Screen-Age Kicks

"Someone mentioned it on Twitter,” begins Alex Trimble, confirming my theory that all good interviews in 2010 should start with a tale of something discovered through the miracle of micro-blogging. “Someone said ‘Two Door Cinema Club are on Kanye’s blog!’ and I thought ‘That’s not actually Kanye West’s blog is it?’ I went on and there we were!”

Bassist Kev Baird chimes in: “Daft Punk told him about us. That’s the best part of the story!”
‘Gildas, who runs (uber trendy French label) Kitsuné is really good mates with Daft Punk and he introduced them to us. They kind of became fans. Then they were talking to their mate Kanye and passed on the word.”
When Hot Press first discovered Two Door Cinema Club last year, they were scruffy, baby-faced teens chugging along with few thankless support slots to their credit. Today, everyone and their nan is buzzing about the jerky trio.
I meet the boys backstage at Dublin’s Academy, where they’re about to join Funeral Suits and The Maccabees for the Dublin leg of the NME Awards tour.
Immaculately rocking the skinny white boy look, they clear a patch for me in a mess of bottles, CDs and hoodies.
“There was never a ‘Holy shit! This was amazing!’ moment,” Trimble muses, “It was slowly building and building. In terms of media attention and other people finding out about what we’re doing, being shortlisted on the BBC Sound of 2010 poll was it. That was pretty big. It meant that thousands of people were going to know who we were.”
Guitarist Sam Halliday pipes up; “Yeah, it kind of shifted from our mums telling us we were good to a big national poll... confirming what our mums thought!’
Two Door Cinema Club formed in County Down nearly three years ago, when these school chums were only 17. Unfortunately, before they could focus on taking the indie world by storm, there were final exams to be sat. “We kind of finished school by about Christmas that year I think,” Halliday jokes.
“Yeah, we all decided this was what we wanted to do,” says Baird. “So we were like, ‘Awh, what’s the point in doing this?’ It was really hard to get motivated!”
Clearly, there was something wonderful in the water from the start, as their signature tune ‘Undercover Martyn’ is only the third song they ever wrote. The accompanying video sees the trio floating about on the outstretched arms of a swarm of invisible extras, something they inform me was a lot more fun to watch back than it was to create!
“It was terrible,” Trimble squeals, “Fair enough, the idea of it is really fun. The idea of people carrying you around for the whole day is amazing. The thing is, they’re people who don’t know how to carry shit and they’ve got their elbows and their shoulders digging into you. It was really painful!”
“You watch the video and it’s like three minutes long,” Baird remembers, “We were on top of people for 14 hours!”
Mild bruising aside, the video is a good fit for their quirky pop.
“We always from the start wanted to make uptempo and danceable music and something a bit more uplifting,” Baird states.
No plans for a sweeping ballad then?
“Who knows? There’s never really any plans for anything,” laughs Trimble. “It happens! Shit happens when we write songs and they tend to be uptempo. If we wrote a slow song and we loved it, there’s no reason why we wouldn’t release it.”
Recently the almighty Phoenix invited them on the Continental and American legs of their tour. Are TDCC as fanatical about the Parisian foursome’s music as I am?
“Hell yeah!” they echo.
“We were on tour and we drove like six hours out of our way on our day off to go to watch them,” raves Trimble. “After the show we approached their tour manager. We looked like three creepy fans. And said ‘Hey we’re Two Door Cinema Club, we did a cover on their album and we’d love to go and say ‘Hi!’”
Indeed, their cover of the Versailles rockers’ tune ‘Lasso’ went down a treat on the Special Edition Bonus edition of Phoenix’s Grammy award-winning Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, along with remixes by the likes of Passion Pit and Animal Collective.
“We share the same label in the UK, Co-op, and when they asked us we jumped at it! We were in the middle of doing our album. Every day was really busy. We didn’t know how or when we were going to be able to do it. But we said ‘yes’ immediately and recorded it ourselves on our day off!”
“We were a bit nervous that it was going to be shit,” Baird recalls. “There was no time to think about it! But we’re really happy with it and they seemed to really like it.”
Funnily enough the same nerves didn’t apply to the recording of their own debut (not-so-fun fact: Tourist History was made in the studio adjacent to the one where Duran Duran recorded their 13th album).
“Every day was really easy.” Trimble enthuses, “It was work, loads of hard work. However, it was relaxed at the same time, We got to work with a producer called Eliot James (Bloc Party, Noah And The Whale) who from the start knew exactly what we wanted. We don’t have a lot of experience working with producers because before we usually did it ourselves in our bedroom or whatever. He totally was on the same page.”
Having started life with a laptop drummer, at the end of 2009 the decision was made to switch to a sticksman of the flesh and bones variety. That's despite the advice of a certain celebrity fan, who caught their sound check at Electric Picnic.
“Wayne Coyne was standing there, side of stage with a cup of coffee,” Baird recalls. “That was one of the last shows we played without a drummer. We’d already decided we were going to get one. We had pencilled in when the auditions were going to be and everything! I remember talking to him after the soundcheck and he was like, ‘Awh, I love the drum machine, it’s amazing. Don’t ever get a drummer!’ I shat myself! I wussed out and went, ‘Yeah, yeah, we won’t!’ He was like, ‘Definitely don’t’ and I was like (adopts suitably terrified squeal) ‘No, No’…”
Whether they’ve lost the Flaming Lips man’s support or not remains to be seen, but one thing’s a given: TDCC can hang a ‘Gone Tourin’’ sign on their Bangor bedrooms for the next year – and count themselves lucky if they get home in time for Christmas dinner. Any particularly big goals bugging them for 2010?
“We’re looking to make some celebrity friends, especially in New York,” chirps Halliday.
“Yeah!” Baird interjects. “We were chatting earlier about how we want to get into a celebrity fight with another band that we can beat up. We were talking about The Enemy because they’re all quite small, but we think they also might be quite hard. Then we decided that the Mystery Jets could be a good one. Worst part was we tried to have a bit of banter with them on Twitter and they didn’t reply.”
Well, that’s what I always say. Win some, lose some. Tweet the results.