Soul Survivors

Following the success of their singles of 97 and 98 ( Laura Loves and She s So Young received praise, both winning Hot Press Single of the Fortnight ), south Co. Derry band Asterix are blowing people away with their brand new album, I Know Your Soul. This dark and different CD immediately stands out from the indie-pop crowd. Chatting to Donal Convery, the band s lead vocalist, I begin to understand why.
When he isn t singing, playing the guitar, and writing the kind of beautiful music that you find on I Know Your Soul, Donal works full-time as a maths teacher in a girls secondary school in Belfast. Wow! I say. What a cool maths teacher to have! The girls must love you!
Well, the rather shy Donal replies, I d be reluctant to say anything about playing in a band to them. But we were on a TV show called Kelly, and we were on it the same night as Boyzone. And all they were interested in was did we meet Boyzone, and what were they like, and one of the girls asked a question which I didn t understand to begin with, but then I realised what she was on about she was wondering why there was only one singer in the band. They were so used to boy bands.
Two of the other band members also work full-time one s a pharmacist and the other works for the food shop, Iceland while another is doing media studies. Do Asterix find it hard to juggle their blossoming musical career with their day jobs?
Initially it was difficult, admits Donal, but we all love doing it. You just put in the time and make the effort. It takes maybe two or three evenings out of your life in the week, for rehearsals and things like that, and then it s just a matter for your own self, how much you put into it after that, trying to write songs and that kind of stuff. I think it s harder for people that are close to you; they don t see so much of you. They have to be very patient.
Would you love to be full-time musicians?
Oh yeah. We ve been putting a lot of work into it; this is the culmination of two or three years work. We wouldn t be doing it if there wasn t that little dream that something would come of it. But it is good to have something else to fall back on. A lot of people would say we re very lucky in that way, but we would say in turn that it s not really what we want to do. We do want to be full-time musicians and be able to make a living at it.
Asterix s fruitful partnership with their record label should go a long way towards manifesting their dream. The band are signed to Schism Records, run by Peter Fleming, ex-bassist of Scheer, themselves attached to the prestigious 4AD label. With the business side well-looked after, Asterix s art has a good chance of flourishing. That art is beautifully exemplified by Pulse , the band s first single this year.
Pulse is different from our previous two singles, explains Donal, which were all poppy and nice and up-tempo. I think we chose it because it was different; we like the harmonies on it. We thought it had a sort of late 60s California feel to it, a Mamas and Papas sort of thing. We re very happy with the whole feel of it. It will take time for people to like it, but it was worth taking the risk.
Pulse carries a poignancy shared by many other tracks on I Know Your Soul. Some of Asterix s harmonies verge on The Beach Boy-esque, as they dive into your soul, dredging up all sorts of emotions. Many of these tracks describe universal human setbacks, like betrayal by someone you trust, or the loss of your loved one. I Know Your Soul is tinged by the kind of sadness which is actually healing to listen to, because it purges you. I ask Donal why it s there, and whether it was difficult to be so honest, and therefore vulnerable, in his writing and recording.
I think everybody goes through periods in their lives when they run into these kind of setbacks, he says. For me, the worrying thing about that is where do the next songs come from, when you ve already written those? Although I think as well that it s easy to write songs that are personal; it s difficult to make something up off the top of your head, something you haven t actually experienced. I think you need to have felt some kind of loss or fear or worry before you can actually write stuff like that.
I Know Your Soul is out now on Schism Records.