Night and the city

Neal Hughes is feeling nostalgic.
“There used to be a bar in Cookstown called the Pink Pussycat,” he says.

“They changed the name to Clubland and it became the biggest place in town – everybody went to it for a drink and a smooch. When Tiler recorded our first demo, we gave it to one of the DJs who worked there and he played it at the end of the night. The place went mental, so they started to play it at the end of every night. This one time, a load of girls spent all day in school making this confetti stuff and when the song came on they threw it all over the balcony. It doesn’t get much better than that when you’re 18.”
Anyone who can remember Neal’s former band will have little difficulty believing this yarn. Tiler, you see, were not a crew you’d find shirking in the shadows.
Back in 1999, when the boys decamped en-masse from their hometown to Belfast, it felt at times like the place had fallen victim to some kind of covert indie invasion. They were everywhere. Stroll into a bar and if the band wasn’t playing, then one of the members would be pouring your drink. Turn on your radio and you’d hear them pontificating about the latest releases; read a press release from a local label and one of their names would be the chief contact; walk into a club, they’d be running the night.
If enthusiastic engagement alone guaranteed success, then toppermost of the poppermost would have been an achievable ambition for the five-piece. As it was, their blend of brooding, accomplished Radiohead-influenced rock looked more than capable of doing the job on its own. Labels were interested, deals were mooted, and the prospect of Tiler turning up eventually in HMV seemed far from remote.
Events didn’t pan out that way, of course. Optimism seemed to drain, momentum was squandered, and when bassist Jimmy Devlin moved to London, the band, very quietly, called it quits.
“We just didn’t believe in ourselves enough,” Neal reveals. “Although we were always running around or whatever, we were all pretty introverted and shy. Enthusiastic, yeah, and being affiliated in that way was a great thing, but we weren’t writing the way we wanted to. We’d worked ourselves up to expect big things and when they didn’t happen immediately I think we all got demoralized.”
Which was a shame – because while Tiler were far from the finished article (in thrall to too many obvious influences and prone to mistake bombast for grandeur), the obvious camaraderie that existed between them (they were all old schoolmates), coupled with the quality of Neal’s voice meant that their presence was always a welcome and promising one.
The next three years passed in a blur of day jobs and bruised confidence.
“People would stop me now and again and ask what I was up to and I didn’t really have anything to tell them.” he says. “But that had far more of an effect than if someone was nagging me all the time to get my arse in gear. It plants the seed that you are capable of more.”
Last autumn, with Dave Newell replacing Jimmy, the remaining members of Tiler decided to get back together, changing their name to Driving By Night.
“There was a realization that there were things that we wanted to say and I think we all feel an awful lot taller since we started up again,” says Neal.
After a tentative start, a recent spot upstaging Keane at The Ulster Hall, and the release of debut single ‘Cash (my intro)’, has revealed a band living up to their early promise. The rigid four-four-two rock of their earlier sound seems to have mutated into something more intriguingly complex, while Neal’s magnificently grainy vocals (“I’ve been smoking an awful lot of fags”) are an absolute revelation.
Life seems to have added some necessary flavour to their music. If Tiler were all about expert outlines, then Driving By Night seem comfortable with adding colour.
Neal: “We’re all 25, 26 now – it’s a totally different stage in your life. The clock starts ticking. It’s a bit darker but more honest, I think. We’re a lot more confident now. It’s amazing. Once you start writing songs again everything is different – even that room where I work every fucking night; it’s a different place.”

For more information access www.drivingbynight.com