Does What It Says It Does On The Tinley

Bit by bit it members of the old school of Irish rock are working their way back into the current music scene. From Dave Couse and Jerry Fish to Marc Carroll and Nick Kelly, those who experienced the major label rush of the '90s are coming back to tell their tales. Take Emmett Tinley for instance, who tasted the highs and lows of it all with the Prayer Boat.

"Alantic Records discovered the last album we did as a band about six months after we’d done our last show,” he says. “We were kind of taking a sabbatical and reassessing things because no-one was really willing to take a chance on that record. By the time Atlantic picked up on it we’d drifted apart. Various things happened in people’s individual lives and things had changed a little bit. I went off to tour the record solo with the plan that the band could rejoin later on. That never happened but they decided to do a solo record with me instead. It took another two years to get into the studio.”
Was that not just a touch frustrating?
“A little bit but the reason I’d taken the sabbatical was to go and live a bit and do ordinary things and not be planning home life around things that might never happen. I wanted to hang out and see places without feeling that you had to write a song about it. I don’t mean I stopped being creative just taking a break. We worked so hard as a band for thirteen years and we really didn’t get anything out of it you know. Musically we did cool stuff but critical acclaim doesn’t put bread on the table. It was very hard for everybody. When Atlantic took on the record I didn’t have to worry about anything financially so I had a really good time chilling out and relaxing, I was living in Amsterdam so it was pretty heavenly.”
At last though the fruits of his labours have seen the light of day in the shape of his fine solo debut Attic Faith. Despite all the high powered company politics behind it, the album has emerged on small Dublin label Independent, home to Josh Ritter amongst others.
“Atlantic made the record and they own it but they made a decision that they wanted it to come out in America on an independent label. I said that was fine but that I wanted it to come out over here on an indie as well. I’d known Dave from Independent for a couple of years and so that made sense. You have to be blind not to see the Atlantic logo on a record though. The thing with an independent label is that they can get things done really fast and that momentum is crucial to your head space. The majors are like those huge oil tankers out at sea; it takes them fifty miles to turn round.”
Attic Faith is however a record that reeks of ambition, especially in the scope of the songs and the production. You’d almost call it an old fashioned Irish rock record. Would Emmett see any connections with his previous work? “There’s a lot of similarities there, especially in the songwriting. I wanted a big record, I didn’t want a singer songwriter record. If it’s out of step with what’s going on now it’s not intentional but it is so bizarre, if the last Prayer Boat record came out now it would do so much better than it did then. I’m not trying to go against the grain, it was just in my own head I wanted to make a big record and break out after feeling contained for so long.”

Attic Faith gets a live airing at Dolan's, Limerick (April 21) and Roisin Dubh, Galway (25).