Hot Press Xmas Summit

Here's Who's Talking Turkey This Year:
Niamh Farrell: Upbeat at the best of times, the HamsandwicH singer is in a state of megachuffment having seen her band score their first Irish number one in April with Stories From The Surface, and then go on to play an Electric Picnic Main Stage stormer.
Thomas Walsh: Proudly sporting an ELO badge on his lapel, the Pugwash mainman is re-acclimatising to being in Dublin after a year of frantically running round the States in support of their rather splendid Play This Intimately (As If Among Friends) album.
Gemma Doherty: The Derry half of Saint Sister who first appeared on the Hot Press radar in April when they did their best to blow San Fermin off the Whelan’s stage, and have subsequently confirmed their ones to seriously watch status with debut EP Madrid.
Daniel Anderson: Taking the DIY aesthetic further than most, the former Rags singer built the breeze block studio in which his chart- bothering solo debut, Patterns, was assembled and then went door-to- door round Finglas flogging it.
Craig Fitzgerald: The singer of one of the year’s standout Irish singles, ‘Northern Boy’, the disgustingly fresh-faced 22-year-old travels to Eurosonic in January with the rest of The Academic who’ve been hand- picked for the job by 2fm.
Stefan Murphy: Having delivered the brilliantly bawdy Year Of The Horse, the Artist Also Known As The Mighty Stef proceeded to gig his way around Europe, both under his own considerable steam and as special guest to young pups The Strypes.

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Stuart Clark: The Hot Press Assistant Editor is showing no ill-effects from the rabies jab he’s had - all will be explained! - but you’ll know what’s up if he starts frothing at the mouth and spouting more bilge than usual.

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Having pressed our noses against the glass these past few weeks trying to get a sneak peek, it's great to finally park our posteriors in the Chelsea drugstore, the ever so chi-chi and rock 'n' roll-minded D2 bar and venue brought to you by Metropolis festival man John Reynolds. While the painters, plumbers and the man wielding a massive drill go about their last minute pre-opening business, Hot Press and the six participants in our 2015 Christmas round table settle down in the basement bar for what turns out to be a frank and lively exchange of views.
The Best Gigs & Albums
Stuart: Welcome to the 13th annual Hot Press Christmas Round Table. Party hats, crackers and faux reindeer antlers have been provided; please remember to be as festive as possible! We’ll limber up with your Albums and Gigs - both played and seen - of the Year.
Stefan: My favourite gig turned into the most tragic one. We were in Le Bataclan on October 22 with The Strypes. It was at the very end of the tour and we did a version of Plastic Bertrand’s ‘Ça Plane Pour Moi’. He’s Belgian, I know, but it’s the only French-language song I’d have been comfortable belting out. So I did the vocals, and we even threw in some of the lyrics from the Only Fools And Horses theme! The crowd were just so fucking into it; they were almost the opposite of how people describe Parisians, laying their hearts on the line for rock ’n’ roll music, not being stand-offish. Somebody sent me a video of us doing it after the tragedy, it was just so fucking fun and energetic. We were down the back of the hall selling merchandise where that poor English guy, Nick Alexander, was shot. The mental images and nightmares I’ve had since of someone just walking in that door where we were standing and all this shit happening. I was down in Slane doing a small gig with a couple of lads out of the band last Friday, and got a text from the guy promoting it saying, “Have you seen the shit that’s going down in Le Bataclan?” I just fucking started shaking. That gig had been one of the most magical nights of my life but, of course, now it’s just so tragic.
Thomas: Le Bataclan is a great venue.
Niamh: We were already down to do Other Voices at Electric Picnic, but with two weeks to go got a call asking, “Do you want to kick the Main Stage off on Friday?” I was convinced it was somebody winding us up, but no, we opened the festival which was so fucking scary. You’re thinking, “It’s gonna be half-six, people will be setting up their tents, nobody’s going to be there.” The crowd was okay when we went on, but as the set continued it got busier and busier and busier until the whole area in front of the sound tower was packed. It was such a buzz!
Stuart: Did you get to rub padded shoulders with Grace Jones?
Niamh: No, but I saw her entourage swarming around the place. She had a whole section of the backstage for herself and her wardrobes. I remember watching her and thinking, “Hey, that’s how you put on a show!” She’s 67 and still going out there and giving it her all.
Daniel: Father John Misty’s I Love You, Honeybear was a good one. I managed to get guest-list for his Whelan’s gig and was just blown away by the emotion coming off the stage. I have a rapacious appetite for him as a human being.
Thomas: You're showing off using words like 'rapacious'!
