Commercial Break

If you’re expecting Yakuza to be revving expectantly as they prepare to release their debut LP, you may well be disappointed. Not for this crew of noisemongers the tsunami of promo work normally expected of a band on the make. In fact, the four-piece plan on doing pretty much next to nothing over the next three months, leaving One Nation Under Awed to make its own way, blinking, into the cruel indie world. Boo hiss, I hear you cry – not another bunch of small-town, slacker wastrels, content to adopt the posture of a band, but not quite as keen in putting in the spadework.

Well, back off. Because there is nothing complacent about this lot. If anything, this is a band noted for its level-headed pragmatism – a pragmatism that has been much in evidence over the near-decade of their existence. And a pragmatism that allows frontman Ronan Quinn and drummer James McDonald to shrug their shoulders good-humouredly at the news that bassist Philip McKernan has been summoned to Australia for the summer.
“What can you do?” smiles Ronan, “It’s a great opportunity, isn’t it? It’s not like you could turn it down. We’re not in any kind of position to quit jobs or whatever, I’m not even sure if we’d want to do that. The album will still be there when Phil gets back and we’ll hopefully have plenty of new songs written. But we’ve always managed to work our lives around the band and I don’t think there’s any reason why we can’t go on doing that.”
And on his return Phil will find a record with plenty to keep him occupied. One Nation is a wiry, skeletal, fidgety beast – in thrall to both the demented fuzz rock of Dinosaur Jr, and the gloomier, darker terrain of Joy Division. While the full force of Yakuza’s personality has yet to burst through, they don’t half make a committed racket warning of its approach.
For the band, the input of US producer David ‘Dubh’ Black was crucial, the former Mudhoney, Cornershop and Therapy? collaborator taking charge of affairs during a stint in a Finglas studio last year.
“He’d wanted to come over to Ireland for a while and work with a few bands – a working holiday for him,” James explains. “We got in touch, I met him when I was over in Seattle, and he was only too happy to give us a hand. It was really great working with someone like that, somebody with that much experience. We didn’t really know what level of involvement he would have, but then he just said ‘why don’t we make an album?’ We were shocked. And delighted.”
“It’s strange listening to it now because we’ve become an awful lot more adventurous since it was recorded,” adds Ronan. “A lot of the songs on the album were the very first we ever wrote together and are a bit rudimentary but it was a good way of documenting that period in our lives. That’s actually how I look at the record – our friends and girlfriends helped with the design, the recording was a really great experience – it’s a line in the sand really for that part of our lives.”
The Yakuza boys are keen to stress that business will be resumed as normal by the autumn. Any momentum that’s been lost, they remain confident can be regained with some old fashioned graft.
“You need a rapport,” says Ronan. “You can’t play in a band with people you don’t respect or like. I’ve never seen the attraction in putting ads in the paper for musicians or anything like that. It’s far more interesting when everything develops organically. We’ve had a brilliant time over the last seven years. We haven’t just sat on our arse playing to our mates – we’ve organised tours in Britain and Europe, slept in cars, played to people who had absolutely no idea who we were. And we’ve done it ourselves. It’s pointless waiting around. You can’t just expect things to come to you. You have to try to make it happen yourself. And I think we always will.”

www.scream4yakuza.co.uk