fi and then there’s this’. This album is a very simple, punk rock ‘n’ roll record. It’s not experimental like some of our other records, it’s raw, high energy punk. The whole thing was done on instinct. We’d write a song, we’d rehearse it, learn it and go for the best take, not waste any time trying to embellish it.”

Another vital factor in the album’s development was recording in Seattle with producer Jack Endino, a legendary name amongst American alternative rock circles.

“He was someone that we wanted to work with years ago”, Andy explains, “ but we never got the chance to meet up with him. When we came to do the record, we wanted someone who could get a modern garage rock sound. He’s done Mudhoney and Nirvana but the stuff we were doing was a lot more punk rock as opposed to grunge. We sent him a little four-track taster and I called him up at home and he said he was familiar with the band, had one of the early records and really liked the tracks. The reason we went to Seattle was there was some ill health in his family and he didn’t want to come over here”.

As with many recent developments in the Therapy? camp, events probably worked in their favour.

“We signed to A&M in 1992 and I had really long hair and a massive beard”, Andy replies to the observation that to record in Seattle at the height of its influence may not have been the best move. “To be honest, they probably thought they had Ireland’s grunge band. The first album we did for them was kind of techno punk, which surprised them a bit. We’ve always done our own thing because you give yourself a terribly short shelf life if you jump on any bandwagon. I’d rather have, for use of a better word, a career rather than a brief flash in the pan. There were so many bands who jumped on that grunge bandwagon and it really did them no favours”.

One thing the Northerners always had in common with the Seattle bands was the ability to cross over between the indie and metal worlds, something fairly unique around these shores at the time.

“I think it was more to do with the attitude,” Andy observes. “When we started out we got a lot of coverage in Kerrang! magazine and there were all these letters saying ‘who are these guys with short hair’ – ‘indie impostors’ was a term used a couple of times. Nowadays every metal band has short hair, it’s kind of part of the uniform. I think it was more the energy and attitude that appealed to metal fans. In reality I was always into punk rock and early Motown, stuff like that. I’ve never really been a metalhead, believe it or not. The music we play is nowhere near as heavy as Slipknot, but I think the audience can connect with the energy”.

Spend any amount of time in conversation with Cairns and he will continually return to the one area of music that has continually inspired him.

“Punk was what got me into wanting to be a musician. I’ve always had that kind of DIY attitude, I’ve never liked things to be polished or perfect. I like things with a lot of vibrancy to them. Punk has been so misused – people call Blink 182 a punk band. With all the good intentions that they have, it’s just melodic rock really”.

Watching Therapy? at Witnness last year, it was hard not to be moved by the pride and affection in which the Irish audience hold the band, a feeling that seems to have spread to a whole variety of groups. Andy has noticed it too. “It’s about time. People are beginning to take a bit of pride in the music scene. They’re realising that a lot of time in the past we put all our trust in English or American bands. When you’re growing up, there’d be a few local bands that you quite liked then an English band would come and play down the road and everyone would piss their knickers. People are now beginning to realise that there is some brilliant stuff on their doorstep and they’re beginning to support it. Irish music has always had a bad rap and sometimes understandably so, given some of the dross in the past, but there is a whole thread that runs from Thin Lizzy to Ash of passionate guitar music with absolutely beautiful, poignant melodies. It’s something that only Irish bands can do at times”.