Making Their Question Mark

“We just look like three hicks from the sticks!" laughs Therapy? frontman Andy Cairns. ‘We don’t look like we're in any particular genre. People see us and say, ‘God, he looks like a guy that works at the petrol station at the bottom of my road!’ There’s that underdog spirit about us. And the amount of music we listen to and all the influences we take on board, people can pick up on that.”

On the occasion of the release of 13th long-player A Brief Crack Of Light, Cairns is pondering Therapy?’s enduring crossover appeal and resulting acceptance in the rock, metal and punk communities. Much to his delight the reviews for the latest opus have been unrelentingly positive and the Northern power trio are currently gearing up for a slew of dates in support of the release.
Their broad spectrum of influences and appetite for a multitude of musical genres is indeed evident on the album. The sonic cocktail doffs its cap in a variety of directions, on a number of tracks their dubstep fandom comes under the spotlight.
“Well, we are electronic music fans,” enthuses Andy. “Our favourite period of dubstep is probably 2005 to 2006, when it was Kode 9 and Digital Mystikz and people like that. We don’t really like the mid-range wobbly stuff that's going on at the minute. We do like an awful lot of electronic music, and that's reflected on the album, the sound design on ‘Get Your Dead Hand Off My Shoulder’ is completely dubby, we had an old echo box brought in and everything.”
As well as absorbing sundry musical influences Cairns is an avid book fan and frequently draws inspiration from the literary sphere, the title of the album is taken from a Nabakov tome following a Russophilia reading spree.
“As a band, we are very dark in terms of the way we look at life but we do like people like Beckett where there is a humanity to the darkness,” he explains. “We quite like characters that are marginalised. Maybe it’s because we’re from a little town in east Antrim ourselves originally we felt a bit like that growing up. We always have a lot of empathy for people that are slightly apart from everyone else and I think that aesthetic is carried through to what we’ve done.”
The album is the first since the band celebrated their 20th anniversary in 2010, a landmark Cairns never thought they would reach. The celebratory tour saw them play seminal collection Troublegum in its entirety. Hitting the two-decade mark gave the lads cause to look back over a career of many highlights, including supporting The Rolling Stones and recording with Ozzy Osbourne on Black Sabbath tribute album Nativity In Black.
“The Ozzy session was hilarious,” notes Andy. “We'd met Sharon a couple of times at metal festivals and she would always come over and take the piss about us being from the North and have a bit of banter with us. She was really, really nice. They asked us to record ‘Iron Man’ and flew me and Michael to LA to do our parts. When Ozzy came out of the vocal booth we were so nervous we probably looked like we had shat our pants! He was really friendly and kind and we were so nervous. We managed to say something like, 'Ah man, you nailed that in one take.' He said, 'Well I’ve only been singing it for 25 years!' (laughs)
Although now based in England, Cairns keeps a close eye on happenings on the NI music scene.
“I listen to regional radio on the internet and am across quite a bit,” says Andy. “All the Northern bands get on really well too. When the Ulster Hall reopened there was a big Northern chumfest. There’s actually a great photo that Michael has of all the bands taking part with Tim, Gary and Neil Hannon and everyone.
“There have been huge changes since we started, when there was only The Limelight, The Errigal and the art college for bands,” he adds. “There was no record scene and there was no printed material except for the fanzines put out by the Warzone Collective. Look at it now!”

A Brief Crack Of Light is out now on Blast Records. Therapy? play Vicar St., Dublin on March 10.