Fountains of Jane

You have to admire Deci Gallen’s attitude. Here we are, waist deep in the Summer of Deluge and Flood, and the Castlerderg-lad is strolling round town in a pair of knee-length shorts.

“I’m determined to front this out,” he says. “The longer I wear them, the sunnier it’s gonna get. “
That’s the spirit.
Bloody-minded, optimistic, and misguided in all the right places – it seems that our Deci has all the constituent parts needed to develop into a frontline indie hero.
Even if his tan could do with some work.
We’re here to talk about The Jane Bradfords, the tuneful Trojan Horse utilised by Mr Gallen to bring his quietly melancholic take on the electro-pop blueprint to the general public. And while conversational digressions on the flaws of the last Star Wars trilogy (“They didn’t have a Harrison Ford. Simple as that.”), and of the other-worldly nature of the ‘05 Champions League Final (“Smicer?”), eat into our time somewhat, once he does get around to talking about his songs, there’s a steely-eyed surety about him that suggests it doesn’t take long for Gallen to convince people he’s the real deal.
On stage, The Jane Bradfords may well be a bobbing and weaving four-piece; off it, however, the outfit is very much the creative preserve of Deci himself.
“I’m a complete fucking control freak,” he laughs. “And the other guys all have their own things going on too, so it works out well. I bunker myself away and get on with it. I’m mediocre across a wide-range of instruments, which helps.”
He’s also a fearsomely productive chap. With a day job, and a series of DJ residencies across town (Queen’s, Stiff Kitten) you would wonder where he gets the time to act the auteur (“I’m pretty prolific for someone who works 60-hour weeks”, he grins.), but listen to him rhapsodise over Abbey Road for a while and one thing about him becomes clear: he’s an old fashioned obsessive.
“I’ve pretty much written my first album, but must have rejected at least 20 odd songs. Full songs, mind, not just sketches. I’ve an idea of what I want to do, and they didn’t fit in. If it doesn’t make sense to me then it’s not going to make sense to anyone else. At the end of the day, if you’re recording something that’s going to remain there forever, you have to make sure it’s as good as it can be.”
Which, of course, is an admirable sentiment, but also one that may well set alarm bells ringing – there’s no surer way of contracting some nastily debilitating creative virus, after all, than by buying into the notion that you’re writing for posterity.
“It can affect you if you’re the wrong type of person,” says Gallen. “But I’m not obsessive in a negative way. Most of the time it spurs me on.”
And will the record be a summation of your life so far?
“Yes and no. It’s very much in the now. All the songs are completely fresh. I haven’t been carrying around a wee black book for 10 years, I haven’t needed to. Over the last year I’ve written my best ever songs, so there was no need to go back any further. I suppose it’s just a reflection of the stage that me and a lot of my friends have reached in life – you know, college is behind you, real life is there is front of you – mortgages, responsibilities, partners. It’s pretty personal.”
And, judging by the limited number of recordings that have emerged blinking into the sunlight so far, remarkably tuneful too.
“A lot of musicians seem to have just given up on melody,” says Deci. “I blame multi-tracking. It’s just so easy now to stick hundreds of instruments over a song that a lot of bands don’t take the time to write a melody. All my songs start out with me singing a melody down into my answer phone. Usually pretty drunkenly. Okay I then go off and put it into a computer – but it’s only a tool as far as I’m concerned. An Apple Mac can do everything you want except come up with a decent chorus. That’s my job.”
That and chasing the rain away.