Craig: I really enjoyed The Maccabees’ Marks To Prove It, which was a bit more experimental from them. It’s great seeing bands who are three or four albums into their career still challenging themselves. Gig-wise, playing the Electric Picnic was a dream come true and we also learned a lot going on tour in the UK with Circa Waves who are great lads.
Thomas: Being the old man here, it’s got to be Alone In The Universe by Jeff Lynne’s ELO. He’s the Grandfather John Misty. I’ve been such a big fan since I was six. I credited him on my first album, Almond Tea, as a ‘thank you’ and now - amazingly, wonderfully - I’m a mate of his. When I’m in LA, he calls me and I go over to his house and he shows me the ukuleles that George Harrison gave him. We have a jam and a cup of tea in the garden with powdered milk, which is such a very English thing! He shouts a line on Play This Intimately (As If Among Friends), so he’s officially on a Pugwash album.
Stuart: As is Ray Davies…
Thomas: We were supposed to record in Dublin, but that fell through and we ended up at Ray’s studio, Konk, because my engineer Guy Massey - who also did The Libertines album - knows him. He came in one day for a nose, liked what he heard and sang on a track. We went out for a night with him and ran into Steve Diggle from Buzzcocks. We have this amazing connection now, and may do something with Ray in the New Year.
Stef: My mate Brian Brannigan, AKA A Lazarus Soul, made a brilliant album called The Last Of The Analogue Age. I buy shit loads of records, but most of them are still in their fucking cellophane wrapper which is a bi-product of playing 150 gigs in a year and never being at home. I know we’re all supposed to hate Spotify, but if it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t hear any music at all. It’s great just to have all that shit at your fingertips. One of the best gigs I was at this year was Swans in the Button Factory. I’ve been painstakingly working through their back catalogue, which is a fucking very difficult listen at times, but it kind of builds your spirits.
Foreign Adventures
Stuart: Craig, The Academic are the official 2fm picks to play at the Eurosonic showcase festival in northern Holland in January. That must be a huge confidence booster.
Craig: This time last year nobody knew who the fuck we were, so, yeah, it’s brilliant to have 2fm playing our single, ‘Northern Boy’, and reckoning that we’re good enough to go over to Groningen and play in front of all those radio people and festival bookers. We had our first European experience in September at the Reeperbahn Festival…
Stuart: There’s many a misfortune that could befall a good- looking young boy from Mullingar in Hamburg’s notorious red light district…
Craig: (laughs) Conor from Villagers said, “You’re going to love it. It’s a crazy place but I’ll let you discover why for yourselves when you get there.” I saw exactly what he was on about when we arrived!
Stef: We brought The Strypes for a walk round the Reeperbahn, checking out all the brazzers and stuff like that. They wanted to check it all out but were afraid to go on their own being young lads and that. No sex was paid for that night, but there was a bit of window shopping!
Stuart: Ah, so you’re the bad influence on The Strypes I’ve been hearing about!
Niamh: It’s always great going somewhere new. We made our New York debut this year. The first gig was shit; we’d been up 24 hours, there were problems with the pedal-boards and there were only five people there. We did four gigs in all, which progressively got better, culminating in an acoustic show in this small venue called the Rockwood Music Hall on the Lower Eastside of Manhattan where it was packed and they loved us. They think you’re a new band because they’ve never heard of you before, but you’ve got three albums to pick the best songs from.
Gemma: We just heard today that we’ve got South By Southwest in March, which is a biggie for us because so many of our favourite bands have played there.
Craig: We're there too!
Thomas: Us as well!
Gemma: Party! We’re a bit like The Academic in that myself and Morgan only started playing together about a year ago after meeting in the Trinity Orchestra who perform those cover sets at festivals. My first with them was Forbidden Fruit where we did Queen. It’s great being able to sing ‘Who Wants To Live Forever?’ and absolutely milking it! Talking of showcases, we’ve got to rehearse next week for the Trout Records one we’re doing with Paddy Hannah and O Emperor in the Stockwell Arms in London. The label’s run by Conor O’Cusack who’s in SPIES and co-manages us with Isis O’Regan.
Door-To-Door Salesman
Stuart: The music is obviously what matters most, but it doesn’t do any harm to have a story with which to pique the media’s interest. Daniel, were you surprised at the amount of coverage you selling Patterns door-door received?
Thomas: What did you do? I'm fucking lost…
Stef: He built his own studio in his uncle’s garden, recorded an album and made a short film about him knocking on doors, vinyl in hand, saying, “Right, I don’t have a record label but I’m selling this…”
Thomas: So, it got out there, big time. Well done!
Daniel: From my perspective, it took away the pretension. I was in a band that was very pretentious. They thought they were great but…
Thomas: Who were you in?
Daniel: The Rags. You probably don’t even remember them.
Thomas: What do you mean I don’t remember? My Rickenbacker case is a Rags case!
