It happens far too often in Irish rock music - meat and potatoes are rarely garnished with a decent dressing. As for the word "art", it's something that is looked on with a general air of disdain, a tasty leftover, perhaps, from the days of The Virgin Prunes when they played gigs in art galleries (and stuck pig's heads on stakes, leaving a trail of blood from entrance to exit.)
These days, art has taken a back seat, making way for little in the line of genuine or startling creativity. Enter stage left The Plague Monkeys, a Dublin band that has made a virtue out of interesting ideas, in the process salvaging the writing of terrifically artful, studio-enhanced songs (mention the word "ethereal" and you will spend the rest of your life listening to Vengaboys) from the jaws of obscurity. The band has recently released its second album, The Sunburn Index, arguably the best Irish release of this year and indisputably the only one that features an extremely judicious use of a bicycle bell. Stephen Roche would be proud of 'em.
Carol Keogh, lead singer of the band, says that when the band formed several years ago they knew exactly what they didn't want to be (i.e. ordinary). She has now lost what she describes as her "initial clarity of focus" and finds it difficult to remember being reactionary. "We didn't want to take a route that was driven by commercial aspirations, let's put it that way," she says by way of explanation. "We're not an archetypal pop band, which is why I find it hard to slot us into any particular genre."
Not in any way fixated with the idea of being pop stars and not in too much of a hurry to start a 50-date tour of Ireland's bars and clubs, it would be safe to say that The Plague Monkeys have a bit of an perception problem. The band don't play too often, but when they do, they try to "make it an event. We're not a band that people would come to see to talk over while they're at the bar. We don't want that kind of audience."
"People have reservations about seeing us live," Keogh affirms, suspicious that some people think the band studio-bound and gagged, but also quite aware that an audience requires a sense of expectation. "They think what they hear on record is not going to transfer onto the stage. We've worked very hard to ensure that it does. People need to come and see us to understand. I don't like the idea that people think the music mightn't cross over."
As to the perception of the band, just choose from any of the following and you won't be too far out of whack: studious, teensy bit arty ("We want to find organic ways to do loops," Keogh says without so much as a hint of a smile in her voice) and the owners of a darned good pop sensibility. The results aren't half as bookish as one would think. But wait!
"We are a bit nerdy, and two of us wear glasses! I'm the arty one - I studied fine art. Donal (O'Mahony, the band's resident studio boffin) has an honours degree in business studies, and he's now doing a masters in multimedia. The main aspects to what we do, work-wise, are motivation and organisation. I tend to look after those, while Donal is the person who would be perfectly happy to spend hours in the studio tweaking one sound. As for organic loops, it's what you do with them. Found and cutup sounds are more interesting. So yes, I suppose we're all quite studious, doing our little experiments in the corner."
From experimenting in studios and being on a small Irish Indie label to working part-time in a major record company, Keogh has experienced more facets of the music industry than most.
"Working in a major record company hasn't shown me anything that I didn't already know," she notes. "I'm more aware now that office space in a record company is just the same as office space elsewhere, and run the same way, except there are a lot of CDs around. There are people who work in record companies who are passionate about music, but I don't know how many there are.
"As for us, I don't see us fitting into the parameters of a major record company. Unless we were to accidentally write a storming single that would instantly catapult us into the top rungs of the charts, then there's no way a major company would invest in us. We're too much of a slow burner. It's become more and more imperative that the artists they sign give an immediate return on any kind of investment. That's what it's all about. It's got nothing to do with artistic merit.
`The public perception of record labels is a lot different to mine and to anybody who has seen it from the inside. There's this idea that it's a great coup to be signed by a major record label, and to have loads of money thrown at you. Equally, if that doesn't work out, if the return is not made after a time, there's a stigma attached to losing the deal, as if you've somehow failed. That's wrong and I disagree with it, but it seems to be the way the media and people, inadvertently or not, perceive it."
With soundtrack work completed for the directorial film debut of Conor McPherson (Saltwater, to be released early next year), The Plague Monkeys seem set to capture more souls than the average Jesuit. Carol Keogh, the former fine art student with a voice that is the epitome of fine art, leaves The Irish Times with a quote that will either make you want to dive into the world of The Plague Monkeys (if you haven't already done so) or damn them into the pit from whence they came. In the interim, Back Alley fans can cover their eyes and immediately turn the page.
"For me, Joseph Bueys is the artist that best represents the band - his ethos, his ideas. He had an interesting, fragmented way in which he put things across. He never seemed to think that anything needed to be finished. The process was what was really important."
Tony Clayton-Lea can be contacted at tonycl@esatclear.ie
The Plague Monkeys play Cork on November 12th (The Lobby) and November 13th (Half Moon Club). The band's second album, The Sunburn Index, is on the Crosstown label
