Royal Flush

They’ve played what seems like a gazillion Dublin shows since I first heard about them, so needless to say today will not be my first encounter with Waterford lads O Emperor. Still, as I cross the colossal lobby floor of Dublin’s swanky Radisson Blu Royal Hotel, it strikes me that this isn’t going to be my typical run-in with the fivesome.

“We’re not used to this plush environment,” drummer Brendan Fennessy laughs as he greets me, “we’re more a Travelodge kind of band!”
It’s hardly surprising that the quintet weren’t always working in the midst of four star luxury. The band has been two decades in the making – a primitive version of the outfit was formed when they were still in secondary school, but all five members have known each other since they were five years of age. I have to ask, what’s the relationship like these days?
“A bit bizarre,” guitarist Paul Savage admits. “We just act as one, think as one.”
“We’ve become immune to each other.” Fennessy adds, “I think we’ve just merged into the same person. We start struggling independently, we kind of need to do things as a group.”
Odd though it may seem, this unfathomable bond is crucial to the O Emperor sound – Savage explain that each tune is the product of a team effort: “One person has the skeleton of a song and it generally works best if it’s not too detailed, if it’s just some chords and a chorus. Then we all build it up from that.”
And what about the group they formed as teenagers?
“It was Dad Rock,” Savage recalls. “Covers were our bread and butter. We started off as a good covers band, we had a lot of energy and we really
enjoyed playing...”
“…but then we got really lazy!” Fennessy adds, finishing his bandmate’s sentence. “We just fell back on the songs we’d learned when we were 16 and never learned anything new!”
Savage pipes up: “But the bikers always liked us! And the old taxi drivers.”
Fennessy hangs his head: “The ladies were never fans.”
“There were never any women at our gigs. It was just all hairy men!”
Surely some of those taxi drivers brought their wives along for a night on the tiles?
“No! Not even!”
Compelled to console the po-faced duo, I assure them that they’re appealing to a younger and more diverse audience these days.
“I dunno if we’ve even are!” Savage laughs, “There’s guys still coming up going; ‘Like your stuff lads, it reminds me of Steely Dan!’ But that’s what we listen to so we can’t really get offended!”
Surely there were a few females in the audience at their packed-out Electric Picnic set this year?
“There were, but they were waiting for Jerry Fish afterwards!”
For the record, this is not true. A close personal female friend of mine named O Emperor’s performance her pick of the weekend after stumbling into the Cosby tent on the Sunday in search of a dark corner in which to readjust her undergarments.
Whoops – I never told you that.
Anyway, the last time I interviewed Mr. Savage, he was eating his dinner off the debut album Hither Thither – boxes of the record were functioning as a makeshift coffee table in the O Emperor front room.
“They’re still there,” he laughs, “only now it holds up our vinyl player! We should just give them out as coasters, really.”
The fivesome decided to hold out for the big label bonanza before releasing the album, which paid off when they got signed to Universal six months ago. With 11 tracks “toned and ready to go”, the band produced Hither Thither themselves along with sound engineer Ciaran Lynch.
So, how much of the dinner table material made the cut?
“About half,” Savage tells me. “There’s five brand new songs that we only wrote in the last eight months and some were written about three years ago. But we went back and recorded it all as one, so it still sounds coherent.”
One of the most striking things about the album is the chopping and changing of voices – Savage shares frontman duties with keyboardist Phil Christie.
“A lot of bands we listen to have two or three singers,” Savage shrugs, dispelling the notion that ego has anything to do with it. “It doesn’t bother me, sometimes it’s even nice to get a break from a voice. We just happened to end up with two singers, we might even end up with three or four by the second album!”
Depending on which vocalist takes the reins, O Emperor’s tunes can be jerky or intimate, fiery or delicate.
“I’m more for the louder, shouty vocals,” Savage agrees, “and Phil’s more for the tender, sweet ones… for the ladies.”
“…or lack thereof.”
Known for intricate harmonies, copious amounts of slide guitar and a psychedelic sweep, the noise O Emperor makes is straight out of another time. I mention that parts of Hither Thither bear a striking resemblance to Paul McCartney’s Wings.
“It definitely does,” Savage laughs, “we realised that the start of ‘Don’t Mind Me’ is very much like ‘Band On The Run’, but only when (mix master) Ciaran Bradshaw pointed it out. But Wings in small doses can be very, very powerful.”
“Hey!” Fennessy protests. “I wouldn’t even say small doses! Sometimes you’ve gotta have a big Wingsfest!”
“Well, Venus And Mars was a particularly bogey album.”
Here follows a rather nerdy debate about Wings’ best and worst moments, which, at the risk of flooding these pages with angel puns, I’ll spare you.
Fennessy wraps up the point nicely; “but that’s the thing about some bands now – it’s automatically uncool to like Wings. I mean, you can genuinely like Wings!”
When not overdosing on McCartney and co., O Emperor have been busying themselves with a slew of star-studded support slots, including a couple of shows with folk phenomenon Mumford & Sons.
“It was nice to play to a demographic of our own age,” Savage grins, “or even just play to some girls was really refreshing! Moving away from the 50-year-old bikers...”
“It’s quite nice doing those gigs,” Fennessy adds. “You have nothing to prove. There’s no expectations.”
The band seem to be perpetually on tour in 2010, having played every festival the Irish had to offer. I guess the more shows you play, the better you get, eh guys?
“Nah,” Savage laughs, “We just need to pay off a huge debt.”
“Let’s not ignore the elephant in the room!”
Joking aside, the fivesome are clever enough to know that a strong work ethic is their greatest asset.
“It’s the grassroots kind of thing,” Savage reasons. “If people get to see you, there’s a chance they’ll like you. If they like you in the moment, that’s the only way that you can actually get them to listen to your music. There’s so much other stuff that they could be listening to on the internet – I mean, I’m the same, I have a three second attention span! The only way people are going to buy your music is if they’re there in the room at the time and they like it… even if they are only there to fix their underwear!”

Hither Thither is out now on Universal. O Emperor play Dolan’s, Limerick (October 23); The Stables, Mullingar (24); and The Sugar Club, Dublin (November 6).