Kode Blue

Sometimes, it only takes one song. For Dublin alt. rockers Kodaline, it was certified heartstring-puller ‘All I Want’, a track so sweepingly melancholy it should come with a warning, Perhaps one advising against operating heavy machinery while under its tear-jerking influence.

Within a month of release, ‘All I Want’, the lead number from the band’s self-titled debut EP, had charmed radio stations all over Ireland and the UK, and the accompanying video had racked up half a million views on YouTube.
Given that Kodaline didn’t exist 12 months ago, I’m expecting guitar and vox men Stephen Garrigan and Mark Prendergast to be in fairly high spirits when I meet them for a chat in Dublin’s Workman’s Club.
“We played in Bristol recently and there were loads of people singing along,” Prendergast beams. “We were like, ‘What the fuck?’”
“It’s really strange because it’s such early days for us,” Garrigan adds. “We’ve only done one EP, we haven’t really released much. We’re just happy that people are actually listening to us.”
Having spent the best part of the year in the studio, the boys haven’t had much time to develop their live show.
“We only started gigging really in the summer,” Prendergast points out. “Before that, we just did warm-up shows. I think yesterday was like our tenth gig. We were in the Academy with the Temper Trap. So we’re still getting a bit nervous. We’ll always get nervous, I suppose.”
As far as rounding up a rabid fanbase goes, the video for ‘All I Want’ didn’t hurt one bit. A gorgeous but suitably forlorn depiction of a facially-deformed office worker looking for love, it was directed by award-winning Dubliner Steve Russell.
“He sent us an idea and a treatment for it and that was that.” Garrigan recalls. “Exactly how it was on paper is exactly how it came out, which doesn’t really happen a lot. He’s very talented”.
“As soon as you read his treatments,” Prendergast butts in, “you go, ‘I could never think this shit up!’ And we’re not the kind of band that wanna be in our videos, and want to be seen. I hate seeing myself on screen.”
The track also caught the ears of America’s ABC network, who placed it in the final series of medical drama Grey’s Anatomy.
“We joked about it beforehand with the label,” Prendergast recalls. “We said, ‘It’s a bit Grey’s Anatomy!’ and then we were in the middle of rehearsals and we got a call saying, ‘Yeah, they’ve taken it’.”
Garrigan says the thought even occurred to him during the writing process.
“I was like, ‘This is my doctor-running-down-a-corridor song’!” he laughs.
“We saw the trailer yesterday and it was so weird,” Prendergast says. “Seeing all these big actors with our song in the background. It’ll be weird watching the show. The song’s five minutes long and I think four minutes of it is getting aired, so it’s going to be good. We don’t watch the show, but we’ll be really vain and watch that episode!”
Meanwhile, ‘All I Want’ has already been covered over 200 times by YouTube users.
“We’ve watched a few of them,” Prendergast says. “There’s one girl in America called Kina Grannis, hers has like 80,000 views. She did it with some English girl and it’s incredible. It’s great to see people in their bedrooms knowing every word and singing it. It’s a good feeling.”
“We try to write about honest stuff,” Garrigan adds, “and you can kind of tell that when people are covering it, it’s because they connected to the song, which is just overwhelming.”
“They do it better than we do!” Prendergast jokes. “But we read all the comments and stuff, and get back to people. Some of the comments on the video are hilarious. Comedy genius. One of them was, ‘That company has serious HR issues!’”
“We love that shit,” Garrigan laughs. “It’s quite a serious song but you’ve got to take the piss out of yourself.”
Things are working out spectacularly well for Kodaline, but, surely they considered the risk of being so emotionally transparent in their songs, and on their very first release to boot.
“Me and Mark always write songs together,” Garrigan says, “and we just came to a point about two years ago, when we decided that every lyric has to mean something. We were writing for therapy really. Not that we need therapy, but …”
Writing songs is cheaper?
“Yeah!” Prendergast interjects. “We’re pretty strict on each other when it comes to lyrics. There’s no bullshit. It’s just straight-to-the-point honesty. And on the album, we’ve got songs that are more honest than that.”
“It probably comes from influences as well,” Garrigan says. “I’m really into Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Dylan– people who just say it as it is.”
Does this mean that we can expect even more heartbreak on the band’s debut long-player, which is due out early in the New Year? There were plenty of surprises on the EP including a rather sinister-sounding choir of indecipherable rumbling voices.
“That’s ‘Lose Your Mind’,” Prendergast laughs. “We did that when we were absolutely hammered and couldn’t remember who sung what. We had a day off in the studio and the next day – it was just the two of us and the engineer, and he said, ‘Do you want to listen to it?’ He put it on and it’s what you hear now. It’s the most fun I’ve had ever writing a song.”
Now this, I really wasn’t expecting, especially since the boys sound positively angelic on the track in question.
“Ah, man,” Garrigan exclaims, dismissing the idea with a wave of his hand. “If you listen to the harmonies, it’s like (screeches) ‘Aaaagh!’ But our producer is all about vibe and we are as well. It’s just about capturing a moment.”

Kodaline play the Button Factory, Dublin (December 2) and McHugh’s, Belfast (3). Their self-titled EP, which includes 'All I Want', is out now.