Shiels Keeps Turning: Hot Press checks in with Robyn G. Shiels

Robyn G Shiels has some changes to make. The perennial outsider, the eternal loner, the grouch never invited to the party – the County Derry songwriter’s deep-seated odd-man-out persona, which has been established over long, agitated years at the coal-face, could suddenly be a bit more difficult to convincingly pull off.

Back in November, and in the face of competition from the likes of Little Matador, Sullivan and Gold and VerseChorusVerse, Shiels’ album, The Blood Of The Innocents, carried off the main prize at the NI Music Awards.
Characteristically, Robyn was at the bar when the announcement was made, but the abiding image of the night was clear: one of our more interestingly peripheral figures was having his (deserved) moment centre-stage.
No-one who has listened to the record could be surprised by the recognition. But we’ll attribute Robyn’s own visible shock to the fact that during the tortuous five years between recording and release Innocents was less an album, than some half-acknowledged poltergeist keeping him up through the night.
“I’ve never really been one for shying away from a song wherever it feels the need to run to – usually up a darkened alley. I’m a bit too country to be thinking I’m the shit. You are talking to a fellow who calls his own songs (every one of them) ‘The Greatness’, even in the bad old days.”
In truth, it felt like last year’s award was only partially attributable to The Blood Of The Innocents. There was a sense that it was also a nod towards Shiels’ continued example: his durability, his ever-evolving catalogue of tunes, and his gift for collaboration.
At the moment he is working on a project with his old mates, Therapy?, which sounds like a departure for everyone involved (“It’s an avant-garde black noise project with Roisin (Desert Hearts), and Herb Magee(Goons/Lafaro) all playing their parts”), while also finishing off the long-running Rs.sN record with another old pal, Steve Nolan ("It’s full on sinister with strings”).
But thankfully all this extra-curricular work doesn’t seem to be eating into the commitments of his day-job.
“I’m now in Start Together Studios working on the next EP with Ben,” he says. “At present we’ve five tunes of Grimolica. A bit of banjo, bit of bow-saw etc. It should get us a bit more up to date on where we’re at right now. It’s stripped back. A mate said it sounds like the Johnny Cash/Rick Rubin period. I’ll take that for what’s it worth.
"Hopefully it’ll spread its devil’s wings come May or June, followed by an Irish tour and then I can concentrate on the next 'award winning' album.”