In Vitus Veritas

Love Me, Love My Dogma by St Vitus Dance is the great Northern record that disappeared down the side of the settee.

Why’s that, you may ask?
Well, maybe because it was released in the musical dip that occurred between the hey-day of Good Vibes and the Ash/Therapy?/Divine Comedy revival, timing was the problem. Or perhaps its flamboyant arrangements and arch lyrical concerns stood so defiantly contrary to our recidivist punked-up orthodoxy; there never was a chance of it being clutched to our collective bosom.
Whatever the reason, its continued obscurity is a sad state of affairs that should be righted. Dogma is so florid, literate and bursting with personality – you owe it to yourself to get acquainted.
Not, however, that the band’s frontman sees it quite that way.
“I really didn’t like it,” says Noel Burke. “It took quite a while for me to listen to it. I dismissed it for a long, long time, and assumed it was crap.”
Thankfully, he’s revised his opinion. More than Twenty years on, there is little on the record to cause embarrassment. In fact, in its depiction of mundane Belfast moments, it presents a picture of life in the city that must have been a welcome alternative to the hyper-realities offered by the likes of Stiff Little Fingers.
“Well, it would have been hypocritical of us to take that kind of angle,” explains Noel. “None of us were really touched by the trouble. We were the generation who maybe saw things ease off a bit. I suppose like most people from here, we identified more with The Undertones’ take on things than the SLF take and maybe that comes out.”
The other notable factor contributing to the album’s odd allure is Burke’s vocal style. A full decade before Neil Hannon, here was one Ulster lad not afraid to let some wind pass through his pipes.
“I was obsessed with Scott Walker to a degree that embarrasses me now,” he admits. “I’d played bass before and someone told me I should sing. So, I can remember getting a tape of Fire Escape In The Sky (Julian Cope’s compilation of Walker’s best songs), sticking it in a walkman, and dandering around Musgrave Park trying to teach myself how to sing out loud.”
Snapped up by Probe Plus Records who, at the time, were best known as the home of Half Man Half Biscuit, it looked like St Vitus Dance were primed for a UK breakthrough. However, their move across the water back-fired.
“In my wisdom I decided that we should up sticks to Liverpool,” says Noel. “ Worst decision I ever made. Trust us to be the only people to move to Liverpool in the eighties to look for work. We’d worked really hard building up a following in Belfast
and it was starting to look really special. And we really should have stayed, developed our sound a bit more. But when we got there, it was actually deader than here. There was no scene, nowhere to play.”
Momentum lost, the band began drifting apart; some members moved back to Belfast,
others took on day jobs. For Burke, however, there was to be a surreal turn of events. After Ian McCulloch decided to leave Echo And The Bunnymen, ...Dogma Will Sergeant and Les Pattison asked him if he fancied a crack at replacing the irreplaceable.
“I was at a loose end. Working in a book shop. And they got in touch. I thought they
were going to form a new band, but then they told me they wanted to continue as Echo And The Bunnymen. I remember thinking it wasn’t a good idea, and I should have dug my heels in, but what do you do – it’s Will Sergeant and Les Pattinson?”
They trio recorded one album, Reverberation, and toured the world, but the critical flack was heavy (notably from Mac himself) and Burke’s morale took a pounding.
“I always knew it was doomed but thought, I’ll do as good a job as I can and see what happens. But it was no fun at all, and I could see how unhappy it was making Will. It was a relief when it was over, to be honest. But I think the experience sickened me. I stopped listening to contemporary music, didn’t pick up a guitar for a few years.”
In early 2005, however, an out-of-the-blue invitation from the folk at Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival for the band to play back up to Monochrome Set, led to a full-blown St Vitus reunion. Such was the success of the show, it wasn’t long before they were writing and recording again as a unit.
And the result is Glypotheque (a pun which may not mean much to anyone outside of Belfast, but which raises a wry smile from anyone ever accused of acting the said G-word) – a warm, soulful collection of Byrds and Velvets-obsessed guitar tunes, imbued with a hard-won wisdom and new-found contentment.
“It’s not bad,” says Noel. “And as anyone who knows me will tell you, that’s a pretty big admission.”
Let’s hope that, unlike its predecessor, it stays where we can all see it.

Glypotheque will be released through Probe in April