Vulpine Howl

Shane Serrano is giving it to me straight.

“We’re not a competition band,” the drummer stresses. “I’ve seen lots of bands over time and all they do is enter competitions. We’ve never had a strategy. We sometimes try and make a plan, what would look good and what would sound good, but it never works for us. We just do our thing.”
Clearly, there’s no messing about with Fox Jaw Bounty Hunters. Then again, I’d expect nothing less from a group of straight-up rockers. So what makes a great live show?
“Diversity,” singer Ronan Mitchell nods.
“Being in the right frame of mind,” says the otherwise silent Sean O’Mahony.
“Good energy,” guitarist Morgan Nolan’s states. But clearly it’s Serrano who’s the publicity whiz in the band.
“A few pints of Guinness!” he grins.

It was less than a week ago when I got my first taste of Fox Jaw Bounty Hunters, during a forceful performance that would earn the Limerick quartet the title of Arthur’s Day Play On The Day Gegional Winners for the West and Mid-West. With booming baritone vocals and seemingly endless bravado, the gloom rock foursome made quite the impression on the judging panel.
What’s more, Dolans Warehouse was bursting at the seams with eager Fox Jaw fans, who, competition or no competition, were keen to see the local lads at work.
With four years of gigging behind them, Fox Jaw Bounty Hunters are by far the most experienced band in the competition. In the last nine months alone, they released their debut album, played the Main Stage at Indiependence and signed their very first autograph. I’m assuming this is going to give them an edge in today’s Hot Press cover shoot, but Mitchell tells me he’s not comfortable in front of the camera just yet.

“We can go on radio and play and talk about music, that’s easy! Photo shoots are a different story! But we’re delighted to get this far in the competition.”
“It happened so fast as well,” Serrano observes. “It was like, ‘I might apply for this thing’, and then all of a sudden being called to photo shoots in Dublin!”
The line-up in Limerick was so diverse, a fellow judge remarked that it was like comparing an orange and a spoon.
“Which is the good one?” Mitchell wonders. “Are we the orange?”
Hmm. I’ll get back to him on that. In the meantime, what’s the scene in Limerick like at the moment?
Serrano fields this one. “It’s changed a lot over the years but it’s always been this little gem of the Irish music industry. Brad Pitt Light Orchestra, We Should Be Dead, Windings, Giveamanakick, The Cranberries… over the years it’s just kept churning out bands. There were times when there was this amazing music scene and you had bands that no-one knew back in the day playing local pubs, like the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs and Crystal Castles. But it’s always been a struggle. People are a little afraid of what’s different I think.

“Then the fact that everybody knows each other means that everybody’s really nice to each other and everybody supports each other’s scene.”
Their debut album, The Devil In Music earned the band countless three and four star reviews when it was released back in May. For the uninitiated, Serrano describes it as, “something you’re going to like over time, rather than a pop gem you’ll be sick of after two weeks.
“It’s very different to trends at the moment,” he adds. “There’s no synth or ‘80s flashback moments.”
“It’s a grower,” Mitchell says. “One of the songs is called ‘That Old Chestnut’ because I had the riff for about four years and every time I’d play it, Morgan would say, ‘Ah, that old chestnut’!
“In the end, we gave our songs exactly what they needed,” he adds. “They’re all very personal, they’re all about our experiences being in Limerick, ‘Hatch Sixteen’ is even about Limerick. ‘Wasteland Overture’ is a song I wrote after reading The Road and I got a kind of post-apocalyptic story in my head that I thought really fitted the song.”

The Dolans massive will tell you that there’s a distinctly sinister edge to the Fox Jaw Bounty Hunters sound. Has Mitchell ever felt the need to write an upbeat, feelgood number?
“No!” he pains. “I would never try to lighten the tone of the lyrics, if the song didn’t need it.”
What did I tell you? Honesty, straight-up.

The Devil In Music is out now.