Deadly Buzz

I don’t mean to imply that powerhouse quartet Hands Up Who Wants To Die are obsessed with death, but observe, if you will, how a simple question about their first gig pans out.

“Barry wasn’t too keen on playing Dublin,” recalls drummer John Breslin.
Vocalist Barry Lennon, who doubles as the co-founder of ass-kicking independent label The Richter Collective explains, “There’s a lot of people who I’d told were shit over the years.”
“Basically, due to Barry’s fear of getting killed at his first gig, we decided to go to Berlin,” Breslin continues. “Paul (Clynes, guitar) was living over there at the time. He had the contacts to set it up. It was great. Pretty joyous, actually.”
“It was funny because it was like playing Dublin,” Lennon laughs. “There were tons of drunken Irish people who had been watching the rugby match. We were reminded of Dame Street on a Saturday night!”
“…except it was in a squat.”
Two years later, the foursome would be back in Germany, recording in an equally unconventional environment – a World War II bomb shelter in Offenbach.
“The council took over the bunker and made it into rehearsal spaces,” Lennon says, as if the whole thing were completely ordinary. “It was in the middle of a residential area and the roof looked like a normal roof, so bombers would go over and it would just look like a house.”
“It didn’t look particularly interesting ‘cause the whole idea was that it was inconspicuous.” Breslin adds.
“It was weird when you were there for ages on end, you got kind of a bit disorientated. I was thinking a lot about the war and the whole thing around it.”
“It was pretty intense,” Clynes admits. “It was long days and we didn’t have any contact with anyone for over a week, apart from one night when we went out.”
“It was seven days of recording,” Lennon adds, “So it was fairly intense, going in at 11am and coming out at two or three in the morning.”
“It felt like the right amount of time, though,” Breslin shrugs, “and it was nice to get another holiday in with Roy.”
Until recently (last Friday night to be exact), Roy Duffy of surf pop trio Squarehead played bass in HUWWTD, but with his other band prepping their debut album for release, he had no choice but to hand in his notice. Luckily, Matt Hedigan of pop-punk outfit Elk was happy to step in.
“I was already a fan anyway,” Hedigan says, “which was useful because I knew roughly how the songs went and I wasn’t coming in there totally blind.”
The album’s title is a marvel in itself – a reference to the grammatical phenomenon that dictates that a sentence with the word ‘buffalo’ repeated any number of times is always correct.
“It means that bison from Buffalo bully other bison from Buffalo,” Breslin explains. “We were attracted by the farcical nature of the sentence.”
Does that mean I’m still correct if I refer to the album simply as Buffalo buffalo Buffalo...?
“I like that question,” he muses, before suddenly making his mind up. “Yeah, I’m happy with any number of Buffalos just as long as all the capitals are in the right place.”
Mastered by Shellac’s Bob Weston, the band are quick to point out that Buffalo buffalo… is far from a carbon copy of anything the California math-rockers have produced.
“Pretty much everyone has mentioned The Jesus Lizard and Shellac in the reviews,” Breslin notes.
“People are obliged to compare bands to other bands,” Hedigan adds. “I can see a little smattering of those bands in Hands Up and we do listen to all of them. But there’s a lot of personality in Hands Up that wouldn’t be in those bands, I don’t think.”
What would be the one band that no-one would guess they listen to?
“Enablers?”
“That’s not that surprising,” Breslin laughs. “JT would be your one, Barry. Justin Timberlake.”
“I think we all totally dig on JT, though.”
“I like that Katy Perry song as well,” Hedigan pipes up.
“’Firework’” Lennon nods. “Savage tune, man. I was banging it out in the Richter office the other day.”
“How’s that go?” Clynes asks, before Lennon, Hedigan and Breslin break into a perfectly-timed spontaneous cover. No need to ask if they’re gelling okay with their new member, then. The addition of Hedigan to the line-up was marked with a rather cute-sounding “ceremonial handover” of the bass at the Dublin launch of Buffalo buffalo… in the Mercantile.
“I was a bit nervous,” he admits. “I don’t normally get nervous but I really didn’t want to let down the three boyos. Roy crowd-surfed into the audience when he was done. It was cool to do something like that.”
“It was probably my favourite gig.” Breslin beams, causing the others to chime in in agreement.
So Lennon has no more concerns about playing his hometown, then?
“Nah, I lost my gig virginity a long time ago,” he laughs.
Breslin adds, “…and we figure no-one’s gonna run in with a gun at this point.”

Hands Up Who Wants To Die embark on a mini-tour with Copenhagen’s Menfolk this month, taking in Kelly’s, Galway (March 24), the Quad, Cork (25) and the Twisted Pepper, Dublin (26), before heading on a French/German tour in April. Their Buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, Buffalo, buffalo album is out now on Richter Collective. You can listen to 'Vergessen' now on hotpress.com.