Stef: You nicked it?
Daniel: It was mine. There you go!
Thomas: Small fucking world! You’ll be pleased to hear that it went to a very loving home.
Stuart: A studio’s a pretty ambitious thing to pick as your first building project. It’s not subsiding, is it?
Daniel: I spent a lot of time researching it and every other aspect of the album. When you’re in a band you become reliant on other people. That moment when everyone else has left and you realise that all you did was write the lyrics and sing was very stressful. So, I learned how to play all the different instruments myself, starting with the bass. I spent a year analysing Paul McCartney’s basslines and how he wrote. Then I learned a bit of piano. And with that came a great sense of empowerment.
Stuart: As Stef just said, you had no record label or any promotional budget but still managed to get into the Irish top 10.
Daniel: I think the album’s very strong, but it’s not one you put on and straight away go, “This is fucking amazing!” Unlike The Academic, there’s no insanely catchy three minute pop song that 2fm are going to pick up on. It’s very lyrical and a slow burner, which thankfully got great word of mouth. My idea is to write songs that just knock you out, like Arcade Fire’s ‘Wake Up’. When that first came on the radio I was like, “Wow!!!!!!!’ It has the genetics of everything great in popular music, yet it’s new.
Stuart: Having signed to Omnivore Recordings in LA, Pugwash spent a goodly part of 2015 touring in the States. What’s the mood like there with Donald Trump looking a genuine Presidential hopeful?
Thomas: We drove 15,000 miles from west to east; five middle- aged, very unhealthy, hairy people including a Scouser. They’re an unbelievably kind nation of people but you do get some unpleasant contradictions like when we went into this pancake place in the Deep South. The woman came over and went, “Wow, you guys are from Ireland!” She couldn’t have been nicer or more welcoming, but then as the chat progressed she started talking about blacks and “how much trouble we have with them round here.” You go into a garage at three o’clock in the morning and instead of there being Tayto, Lucozade and Mars Bars there’s guns and ammunition for sale. It’s all so deeply ingrained which is why somebody like Donald Trump, who to you and I is a complete lunatic, is a mainstream politician there.
Stef: I second what Thomas said. You won’t find kind-hearted people like you do in America. They genuinely want to be friends, but if everyone wore a badge saying what political persuasion they are you’d probably avoid 85% of them. You have to allow for that or otherwise it’s going to be difficult. If a member of the US military comes up to the merch stand to say “great show” and buy a t-shirt, as has happened, you can’t take them to task over American foreign policy. I have family over there who, if they start talking politics, I have to leave the room. There’s a lot of stupid people everywhere…
Thomas: ... but there are a lot more of them here. You have to go away. It’s the people supposedly in charge of what we do. It’s all over the place and isn’t really fair. I don’t want to give out like Status Quo, for fuck’s sake, but we’ve been ignored by all the major festivals since 1999. They gave us a slot one year at Other Voices, but they dropped us for a fucking comedian. We’re out there being artistic and productive and having people like Jeff Lynne and Ray Davies and Brian Wilson saying, “Brilliant guys!” but they won’t put us on at Electric Picnic.
Irish Culture
Daniel: The country is culturally very rich.
Thomas: But you'll die here!
Daniel: I don't mind dying here!
Stef: When I recorded my first album, I remember thinking how easy it was. You didn’t have to ask permission from fucking - with all due respect - Hot Press magazine, Other Voices, Electric Picnic or any of those people.
Daniel: It's there, it's documented.
Stef: Yeah, like that video that you put up.
Thomas: But you had to resort to a gimmick to get noticed.
Daniel: The Beatles had to resort to a gimmick with Sgt. Pepper.
Thomas: They didn't in 1962.
Daniel: They did, they wore suits, they wore leather. Gimmicks are Ziggy Stardust…
Stef: You're calling it a gimmick, I'm calling it an extension of the art itself.
Thomas: Aren’t you afraid that people won’t be interested if you don’t make some other weird video for the next thing you do?
Daniel: It doesn't matter; I believe the record I've written is a classic.
Stuart: I’m not saying it’s your fault, Thomas, but Pugwash’s experience is very different to The Academic’s who have got to play Electric Picnic and have their records played on daytime Irish radio. There’s always going to be that lottery aspect to music.
Thomas: And I’m genuinely delighted for them. It’s just upsetting when the music industry in your own country pretty much ignores you.
Stuart: The big thing from a social point of view this year was the landslide Same Sex Marriage Referendum victory.
Thomas: Billions of years too late, but at least we’re getting it done.
Gemma: We're getting there…
Stef: Yeah, exactly. With the marriage referendum this year and hopefully an abortion referendum next year, we’re catching up.
