With 'industry stuff' sorted, Two Door Cinema Club hope their parents will finally be able to relax, writes JIM CARROLL
TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB have certainly not wasted much time. In the space of about 18 months, the Bangor trio have gone from being one of a clatter of acts to watch on the Northern Ireland scene to clinching a record deal, releasing a debut album and booking enough gigs to keep them on the road until next Christmas.
It strikes you that there must have been one hell of a work ethic at play, such has been their rise. Frontman Alex Trimble laughs at this suggestion. The band’s indecent haste, it seems, came down to a third party: parents.
“You’re right, we didn’t hang around,” he says. “We were very determined to prove to ourselves and to other people that we could do this. Shortly after the band started, we left school, so it was a case of going to university or giving the band a go. Once we decided it was going to be the band, we gave it full attention.
“But the people we really had to prove ourselves to were sceptical parents. They were unsure, naturally enough, if we were making the right decision, so we had to work harder and probably faster than other bands around at the time.”
It helps that the nuts and bolts of the TDCC operation are very much present and correct. Debut album Tourist Historyis an infectious, joyous affair in which the band's shiny indie-electro pop is to the fore. There are also oodles of songs, such as boom tune Something Good Can Work, which will sound swell on any radio show that will have them and which will also do the job live. Growing up, it was always strong, melodic pop songs which caught Trimble's ear. "I was brought up by parents to the sound of a lot of pop music," he says. "There was never anything weird or abstract, so I grew up to a soundtrack of really strong, hook-filled pop songs with great melodies, so that has always been very important to me.
“When we started TDCC, there were a lot of indie pop bands like Death Cab for Cutie and Bloc Party around. They all had that indie electro vibe, but they also had great pop songs.”
Before getting together with Kevin Baird and Sam Halliday, Trimble served his apprenticeship in jazz and wedding bands “because music was what I wanted to do. I took every opportunity that came along to play with others and in front of people. The people in the wedding band weren’t old grizzled musicians or anything like that – they were about four or five years older than me.”
Trimble knew Baird from his days in the Scouts, while Halliday was an old school pal of his. After the original drummer left – and was never replaced – TDCC began to find their feet.“For our first year as a band, we played fairly exclusively in Belfast,” recalls Trimble. “But there’s only so much that you can do there. The Belfast scene is a brilliant scene, but it’s very self-contained. It’s changing now because there seem to be far more connections to the bigger industry emerging.
“Then we started playing shows in England and touring a lot over there and we got all the industry stuff sorted. All the people we worked with were in London and we were recording in London, so it just made logistical sense to move over.”
Sorting the “industry stuff” saw the band hooking up with hip French electronic pop label Kitsuné. The band have also signed a publishing deal with Transgressive and inked a US recording deal with Glassnote, and have worked with impressively sharp producers Lexx (Little Boots, Björk) and Eliot James (Bloc Party). Trimble is certain that such moves will help TDCC in their quest to stay in this game for the long run.
Tourist Historyis on Kitsuné. Two Door Cinema Club play Belfast's Stiff Kitten tonight, Dublin's Button Factory tomorrow and Derry's Sandino's on Sunday
