Corner Boys

“I remember seeing John in the college cafeteria and he was playing ‘High And Dry’ by Radiohead on the guitar and I thought, I wouldn’t mind having a chat to that guy!” laughs Conall O’Breachain. “In our college most people were football fans and not many were into music!”

And so We Cut Corners were born.
Since winning the JD Set in 2009, the guitar and drum duo have played with Joan As Policewoman, Villagers and Two Door Cinema Club amongst others and have become a regular fixture on the domestic gig circuit. As the release of the highly-anticipated long-player Today I Realised I Could Go Home Backwards on Delphi approaches, we sit down to discuss the whys and the wherefores.
The fateful meeting in their teacher training college led to one of the most compelling creative partnerships of recent years. The band’s songs, which veer from the bombastic, passionate and explosive to the gut-wrenchingly tender, create soundscapes of such complexity and depth that one forgets the band comprises only of a guitarist and drummer (O Breachain takes the lion’s share of lead vocal duties, but Duignan also contributes).
The pair bonded over a mutual love of Ryan Adams, who was their creative muse during the early days.
“We obsessively tried to start writing like him and be an alt. country band playing two guitars,” explains John. “We wrote like that for years and at some stage I suppose we realised we could never do it as well as he did! By the time the JD Set rolled around we were thinking, we can’t do this anymore.”
And so the act in their current guise were born, although they were trading as “Camogie Lovers” early on.
“Camogie Lovers was just a dumb name! Perhaps our current moniker reflects self-mockingly that we do everything very slowly!” laughs Conall.
The JD Set created an impetus and the band vowed to play as many gigs as possible, notching up an impressive slew of shows including the aforementioned support slot to Joan As Policewoman.
“We messaged her on MySpace and asked if she needed someone to open her Dublin show, and she got back to us!” says John.
“We bought her flowers on the night because we were so thrilled at getting the support and she put them on her head!” smiles Conall.
The band have also ploughed the festival circuit furrow with much gusto, this year notching up appearances at Castlepalooza, Indiependence and CXSW.
“CXSW was amazing,” nods John. “The setting is beautiful and we were playing after Patti Smith’s acoustic show. I remember we were waiting behind stage for her to come off, but we were very nervous and very aware of not wanting to get in her personal space.”
“She ran over time and as we were going on she stopped us, apologised and shook hands. She was surrounded by about six other people at the time, quite an imposing character.”
Turning to the forthcoming long-player (whose title, in case you’re wondering, is inspired by a Samuel Beckett play), the gents are visibly enthused. The album was recorded with local legend Jimmy Eadie (David Kitt, Jape, Si Schroeder) and the collaboration is one with which they are clearly pleased.
“A friend of ours, Mike from Mail Order Messiahs, had made an album with Jimmy last year and recommended him,” says John. “We checked out some of the other music he had done and we loved that every record was completely different but still had a signature sound.”
“We very much went in wanting someone to change the way we sound but Jimmy came to see us and wanted to record us exactly as we were. He was adamant there would be no bass and that we would build up the sound in different ways,” adds Conall.
The creative limits of their size present the band with an interesting challenge which has led to a very innovative approach to songwriting.
“Because it’s just drums and guitar we are very limited sonically with what we do, so we need to write in as many different ways as possible,” says John.
“We are always trying to think about different ways of filling a large sonic spectrum,” agrees Conall.
The pair’s uniquely inventive output has been seized upon by sundry videomakers, resulting in compelling visual ventures such as Eoin Kidney’s thermal-imaged vision for ‘The Leopard’, Barcelona’s Nico Casavecchia’s risque take on ‘Go Easy’ and the profound labour of love that is Kijek/Adamski’s ‘Pirate’s Life’. The Polish animation duo hand-drew 1,800 stills for the finished product, a true work of artistic beauty.
In terms of a follow-up to the imminent release, progress is well under way.
“We have demoed all the songs for the new album already,” reveals Conall.
“We consciously made the album short,” says John. “So we feel a certain amount of pressure to get the next one out there.”
But for the moment the release date and launch gig are the main focus.
“Yeah, I was thinking it’s cool that we’re launching the album in the venue where we won the JD Set!” laughs Conall.
The wheel has come full circle.

Today I Realised I Could Go Home Backwards is out on November 11 on Delphi Records, followed by a launch in Crawdaddy (25).