Thomas: The abortion thing is the most embarrassing for me. People are still travelling over to London, for fuck’s sake. We like to portray ourselves to the world as a brilliant country - and in many ways we are - we so much here is fucked up.
Niamh: The abortion thing definitely has to change.
Stuart: Gavin James was talking to us about his grandma’s brother being the youngest person to be executed in 1916. What do the upcoming commemorations mean you to guys?
Stef: I’m trying to write a really special song that commemorates it. I want it to be fucking Phil Spector-esque; a big, orchestral anthem of some kind.
Niamh: That sounds really cool.
Thomas: There has to be an ‘A’ fucking Minor somewhere!
Stef: (laughs) I’ve been working on it for two months without really getting anywhere so I’ll give that a go. I’ve always regarded 1916 as more of a symbolic thing. The week after it was all stamped it would’ve been looked upon as an unmitigated failure, but it was a catalyst for where we are now as a people.
Daniel: We’re talking about the essence of being Irish, but in a way we’re European now.
Thomas: What we’re brilliant at as a nation is finding the humour in situations. I guess it’s a kind of coping mechanism. At my Dad’s funeral last year, I got up and said, “As you know he had Alzheimer’s and his last words were, ‘The new Pugwash compilation is out now on iTunes.’ My brother was shooting me daggers while Neil Hannon was passing himself.
Niamh: Yeah, that was a real Irish thing.
Stuart: Having covered Alzheimer’s, suicide bombings, abortion and red light districts, let us turn our attention to movies and TV shows of the year.
Gemma: There’s a fantastic Irish western, shot down in Kerry, called Darkness On The Edge Of Town. It’s got distribution in the States and played at festivals and is really well done.
Craig: I’ve been too busy to go to the cinema, but I’m really enjoying the new series of Fargo.
Niamh: My favourite film of the year is a kids’ movie, Inside Out. It just blew me away. I was expecting those nice happy feelings you get watching Toy Story and Finding Nemo, but it’s the clearest explanation I’ve seen of how your emotions work. It absolutely blew my mind when I saw it.
Thomas: I saw Trainwreck in LA, which was the perfect vehicle for Amy Shumer’s humour. Broad City ’s great and - I’m going to plug my mate’s TV show now - the new series of Toast Of London starts tonight with yours truly the singing voice of Ray Purchase. Neil is Matt and Ray is me.
Stef: The Brian Wilson biopic, Love & Mercy, was fucking brilliant as was the N.W.A. movie. Stick those in someone’s Christmas stocking and they’ll love you for life.
Niamh: Paul Dano who plays him young and John Cusack who plays him old are brilliant in the Brian Wilson movie. Again, you can learn so much about life from watching it.
Stuart: Having succeeded in lightening the mood…
Thomas: Can we go back to death? I was at three funerals this year and they were all get craig!
Stuart: ...what are your Christmas plans?
Niamh: Having a young son, Oscar, it’s all about Santa now with football and nerve guns top of the pressies list. I’ll go for dinner with my Dad who outdid himself last year by tracking down the board game we used to play as kids, Hood Winked. You have to do various tasks whilst wearing these glasses that have mirrors on them, so everything’s upside down and back to front. It’s hilarious! As soon as I opened it, I was like, ‘Oooooh’ and just broke down in tears.
Stuart: Craig, you’ll obviously be having pints in your Mullingar local with Niall Horan.
Gemma: You know Niall Horan?
Craig: No, never met him in my life! I’ll be at home with the family and wouldn’t mind a nerve gun myself.
Gemma: Could be a good career move to get to know him! I’m from Derry and will be going home on the 23rd and 24th. I haven’t checked yet but hopefully there’ll be a good gig in Sandino’s.
Stef: I’m over in Berlin for a few months trying to write some songs and will stick around there while my missus and my daughter spend time with her family in the US. I’ll have two square feet of Christmas decorations which I’ll stand in front of when I Skype, making sure not to show the slew of half-dead bodies around me.
Stuart: Any sing-songs planned?
Niamh: If I’ve had a few and someone hands me a guitar I’ll play The Postal Service’s ‘District Sleeps Tonight’.
Stuart: It’s one that all the grannies know and can join in with!
Thomas: The expectation with you being a musician is that you’ll sing for everybody, but if your brother was a plumber you wouldn’t expect him to put in a new bathtub on Christmas Day. You’d give the poor sod a day-off. I’m to finish by giving you the ultimate festive tip; avoid excess wind by frying your Brussels Sprouts rather than boiling or roasting them.
Niamh: And boil your ham in a pot of Coca-Cola. It adds sweetness and takes away the saltiness.
Stuart Clark: Happy Christmas everybody!
Everybody: Happy Christmas!