Kitt happens

“People are always trying to find benchmarks,” says David Kitt. “Making records breaks your life up into these convenient two-year sections, and when a new record comes along journalists need you to explain what’s changed since the last one, but that’s not always really that representative of what’s really going on. And often when I think about interviews a few days later I realise that I’d give totally different answers in retrospect.”

So with that caveat, it’s benchmark time. For the past two and half years David Kitt’s been living alone, working through the night and putting in 80-hour weeks into his music in a flat/studio somewhere along Dublin’s grand canal. As the label infrastructure that sustained him for the first part of his career fell apart, and the bills accumulated in the hall, he rediscovered his musical mojo, churned out two songs a day and released The Nightsaver, the first of two albums he plans to release in 2009. And it is, as we journalists say, a return to form, with beautiful home production, and some genuine, sincere, uncontrived gems.
“You know when you’re 17 and find the three other freaks in the town and you sit around drinking cans listening to indie music?” he asks. “Well, there’s been a healthy kind of gang of misfits around me in the last couple of years, and that’s helped me make more sense of myself, how I fit into living in Dublin, and why I do what I do. From the music-making end of things, I felt like I’d found a way of taking everything that influenced me and distilling it down into one thing, as opposed to trying to make each record in a certain style. I really felt that that was something very, very simple that I’d lost for a while. I really want to get the records out there and share the music that’s important to me, but there’s still songs coming every day... two a day almost. I’ve never experienced anything like it before. And after all that, two different records started taking shape. One was this record and the other was the Spilly Walker one.”
Spilly Walker is the electro-pop side-project Kitt has concocted with his younger brother Rob (“In many ways my toughest critic,” says Kitt) and it seems to have had a re-energising affect on him. “It was about giving myself the freedom of having another name,” he says. “It was about keeping the guitars out of it and doing a more electronic clubby thing. It was about turning up and doing support slots for bands I liked, and doing a half an hour set with no expectation. Last week we played with Girl Talk and no one knew who the fuck we were, and having that anonymity with young kids who’re having life-changing experiences to music... that was just brilliant.”
The problem for Kitt is that, while he’s on a creative roll and is clearly enjoying his renewed love affair with music, certain stark realities are taking shape in the background. This record is released on Kitt’s own Gold Spillin’ label and money is becoming an issue. “It’d be great if we could all be self-sufficient and live on a farm and cut ourselves off completely and have solar-powered Protools systems to record on,” he says with a sigh. “But the reality is we all have to make a living and I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do that. I was just about able to afford the luxury of making this. I do consider making these two records one of my greatest ever extravagances, but it was something I really had to do. I could tell that people around me were thinking, ‘What the fuck is he up to?’ I was really pushing it. I was way behind on my rent and bills were piling up, but I was working my ass off the whole time, able to see the big picture of where the album was going and frantically trying to get it over the finish line.”
He mentions his tirelessly supportive family and notes that, “they’ve all got the musical bug. Rob’s in Spilly Walker and Thomas (his other brother) released his own album and is working on a second. The whole family’s musical. My mum’s got grade eight piano and is into opera and classical music. My dad (Fianna Fail politician Tom Kitt) toured the states with a Creedence Clearwater style rock band in the late 70s, and he also toured as the Kitt Family... a kind of folk thing.”
And would he have an interest in politics like his dad? He pauses for a long time. “I’m more of a music man, but I do take an interest. I studied economics so I have leanings economically,” he smiles, “I certainly know about spending my way out of a recession.”
So is the musical bailout going to come? “Maybe. Every album gets talked about like it’s a turning point, but right now I’m not looking past the next few weeks. I feel privileged to be about to go on tour with some talented musicians, and I’m planning to enjoy that.”

David Kitt’s new album The Nightsaver is out now