Their Tide Has Come

Here are some songs that make everyone happy; ‘You Can Call Me Al’, ‘Hey Ya’ ‘Pumped Up Kicks’; three tracks that happily bounce out of the stereo and instantly jerk everyone within earshot into high spirits, and possibly their go-to dance move. A rather impressive reaction, given that it stems from Paul Simon’s seminal ode to a midlife crisis, Outkast’s portrayal of a dead-end relationship and Foster The People’s bone-rattling depiction of the Columbine High School massacre.

Songs like these prove a crucial point; whether we realise it or not, our playlists are full of shiny, happy numbers with sneakily depressing undertones.
The topic comes up naturally in conversation with Johnny Holden, the lead vocalist and keyboard player with Dublin disco rockers This Club. “The songs sound upbeat,” he warns me of debut album Highlife, “but a lot of the lyrics are actually pretty dark, some of them are really dark.”
The most striking track on the record, the almost a cappella ‘You Lie You Get More’ is a perfect example.
“The song is about how the world is quite a dishonest place and how you have to lie to get on in life.”
In a particularly defeatist moment, I suggest that the average human probably doesn’t have enough pure and happy thoughts in their head to fill an entire pop album.
“No,” Holden agrees. “There isn’t enough happiness in the world to fill one.”
Hardcore mutual brooding is hardly what I expected from an interview with what appears to be the happiest band in Dublin.
Having made a decent impression on the Irish music scene under the name Hoarsebox, Holden, along with bassist Kieran Walkin, guitarist Philip Broadbery and drummer Max Carpio repackaged themselves as This Club last year, taking their summery, feelgood sound with them.
“There’s fucking everything on this album,” Holden laughs, “from glockenspiel to electric drums to violin to pencil sharpener… there’s actually pencil sharpener on one song! It’s very hard to hear, but it’s there. There’s just a lot more going on than before.
‘Everyone else’s job has gotten harder except mine. Actually, mine’s gotten easier! Like, Kieran who used to just play the bass and sing and now plays the bass, sings and plays synthesizer. Phil, who plays guitar, now plays synth as well and Max playing drums also has to operate some sort of computer down the back. And I get to be out front taking all the glory!”
Holden has conveniently come up with the term “speed calypso” to describe the revamped This Club sound, which mixes darting synth lines and guitar riffs with four-part harmonies and high-energy melodies.
“I’d call it a disco pop album,” he considers. “It’s very dance-y. It’s short and it’s sweet and it’ll put a bit of a smile on your face and a shuffle in your bum for 30 minutes. We’ve been pretty successful with that in recent gigs. It usen’t be that way, but the last three or four gigs in London and Dublin have been very successful in terms of getting people dancing.”
I’m guessing this is partly down to the band’s debut single, a hip-shaking soul pop number called ‘I Won’t Worry’.
“That song has done extraordinarily well, we couldn’t believe how well,” Holden reflects. “The video was shot on the only sunny day of the year of 2011. That helped.”
The same video has racked up 80,000 views on YouTube and counting, to the confusion of many Dubliners who just can’t fathom how someone managed to make their home town look so good.
“There’s messages on YouTube saying, ‘Where was this shot? Barcelona? Rome?’ Nope, it’s Temple Bar! The Temple Bar trust sent us a thank you afterwards because it pictures it in a really good light.”
Also doing the rounds on Facebook and Twitter is the band’s cover of En Vogue’s sultry 1992 classic ‘My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)’, which has already gotten the seal of approval from Dawn Robinson herself.
“We didn’t really believe it at first,” Holden says, “because we put the video up and literally 24 hours later we got a comment that she left. Our initial response was, ‘Ah, one of our mates is pulling our legs,’ so we kept it kind of quiet but we found out through Twitter that it actually is her. I don’t know how she was able to find out so quickly, unless she was Googling herself all day. I hope I don’t end up like that, just Googling myself all day…”
Luckily, Highlife has attracted enough attention to keep Holden away from the computer for a while, even if some fans are reticent to admit their affection for the band’s candy-coated pop.
Blokes tend to say, ‘The missus loves that.’” Holden confides. “They won’t admit that they like it themselves!”
For all the morose subject matter on Highlife, there’s no denying the mood-lifting impact of This Club’s debut.
“Highlife is named after a type of African pop music, which is this kind of guitar-based pop from the ‘80s and ‘90s,” Holden explains, “but it’s also the name of a beer that we liked to drink when we were making the album. But it’s about the sound of the music being high, of feeling good and things being kind of, well… easy.”

Highlife is out now on Warner Music Ireland. This Club play the Sea Sessions, which take place from June 29 to July 1 in Bundoran. See stage breakdown on hotpress.com