The Irish music scene is thriving at the moment, but a surprising number of exciting new acts are deciding to forgo vocals altogether, letting their music do the talking. What is behind the trend, writes LAUREN MURPHY
'IT'S ONLY WORDS, and words are all I have to take your breath away," sang the Bee Gees in 1968 – but if the brothers Gibb were regular patrons of Ireland's live music venues in 2010, they might have rethought that particular sentiment. It's true that the Irish music scene is enjoying a purple patch at the moment; as has been extensively documented, there is arguably more creativity, diversity and world-beating potential among our musicians now than ever before.
Yet there’s an unusual aspect to our musical “Golden Age”, too. It’s not so strange as to be deemed an anomaly, but the past two years – and to a certain extent, the past decade – has seen a sharp incline in the number of acts forgoing lyrics to accompany their melodies. 2010, in particular, saw the release of a number of high-profile albums, spread across multiple genres, all with one thing in common – they’re letting their music do the talking.
One of those albums is Strands, the debut solo album of producer Stephen Shannon, who also plays in Choice Music Prize-nominated band Halfset and on occasion with Adrian Crowley. Shannon has composed scores for several Irish films in recent years, but his solo project proper is a beautifully crafted collection of gentle instrumental electronica, richly infused with melody and imagination.
“I don’t have any words, I don’t have any expression in that way – but as long as I can remember, I’ve always been humming melodies, and trying to tie two very disparate things together in my mind, then rushing off to find an instrument to see if they work,” he says, nestled in his cosy Dublin studio. “That goes right back to when I was 13 or 14. I guess it just comes from the way I hear music. The first instrumental album I heard that really grabbed me was David Bowie’s Low; the whole B-side of that album is an electronic journey with Brian Eno. It was a really beautiful sound, really dark.”
Shannon has also witnessed the growth of instrumental acts first-hand in his role as a producer in recent years.
“I think it’s a really exciting development – and one which I wholeheartedly support, as you can imagine, because most of the music I opt to work with is instrumental,” he laughs. “But with music, when you put a lyric to a song, it has a very specific emotional identity. I mean, very few people listen to a song because they like the music; the vocal’s such a central part of a song. If you don’t like the vocal, you won’t ever listen to the song again. Whereas if you listen to instrumental music, it’s very much open to interpretation, right across language barriers.”
The universal power of wordless songs is certainly a theory that holds firm with Mick Roe, founder of up-and-coming Irish label Richter Collective, and drummer in the group that is fast becoming its crown jewel, Adebisi Shank. When I speak to Roe, he's on tour in Japan, where the band's driving, sharp-edged guitar-led rock is impressing Asian audiences. Enemies, their labelmates and fellow exponents of instrumental rock, have also toured Japan in recent months, while And So I Watch You From Afarhave been one of the most internationally acclaimed independent acts to hail from Northern Ireland in years.
“I think sometimes [writing music without lyrics] does help when it comes to breaking other territories – classical music and jazz would be really good examples,” agrees Roe. “I think sometimes lyrics can be overpowering for people. I’ve never really connected with lyricists, or over-analysed lyrics. Pretty much all the music we listen to has vocals, but we all just think of them as another instrument; easily replaceable by something else melodic or rhythmic. People don’t notice, or don’t make a fuss about, the lack of vocals in jazz or orchestral or classical music. I think some people just expect popular/rock music to include vocals. It’s a strange expectation, something I don’t really understand.”
Although not every band on the Richter roster is instrumental, Roe says that there has been a marked rise in the number of demos by lyric-free acts coming through their letterbox, although he’s also quick to refute the notion that the label is biased towards a certain sound.
But where has this relatively sudden glut of acts come from? Is it a natural process, a simple case of musical evolution? In that case, why isn't there as many similar acts making waves on the UK or US scenes, where instrumental music of any genre is seen as something of a niche? One man who's perfectly primed to answer such a question is journalist, promoter and author Leagues O'Toole. In 2006, he published The Humours of Planxty, a biography of the folk band. While Shannon and Roe are both open to the theory that Ireland's musical heritage and tradition of trad music may have subconsciously seeped into the mindset of this new generation of musicians, O'Toole isn't convinced.
“It’s certainly a nice idea, but I’m not sure how true it is,” he says. “Of course we all, to various degrees, were exposed to art of the instrumental music through the performances of traditional dances and slow airs, but I’m not sure we could liken the 21-year journey the uileann piper undertakes to master his/her instrument to that of the experience of a rock guitarist . . . The other thing is we all probably listen to more instrumental music than we do vocal music, anyway. Whether it’s music soundtracking TV or games, film scores, children’s toys, people humming, practising an instrument; instrumental music is a naturally ubiquitous element of our lives.”
Yet one factor that all three men agree on is the influence of Dublin band the Redneck Manifesto. Formed in 1998, the quintet have released a steady stream of well-received albums over the past decade, culminating in their most recent release Friendship– coincidentally released on Richter Collective in 2010.
“Going back 10 years, [they] had a real momentum,” says O’Toole. “Their audiences were getting bigger and bigger, and it was a young audience, and you felt like something big could’ve happened with them. But the fact is that they didn’t pursue that success, and remained at a certain level. Their music now is less angry but more sophisticated, and they remain an important band to Ireland, despite deliberately not lighting that fuse that would’ve seen them become an internationally successful band. I would say they certainly influenced a generation of bands themselves. You can hear it all over the place: Adebisi, Enemies, Cloud Castle Lake and so on.”
When contacted for his opinion on being seen as trailblazers, however, the band’s bassist Richie Egan was characteristically modest about their sway.
“It’s weird – I don’t think we would see ourselves as pioneers, to be honest. We came from a world where people put out records for themselves, and it just so happened that the music we were making was instrumental. We would have been listening to bands like Slint, Don Caballero and that sort of ilk, so that would have been were we took our cues from. Then, as now, we were just very happy to be able to make music together.”
