The Saint is coming!

Ivan St John is some way through recounting his musical biography in Dublin’s Library Bar. The local pop songwriter has just been expounding on the benefits of singing in St Patrick’s Cathedral Choir as a youth. Then the story takes a rock ‘n roll detour.

“After the choir, I got into drugs and stuff,” he shrugs, nonchalantly. “The fallen choirboy! [laughs] I started listening to hard house, the music at the time. It’s weird, the contrast between the sacred and the more soulless thump-thump-thump music...” The Ivan St John story itself is one of contrasts – the choirboy who becomes the frontman in a rock band, the debut album of love songs in debt to classic ‘60s pop which is to be followed by a “new take on psychedelic… about the cosmos or something.” He began his musical career under the ‘Pinky’ moniker, his school nickname, but switched to Ivan St John, his middle name, when he started to consider the long term picture. “I just don’t wanna be called Pinky when I’m 50,” he explains. “So it’s better to change now!” Childhood and maturity. The Beatles and hard house. There’s a lot to Ivan St John, and, as his debut Up To Snuff has just been released, it’s the perfect time to look at his past, present and future. To begin the begin…
“My mam says I sang before I talked. When I went to school I used to record this crap with a friend of mine who lived around the corner, because he used to have a double tapedeck. We used to make these sprawling metal songs that had no form at all.” Does he still have any of those recordings? “No, I wish I had!” The next step was being selected to sing in the choir. As he runs through his daily routine, which, with school, brought him from half seven in the morning to eight in the evening, choir practice begins to sound like enlisting in the army. “It actually was like the army!” he laughs. “We used to get paid as well, and we’d have different ranks of choirboys. And it was weird when my voice broke. Traumatic, big time! I’d meet loads of people from the choir and if they’re not actual musicians they’re involved in promotion. It kind of sticks with you – it’s a really cool education.”
Next came his temporary ’fall from grace’ during which time he began producing hard house music. The switch to guitar came with an increasing love for mid-period Beatles and the sounds of the ‘60s, influences which reveal themselves on Up To Snuff. Used to spending days painstakingly programming drum patterns in his bedroom, getting a conventional band together with Liam Marley and Ray Murphy made for a welcome change. “Yeah, to be able to knock out a song in ten minutes… The two of them are ridiculous musicians,” says St John. “Liam didn’t even play bass, he just started to save me – he’s one of those depressing people that’s brilliant at everything musically.”
St John, a self-confessed obsessive and control freak, had found kindred spirits. “ We obsessed over this record, big time. I spend a long time before we even went to record it, at home on a computer plotting out every single little element of the songs. Then we rehearsed it like hell for months and went over to Chicago.” The band spent two weeks at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studios with Rob Bochnik, where everything began to come together. “It just seemed like the perfect place. Steve Albini had just bought all vintage gear – we used bits and pieces of different drumkits, some from the 1920s, real sweet sounding, all amazing amps.…” Getting it completed wasn’t all smooth sailing, however. “It was really hard,” St John admits. “We even went to Abbey Road and mastered it there and we had to go back again because I wasn’t happy!” You get the impression with unlimited funds and time, he could head into Brian Wilson/Axl Rose territory. “It could easily happen. I think it’s good not to have much money! But everybody’s really proud of the record. We made it uncompromisingly. Essentially I only ever wrote the songs because I wanted to hear those type of songs. Nobody really makes them anymore.”
And neither will St John for long. “We did [Up To Snuff] almost as a concept, to try and record an album that’s really organic and harks back. I don’t really want to be a nostalgia artist though. The next album will be way different... I would like eventually to have an album where you have bits of everything. The next record is going to be massively informed by much more contemporary stuff. I’m big into Grandaddy at the moment. [Japanese artist] Shiina Ringo. Who’s the guy who writes songs on videogames? Hipster Youth. They’ll probably have a bigger influence.” So essentially he’s planning to make a gospel electro-funk synth album on an old Nintendo? He laughs. But he just might. Watch this Saint. As for Up To Snuff, he thinks it will hold up, whatever direction he goes in the future. “I wanted to make something timeless, that could have been written at any point in the past. I hope people will be able to go back in 20 years’ time and it will sound as good as it does now.”

Up To Snuff is out now. You can watch the video for 'There You Stand' on hotpress.com now.