Stars in their eyes

They say that all good things come to those who wait, and for Derry/Belfast-based dance supremos The Japanese Popstars, that phrase couldn’t be more apt. Currently in the middle of a whirlwind of promo for their long-awaited second album Controlling Your Allegiance, it’s fair to say that Gareth Donoghue, Decky McLaughlin and Gary Curran are feeling more than a little relieved to get their opus out there and into the hands of the music-buying public.

“‘At fucking last!’ is the phrase that comes to mind when I think about the release of the second album,” laughs Gareth Donoghue over a pint in Belfast’s Stiff Kitten bar. “We’ve sat on it for the best part of a year. It was the same with our first album too, funnily enough. Maybe that’s part and parcel of the whole machine that is the music industry though. It’s our first time working with major labels, so it’s a learning curve for all of us. Virgin/EMI have reasons for doing what they’re doing I suppose. We just can’t wait to get it out there. It’s been sitting on computers for a long time and we’ve been writing a lot of new stuff since it’s been shelved, so we just want to get the so-called dreaded second album out and then start onto the third.”
A record that sees The Japanese Popstars take a huge, Godzilla-sized leap forward in terms of their sound, Controlling Your Allegiance bristles with ambition and showcases a band who are hellbent on taking things to the next level.
“We want commercial success but we want it on our terms,” asserts the musician. “It would be easy to continue making music to a formula that has given you a modest degree of success, but we want to progress our sound. I dunno about cracking the mainstream, but I think there are tracks on there that have and will get radio play and a little bit of commercial success will always be good for us. If it happens the way it did for The Chemical Brothers – where the mainstream found them and not the other way around – we’ll be very happy.”
A more melodic affair than their 2008 debut We Just Are (which this very magazine declared the best dance album of the year), Controlling Your Allegiance boasts collaborations with the likes of The Cure’s Robert Smith, Editors’ Tom Smith, Lisa Hannigan, Jon Spencer, James Vincent McMorrow and more, and while Gareth confesses it wasn’t the record they set out to make, he’s over the moon with the
end results.
“We didn’t want to re-do the first album all over again and musically speaking we wanted to progress, so we decided to do a few collaborations. For this one we wanted more of a commercial viability and having vocalists involved adds a new layer to the sound. Also for us guys, it was something we’ve always wanted to do, it was a great opportunity to work with people who you never would have thought you’d
collaborate with.
“We had a wish-list of acts that we wanted, based on who we all liked and what music we were into, and then had basic ideas for the album,” he continues. “Then we’d listen to them back and figure out who would work best on the track. About 70 to 80% of people that we thought of actually ended up on the album, which we really couldn’t believe. Looking back now we definitely didn’t expect the album to be as vocal-based as it’s turned out, and we never thought everyone would say ‘yes’, but they did, so it was fucking brilliant from our point of view. Getting in touch with these people was actually easier than it should have been.”
And while it may have taken a little longer to get in touch with the panda-eyed legend that is Mr. Robert Smith, his contribution to the track ‘Take Forever’ was definitely worth the wait and may even open the doors for future collaborations.
“I’m a massive Cure fan and when we wrote the track we immediately thought Robert Smith would be perfect for it, and thanks to our manager – who’s an expert hustler – we got his email address and got in touch. We heard nothing back for six months, but we didn’t mind as we figured someone like him would have better things to do, but then he eventually replied saying, ‘Sorry, your email went into my junk mail folder’, and then he asked us to send through ideas.
“That particular track was a big learning curve for us, as he’s so particular about his audio quality and his sample rates and he taught us a lot,” smiles Gareth. “We’re doing Bestival this year and I’ve never seen The Cure live, so that’ll be the night it hits home how cool it was doing a track with him. We’re playing on the same night as The Cure, so hopefully something might happen. It really depends on ferries and what time we arrive and what time they arrive, but Robert’s up for appearing onstage with us. He’s that nice a guy. He’s also remixing the track
himself too.”
At the time of our interview, The Japanese Popstars had just finished a string of Irish shows, and while arguably the band were always something of a square peg in a round hole in the NI music scene, performing on home soil remains hugely important for them all.
“It’s never been a conscious thing to try and remove ourselves from the scene, it’s just that we got over the water a lot quicker than some acts,” says Gareth. “I think that’s where the separation came from. It was a big move, but it was something that we needed to do. Hometown gigs are always great though. You have to turn your phone off about eight hours before them because you don’t want to offend anyone looking for a spot on the guest-list. Those gigs are always a double-edged sword. It should be the easiest show, but sometimes it’s the hardest because you actually know the people in the audience.
“A few nights before Belfast, we played in Dublin and had Lisa Hannigan come onstage with us to perform ‘Song For Lisa’ live. It was mad for her because she was onstage at 2.15am and everyone was raving and it was a bit of a culture shock for her. She did really, really well too. She was saying beforehand she couldn’t dance and had no rhythm, but from where I was standing she was getting it on and bouncing away!”
With the band’s star in the ascendent and the trio now receiving mainstream radio-play for their aforementioned track ‘Song For Lisa’, all the signs are pointing towards them being the next big breakout dance act. Of course, with success comes criticism, and we ask Gareth if he worries some of the more hardcore members of the dance community will turn against them once Controlling Your Allegiance hits record shop shelves?
“Not really, if it happens it happens. I don’t think we’re big enough to have a backlash,” he says modestly. “If you get these opportunities in life you gotta take them, and the music we made on this album is something that we’ll look back in ten years’ time and feel proud we did it.”

Controlling Your Allegiance is released by Virgin/EMI on June 17