If You Can Get It

It was snowing in Dublin when last I went to interview Mick Roe and his masked cohort Vincent McCreith. That means I've had seven, count'em seven months, to figure out the Adebisi Shank effect – the pandemonium the instrumental trio have inflicted on the music scene here, in the UK and 6,000 miles away in Japan; the way they've had hard-nosed journalists, chart-topping musicians and music snobs all aflutter.

Maybe it’s because they’re the tightest live act in the country. Maybe it’s because they do it all themselves (Roe co-runs thriving independent label the Richter Collective). Maybe it’s because their second album, This Is The Second Album Of A Band Called Adebisi Shank, sounds like no music you’ve ever heard. I honestly don't know. And when it comes to capturing their power on parchment, I'm stumped.
What I can tell you is that a few hours after I received my advance copy of This Is The Second… a stranger in a bar told me, quite brutally, that if I’d had it with me at the time, he’d have happily murdered me in cold blood and stepped over my beautiful, putrefying cadaver to get his hands on the promo. Adebisi Shank simply do not have casual fans.
“I like William Bowerman’s reaction best,” drummer Mick Roe laughs, namechecking the London-based session drummer currently touring with La Roux. “He said he listens to the new album 10 times a day, every day.”
Bassist Vinny McCreith chimes in; “My brother went (demonstrates a barely-there nod of the head) ‘It’s pretty good.’ And that means a lot coming from him.”
Whatever the reaction to album number two, Shank fans can expect to be down right bewildered. Where once they found Shut Up And Listen-style math rock, they’ll now hear a Japanese-inspired mess of horns, marimba, vocoders and vintage synthesizers.
“We worked twice as hard and twice as long on it,” McCreith explains, “but it was twice as easy.”
“The last album was just a head-wrecker,” Roe remembers. “It wasn’t even fun to do. It was fun to go to Baltimore and record with J. Robbins. The process all the way up to that was hellish! I think we were actually still writing on the plane!”
I catch McCreith in the middle of a shudder; “It wasn’t very nice.”
Roe continues; “We got to his studio and played him the demos and it was the most embarrassing thing I think I’ve ever done in my life. It was horrific.”
Luckily, this time around there was no shaking in their for the Dublin-based threesome. The follow-up to their 2008 debut was co-produced by the band themselves, along with local sound engineer Stephen Caffrey.
“He’s in my phone as Stephen Christ,” McCreith beams.
“He’s pretty much the most important member of Adebisi,” Roe laughs. “He makes sure we have everything we need, he’s a really calming presence.”
If the new album is a tad more cosmopolitan, it may well be because it was recorded in several different locations around the country: everywhere from a warehouse to Lar’s house; from The Shed recording studio in Athlone, to an actual shed in Wexford under the careful supervision of a flock of chickens.
“We literally tried everything.” McCreith recalls. “If we did make one conscious decision it was that nothing was going to be off limits. Last time there was probably a bit of ‘It’s not gonna fit with Adebisi!’ But then, we are this band. It is whatever we say it is. And that’s why I think this album sounds more like our personality.”
“There’s Paul Simon-y stuff, Peter Gabriel-y stuff, Vinny Club-y stuff…” Roe adds.
“It’s a rich tapestry,” McCreith muses, causing them both to burst into schoolboy chuckles.
“When you start making music when you’re a kid, there’s all these things that say ‘It has to be like this’, ‘It has to be from the heart’ and all these things you’re supposed to do, like write about politics and all the stuff that pisses you off about the world. The better a musician you get, the more all that disappears. When you’re making music. The upshot is that you can’t get to where you want to go. There are so many crutches that you can call in to make stuff sound cool. We didn’t really have to do any of that this time.”
Another first for Adebisi Shank was drafting in the help of a slew of guest contributors, who appear on sax, synth and vocals.
“It wasn’t like ‘Let’s get big musicians on it!’” Roe laughs. “It’s just that our friends are really good musicians.”
“I remember around Christmas,” McCreith takes over, “me and Lar were doing a good bit of writing and it just wasn’t really happening. Then I was chatting to Richie (Egan of Jape and The Redneck Manifesto, who plays synths on ‘Century City’) on New Year’s Eve and he had some pretty good advice. He said to keep going. It made sense for him to be on the album because he gave me that bit of encouragement when I needed it most.”
Elsewhere, on ‘Europa’, you can just about make out the vocal stylings of one Mr. Conor O’Brien, who was recently shortlisted for the Mercury Prize for his own album with alt. folk outfit Villagers.
“We played with him in Canada. The loveliest man in the whole world,” Roe gushes. “And one of the best musicians I’ve ever heard. I can’t say enough good things about him. We didn’t even really care what he did. We could have recorded him eating a carrot.”
“There’s a robot section and a human section,” Roe notes, speaking about the warpy powerhouse that is ‘Europa’. “The human section is Conor and the robot section is all of our robots. We employed some robots for the small bits.”
Like the tiny man who lends his face to the title of the fifth track, ‘(-_-)’?
“Oh, Face? Yeah, he’s one of the robots.”
With all these motorised helpers clunking about, did one of the human egos ever take over? Is there a Vinny track, a Mick track or a Lar track on the album?
“On the last album there were definitely a couple of songs that were leaning one way or another. This time it was pretty Even Stevens!” Roe turns to his musical compadre, “Do you think?”
“Completely! I never actually thought of that. That’s pretty interesting. Is that why this one’s better? ‘Cause none of us got our own way?”
This is a matter the lads are better off discussing away from the prying eyes of the press, so I say my Pip Pips and head home to listen, once again, to the album with which I have grown utterly obsessed. Still, there's one more question we'd like to ask. What’s the best thing about being a member of a band called Adebisi Shank?
“The best thing is having good fun with good friends,” Roe jokes, in full 'bromance' gush.
“Good times in good company!” McCreith echoes.
And the worst?
“The worst thing is that we can’t do it all the time, every day… forever!” Roe grins, before they both erupt into laughter again.
“…but it actually is. How sad is that?”

This Is The Second Album Of A Band Called Adebisi Shank is out on August 20 on The Richter Collective. Adebisi Shank launch the album on that same date with a gig in Whelan’s.