Sound Men Altogether

You never know in whose footsteps you walk. Dubliners trod a map of Ulysses every day of the week. 20 kilometres up the county on a late September afternoon, the four boys from Delorentos are taking breaks from having their picture taken on the cliffs overlooking the Irish Sea to point out local historical and psychogeographical landmarks. Just over that rise of hill George Harrison holidayed as a kid. Out yonder lies an island purported to be marked by St Patrick’s gargantuan footprint. The composer Frederick May spent his last days in a nursing home close to here. Bono and Edge were baptised into the Shalom prayer group on this very beach.

As kids these four musicians – Rónan Yourell (vocals, guitar, piano), Kieran McGuinness (vocals, guitar), Níal Conlan (bass, backing vocals) and Ross McCormick (drums, backing vocals) – used to kick football on the pitch beside St Ita’s, which is less a psychiatric institution than an estate or village unto itself. There’s a peculiar atmosphere here, the sort of remote, sea-lapped end of the world vibe one might get in Cornwall or Findhorn.
Not quite Wicker Man territory, but still, a film location waiting to happen.
Delorentos’ practice space is close by, and they’re only just starting to realise how lucky they are to be able to forge their songs far from the cramped, smelly, noisy rehearsal rooms of the fleshpots. The sea is a constant, sighing presence. There’s an expansiveness about the area, a sense of infinite sky and sea, that puts the band’s sound entirely in context.
Delorentos’ second album You Can Make Sound is a strident and supremely confident record, all the more surprising because it was recorded while the band had effectively split. Following a run of bad luck in business compounded by a period of live inactivity, Rónan Yourell grew listless and confused and announced that he was leaving the group.
“We got confused, sidetracked,” recalls Kieran McGuinness, sat beside his bandmates in a Portrane bar. “We toured and toured the first album and then we went back in and started writing songs, and all of a sudden we weren’t playing gigs. And it’s apparent to us now how important it was to go out and play. You feel like you’re alive, a functioning band, you’re real, and you can see the whites of people’s eyes and gauge a reaction straight away.
“But we spent months standing in the rehearsal space and getting further into our own heads, and I think maybe we began to be a little careless with each other. We organised deals to release the first album in the UK, and began to see it as our next avenue, got out of the original independent deals we’d done ourselves, followed this golden chalice of releasing it in Australia and Japan and stuff.
“And then that fell through, and I think it hit us all pretty hard. It affected our relationships, we were putting pressure on each other. By Christmas 2008 we’d recorded 18 demos of songs, ten of which are on the album. But when we came back in January, Ro said, ‘This isn’t what I want to do anymore.’ At the time I couldn’t believe it, but now I can understand entirely. It could’ve happened to any of us, me or Níal or Ross, if it wasn’t Ró.”
All bands go through such sloughs of despond. If musicians withdraw from the social stimulus of touring, they very easily fall prey to a sort of collective depression.
“In a lot of ways it was a very unreal period for me,” says Rónan. “It’s only by having a place like this (Portrane) that you can make the music that we were able to make, but you lose perspective. I felt a bit lost.”
“I remember our last gig had been in Belfast,” adds bassist Níal, “and it was a real damp squib of a gig, and that day when Ró told us what he felt, I remember a feeling of, ‘We’ve had so many amazing times, playing in Texas, playing in Italy, Canada, and this gig that we didn’t enjoy couldn’t be the last gig.”
Kieran: “We were all pretty shocked and rallied around with our friends. We were being asked what was happening, ‘cos we had cancelled a gig or two. And then we realised we were going to have to be honest with people and tell them what was going on. So the three of us decided we weren’t going to continue as a band, because without any one of us it isn’t Delorentos.
“So we talked to Ro and decided we would all end it together, and in the process we listened to the 18 songs that we recorded. And we all realised that the songs were very good. So we announced we were breaking up and would do a final release, decided to release four or five of the songs. Then we talked to our engineer, Gareth Mannix, and he said, ‘What are you talking about? This is a great album. You have to record this.’”
Rónan: “When we all listened to the songs, I felt they deserved to be put down, even just for ourselves. I knew the belief the rest of the guys had, and listening back to the demos, I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t.”
Which all sounds like one of those intense marital scenarios were the couple embarks on a trial separation – or at the very least, a series of heated all-night discussions – in order to reaffirm whether or not they have a relationship.
Kieran: “We didn’t know what was going to happen, we were feeling our way through all these options. All of a sudden we were back standing in a practice space doing all the things we would be if we were a band.”
Níal: “The interesting thing was it wasn’t actually just the four of us – Gareth was there. I know that made it easier. His attitude was, ‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re a band and I’m gonna treat you like four people that are making an album.’ That helped, and he carried that all the way through the recording of the album.”
Kieran: “But it was all still a little bit tense, and I was a bit confused by Ró’s enthusiasm for the songs. I was like, ‘What does this mean?’ But I remember we were a couple of weeks into working through the songs, and Ró went, ‘Here K, what do you think...’ He called me by my nickname, and he hadn’t done that in three months, and I know it sounds silly but it was then I thought maybe we could make this work. He was relaxed and we were relaxed and it was like, ‘This is working again.’ We had plenty of discussions outside cafes, we talked and talked for hours and then we decided we were going to get back together.”
But, as the man said, in dreams begin responsibilities.
“We were sat there going, ‘What are we gonna do?’ Kieran laughs. “’We’ve told people that we’re breaking up and now we’re coming back three or four months later.’ I’ve never heard of a band doing that, and I knew we were going to get shit about it, but that’s fine.”
Well, it tales a lot of guts to say you’ve changed your mind.
“That’s basically what happened,” Kieran affirms. “None of us realised how much the album represented that period we were going through until we actually heard it afterwards. The last song, ‘I Remember’, we had kind of adapted that to be the last song on our last album, it was about that whole period: ‘Standing on the estuary/The estuary’s asleep/These stones must think it’s strange for us to have to change...’ And then the song ‘You Can Make Sound’, that idea...”
He pauses, trying to put shape on what’s been a bizarre year, before concluding with this:
“What that sentence represents became a sort of mantra for us.”

You Can Make Sound is out on October 9.