Long dark riot of the soul

“I’d rather play to eight people who are having the time of their lives, than to a hundred people who couldn’t give a shit whether you’re there or not.”

Colm Lynch, the latest home-grown songsmith to make a bid for the big time, admits that winning an audience is no picnic. Since the release of his debut, A Whisper In A Riot last year to much critical acclaim and decent airplay, he’s gigged relentlessly, slowly building a following.
“It’s difficult to make your voice heard,” he muses, over a pint in his southside Dublin local. “I’ve been lumped into that whole singer-songwriter genre and I know a lot of people are sick to death of it. They think we’ve had Damien Rice and we’ve had Paddy Casey and all the others; we don’t need any more of them. But I think there is still room for someone like me. Look at Fionn Regan. He’s doing really well, getting huge reviews and he’d be considered a singer-songwriter in the most classic sense of the term.
“But I have a following which is fantastic,” he continues. “And it’s not just friends and family – they’re people I don’t know who might have heard about me through hearing a song on the radio or by word-of-mouth. I do a gig in Dalkey every second Sunday – it’s a lovely gig in a nice setting. I’m not blowing my own trumpet, but you’d want to see the place when I’m playing there.”
Despite his impressive progress rate to date, Lynch can’t help venting his frustration at some aspects of the indigenous industry. “I’ve just read a newspaper article about the Choice Music Awards to see who was nominated and a whole bunch of people were overlooked. It was just a little bit annoying and disappointing to see your name not in there.
“It’s not even about getting awards. It’s about saying, ‘Colm Lynch has released an album and it’s out there.’ But this is my first effort and I’m not the first musician in the world to have released an album and for it not to be an overnight success. And it hasn’t done well in that sense. But the problem is in this country there is a small pool of people controlling the way the industry works and whose opinions seem to count. Everybody takes what they say as what’s hot. If you’re not hot with them you’re not hot with anyone.”
Twenty seven-year-old Lynch grew up in the seaside suburb of Killiney, south Dublin and still lives in the area (he has just bought an apartment). When he took up the guitar he was following in footsteps of his father who was a keen amateur musician.
“My dad was always into music,” he says. “He was just the right age when rock ‘n’ roll came along he tells stories of how him and his brothers would gather around the radio listening to Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel. They’d make these dodgy, crackly tapes. My brother is eight years older than me and he’s an exceptional guitarist. He played in a band with me when I was about 14 just messing around. None of my mates were into music and I was always at them to do something. They were into listening but not playing.”
Finding his tastes at odds with '90s dance culture, the teenage Lynch found salvation in older, more classic fare until the arrival of Britpop in the middle of the decade.
“I was getting into the Stone Roses and that kind of stuff and then Oasis hit it big. I was a kid and I thought, ‘God these guys are amazing.’ Someone gave a tape with Nirvana Unplugged on one side and the Oasis album on the other side. I put it in my Walkman and the first song was ‘Supersonic’. I thought, ‘Jesus that’s it’. I knew then what I wanted to do with my life.”
Lynch’s best songs ‘Lucinda’, ‘Why Must I Apologise’ and ‘Two Bullets And A Gun’ reveal an explosive talent with a distinctive, passionate voice. Though they explore the usual subject matter – affairs of the heart and soul, social and cultural observation – the sonic backdrop is more full-on rock and roll than the wistful acoustica of some of his peers.
Along with Springsteen and Paul Simon, he lists The Smiths and The Beatles as influences. Why then did he go the singer-songwriter route as opposed to getting a band together?
“It’s really an accident that I’m a solo artist,” he says. “I still prefer to play with a band, only it’s not called The Something-Or-Others, it’s just me playing with a band. I do pubs on my own, mainly for the convenience of it. But I love playing with a band, delivering that sound you can only get with a band.
“I don’t think I’m intense as a songwriter, anyone who knows me will tell you I’m always up for a bit of a laugh. A lot of the songs on the album, ‘Two Bullets And A Gun’ for example, is a bit of comedy for me. It’s like a film I’d watch – a piece of Americana. Some of them are personal. ‘Why Must I Apologise’ and ‘Cool Water’ would be, but something like ‘Sophie’ is a totally fictional character. The name ‘Sophie’ just seemed to fit but it could have been about anyone. It’s about idolising someone too much. ‘Lucinda’ wasn’t too personal. It’s about a scene from a nightclub with a guy who’s a bit seedy and some girl who is a little too drunk.
“I wanted to release ‘Lucinda’ as the first single because I thought it would immediately take me away from that whole association. But the record company wanted to go with ‘The Storm’, which is far more in tune with the singer-songwriter thing. So the reviews when they came in were kind of predictable. I can remember Kevin Courtney in particular in the Irish Times saying something like ‘here’s yet another addition to the cross-legged brigade.’ I was thinking ‘shit – that’s really not what I wanted.’
“But most of the reviews were three stars which is six out of ten. That’s not bad. I think the songs are four-star.”
With album number one a critical success and the live situation building steadily for him, Lynch is already thinking about his next move in the studio, as he explains.
“I might like to approach it a little differently, maybe put a lot more effort into getting a sound. For this one we just recorded the songs and they are competent recordings and you can hear all the instruments clearly and all that. But these days you need a hook, something running throughout your album that makes it stand apart, it’s maybe a little bit lacking in that department.”
“What you’re really looking at in this country is a radio hit. I was looking over my year of radio play and a song of mine was on the radio about 280 times in the year. I’ve only been on the shelf since April. There’s a lot of people who would look at me and say ‘he’s doing all right’. You look at your heroes – Bowie’s first two albums didn’t do that well. He only had a hit with ‘Space Oddity’ because of the moon landing. It’s better that you have a slow-burner and that you’re not hyped too much at the beginning. I’ve seen a lot of things hyped over the past year that haven’t lasted.”