Northern Lights

The last ten years in Northern music have been quite a roller-coaster.

It’s been a time of interesting vignettes, arresting cameos, the odd grand-standing lead, and many promising diversions that ultimately came to nothing – but good luck to anyone on the hunt for a grand narrative or fully-realised story arc.
Sure, we’ve seen Snow Patrol go A-List (and can anyone who endured some of their legendarily disastrous early shows seriously claim to have predicted that?), David Holmes shoot off to Hollywood and then draw on Belfast for the record of his life (The Holy Pictures), and Duke Special graduate from the cabaret lounge to the West End stage.
Ash, Divine Comedy and Therapy?, meanwhile, all continued fighting the good fight – and in recent months even suggested they’re being propelled by a second wind.
But you know all about those guys. I’d prefer to use this opportunity to mention a few names that may have passed you by.
The Vichy Government emerged, self-appointed, from the barricades with a radical manifesto: naming names, pointing fingers, and clearing wall space for the backs of their long-list of villains.
Musically, their rudimentary, one-fingered, Casio anthems sounded more like theme tunes from long-forgotten ZX Spectrum games than potential hits, and with subject matters ranging from the moral decline of western civilisation, the deadening effect of contemporary culture, and the hopelessness of Sammy McIlroy as an international manager, the pair were never likely to be invited onto X-Factor. But make no mistake – Jamie Manners had the potential to develop into one of the fiercest, funniest and most devastatingly perceptive lyricists of the decade, and I think it’s a cause of no small disappointment that their momentum stalled at the first sign of a counter-revolution. As it is, we are all the poorer for missing out on his take on Iris Robinson’s ‘Abomination-gate’.
I’d hoped – like that famous Velvet Underground formulation – that Vichy’s appeal, while limited, would prove highly influential – going virulently airborne like some nasty pollutant. But alas, while the local kids spent the rest of the decade rediscovering keyboards and synths, there seemed little appetite for biting social critique.
The persistence and resilience of Geoff Topley is worth celebrating. Like the Vichy boys, success, in conventional terms, remained elusive. But Geoff’s achievement is perhaps even more profound than the here-today hits boys. As Foam (or a variation thereof) Geoff managed three double albums a year for the best part of the decade – double albums that he wrote, produced, designed and distributed himself. His name may not have been written on many schoolbags, but Geoff’s worked his way into quite a few hearts.
It’s been a bittersweet time for Charley Mooney and Roisin Stewart. Anyone who produces a pair of albums of the sublime quality of Let’s Get Worse and Hotsy Totsy Nagasaki can hold their heads high. On their release, these records came shrouded in a unique kind of homespun mystery and intimacy - and in the years since, this has only deepened. Play them now – one after the other – and it still feels like intruding on a private conversation in an invented language. Other projects are currently on the go – but when Desert Hearts 3 eventually comes our way, take some time to bone up on your vocabulary.
The big stories over the last year have revolved around Two Door Cinema Club (or, as they will henceforth be known: ‘Kanye West faves, Two Door Cinema Club’), boys next door who just happen to be signed to Kitsune, one of the coolest labels on the planet; The Lowly Knights – a crowd of guys and girls, working the Big Pink look while knocking out skyscraping folk-pop; General Fiasco – the natural heirs to Ulster’s proud power-pop lineage; and the simply brilliant Cat Malojian.
I’d say we’re in safe hands.
The big macro musical story of the decade has of course, not been its songs, but the mind-bending ways in which their distribution mutated and morphed as the noughties progressed.
The ramifications of this have yet to play out to the full, but I’d say the distinctive mixture of excitement and unease felt just now by most local musicians would be recognised by many in Manchester, Bristol, Glasgow, Cork, and every other place that isn’t one of the great metropolitan Gothams.
All hope, according to Orwell, lies with the proles. In local music terms, it’s more likely to be found in the medium and small scale promoters (personified by the indefatigable Darren Smyth – the man with probably the best pair of ears in Belfast), the aspiring label founders, the poster designers, bloggers, and – of course – the bedroom boys and girls with their guitars, keyboards, and elaborate programmes.
Who knows how the story is going to pan out over the next decade? Who wants to know in advance, anyway? Surely all the fun will be in finding out.