Northern exposure

Owen and Enda Strathern are looking kind of shellshocked. By rights the pair should be in high spirits. Their band, General Fiasco, are responsible for one of the stand out tracks on the Oh Yeah showcase CD; they’re slowly building up a reputation as a live act of some renown, and their relationship with photographer Graham Smith is turning out some of the niftiest visuals in Northern music. But as we find them, just about to set off for a hometown gig, the Bellaghy brothers appear a little spooked.

“We’re recovering from our latest shoot with Graham,” reveals bassist and singer, Owen. “It went a bit further than normal.”
Dare I ask how?
“There was a bit of skin showing,” admits guitar player, Enda. “It wasn’t pleasant.”
“People contact us to say they love the music and the photographs, and when do you ever hear that?” Owen asks. “Graham’s a genius and we’re up for making them as interesting and funny as we can, without turning into Blink 182. So, it looks like we’re just going to have to carry on suffering for our art.”
We should take that last line with a pinch of salt. If anything, General Fiasco have enjoyed a fairly pain-free and irresistible rise through the first stage of their career. This is a band, after all, which made their Belfast debut, not, as convention demands, at the bottom of the bill in the local toilet, but instead flush centre of the undercard on last year’s Killers/Razorlight outdoor double-header at Tennants’ Vital.
“That was down to pure luck,” Owen admits. “We played Glasgowbury and it so happened that Jimmy Devlin, the Radio One producer was walking past while we were on stage. He took a liking to us and invited us to play on the New Band Stage at Vital. So, our first Belfast gig was in front of thousands of people. It was pretty mad.”
That the boys took it all in their stride should come as little surprise to anyone familiar with their work. Although they’re all still shy of their 20s, there’s nothing reticent about the General Fiasco method. Melancholic electro pop may be in the ascendant in Belfast, but the boys run brilliantly counter to that. Songs like ‘Maybe I’m A Little Bit Strange’ and ‘Forget First Impressions’ are snappy, fat-free takes on the celebrated three-piece, power pop template. And while there’s little original in their brew of buzzsaw riffs and airborne choruses, it’s executed with such joy and determination, you’ll feel like writing their name on a lamp-post.
“We’ve always known what we didn’t want to sound like,” says Enda. “We’ve played in loads of bands already, but none of them were a decent fit. They were either dated, lad-rock, Oasis kind of bands, or horrible emo types. Leaky (Stephen Leacock, the drummer) even used to front a power-punk band, but he’s seen the error of his ways and we forgive him.”
Owen admits to an obsession with The Strokes and Kings Of Leon, and has been bemused by some of the acts mentioned in connection with the band.
“It seems like we’ve been influenced by loads of people we’ve never heard,” he laughs.
“People have mentioned The Jam a lot, but I’ve never listened to a record of theirs,” Enda adds.
Owen: “And Elvis Costello. He keeps getting mentioned, so I thought I’d check him out. It was good, but I can’t really hear it myself. I suppose, though, it’s all, broadly speaking, guitar rock with a pop appeal – a universal appeal, so I’ve no problem with it. It’s flattering and I suppose it’s a way of finding out about music from the past that we’d never heard before.”
The recently released Oh Yeah Sessions ’08, saw General Fiasco work on a track with Rocky O’Reilly from Oppenheimer. The result – ‘Please Take Your Time’ – isn’t just a perfect distillation of what they’re all about (and an interesting pointer towards where they may end up); it’s also arguably the best pop moment on the entire CD.
“Working with Rocky was amazing, brilliant,” Owen gushes. “It’s the best recording experience we’ve ever had. We’ve never really used synths, and he opened our minds to it. No matter how much you prepare a song for recording, you’ll go into the studio, someone will make a suggestion and something magical will happen. It was a much more creative experience that I expected. We got to spend an awful lot more time working on the song than we normally would and I think you can tell when you listen to it. We’re delighted with it.”