Hit the North: An Innocent Man

Want to see Robyn G Shiels flinch? Mention how great you think his second album is.

Tell him (in common with David Holmes, who’s called it “breathtaking”, and Duke Special, who says it’s “amazing”) you consider The Blood Of The Innocents to be the record he has been threatening to make (in the times when he wasn’t threatening members of his audience) for the last five years. Tell him that if his debut, A Lifetime Of Midnights, was a killer short-story, this is book before bedtime territory – a gripping, mysterious, dark-hearted epic. Tell him that it knocks spots off Will Oldham’s last few records.
Tell him, in short, that it’s pure class.
And then step back and watch the colour drain from his cheeks.
“You reckon?” he says. “For fuck’s sake.”
Shiels’ reaction to the album, it should be pointed out, is not the result of any lack of belief in the end product. No, there are very understandable reasons why it sends him doo-lally – and they can all be found in the circumstances surrounding its creation and eventual (non)release.
“Busted knuckles, bottles of whiskey, mind loss. Everyone fucked by the end of it,” he surmises. “Now I don’t know what to do with it.”
Our previous encounters with the dark count of Kilrea, took place at a time when he was balancing the role of sin-soaked acoustic troubadour with that of full-time tobacconist. His shop, situated at the arse end of Belfast City Hall, was probably the only place in town where you’d find biddies buying lottery tickets with The Dirty Three playing in the background.
Midnights received much warm backing on its release, but day job commitments meant Shiels was unable to exploit the goodwill. For its follow-up, he concluded that drastic action was needed.
“I sold the shop,” he says, “and decided I’d spend the money making the record. I’d got to a point where I thought: boy – either do this now, or shut the fuck up. I didn’t want to be sitting there, you know – regrets, I’ve a right fucking few. I wasn’t very happy. I wanted to fuck off and concentrate on the music.”
To help, he called on a top-class supporting cast. Ben McAuley, from Three Tales played bass and produced, Ex-Magician and Cashier No. 9 member James Smith came in to add guitar, and, most surprising of all, Fyfe Ewing, Therapy?’s brilliant original drummer, returned from semi-retirement to take his place at the back of the room.
“He’s an amazing fucker,” Robyn enthuses. “I knew him from back in the day but hadn’t heard from him in years. Phil Kieran wanted him to do something with Alloy Mental, and he went to see them play. Turned out he wasn’t really on for it, but he got speaking to Danny Todd and my name came up. He’d liked the first record, so I thought I’d give him a shout. There’s no fucking around with Fyfe. When he’s working on something, that’s all he thinks about.”
Sessions were intense – and not just because of the “18 bottles of whiskey I skulled in the fortnight we recorded it.” – but the gripping end result makes the “mind-loss and mania” entirely worthwhile.
At least it would have done, if Shiels’ timing didn’t stink.
“Trust me to pack in the job to try to get a deal at the worst time in history. No-one is signing anything.”
So, in conclusion, The Blood Of The Innocents has been locked securely away and, barring a huge unbalancing plot-development, faces little prospect of an early release. Which is depressing.
“You’re fucking telling me.”
So depressing, in fact, you wouldn’t blame Robyn if he decided it wasn’t worth the hassle anymore. Thankfully, there are others out there prepared to keep the faith.
“Jimmy Devlin of No Dancing Records rings me and goes ‘What the fuck are we doing here?’ So, he’s going to manage me for six months and see what happens.”
The first result of the hook-up is a new EP, The Great Depression, due out in the summer.
“It’s less of a band record,” explains Robyn. “More acoustic. There’s an ode to Dave Allen called ‘Lastus Greatest Comedian’. He was part of my youth. Would sit there with the aul lad watching him then The Professionals. He was a dangerous fucker, right enough. There was a real edge there. And there’s another song, ‘As The Sun It Set’, which is about Charley Mooney from Desert Hearts. It has the line ‘We will sing our songs surrounded by these whores.’”
It may be too much to hope that the EP reaches the (lost) classic heights of his most recent work, but Shiels’ strike-rate is so impressive, you wouldn’t put it past him.
“You reckon?”

For a copy of The Blood Of The Innocents email [email protected]