Q&A:MIKE STEVENS, head honcho of the Popical Island record label and indie-pop geek talks to
EOIN BUTLER
There are plenty of bookish Irish indie bands out there. What makes Popical Island bands different?We're outsiders, I suppose. We're too old to be "buzz" bands and too eccentric to be cool. Popical Island is like the Isle of Man. It's full of no-tailed cats. All our acts are maybe . . . (laughs) missing some crucial component. You can always spot a fellow dork from across a crowded dancefloor.
There's a Russian expression: two sailors know each other from afar.Exactly, one of my favourite bands on the label is called the Yeh Deadlies. They look at their shoes when they're playing and they rarely communicate with the audience. If you saw them live you would probably think, well, these guys aren't even trying. But they're actually trying very hard. Basically, we're all just really shy people who love pop music.
You don't come across as a tyrant but I understand you rule your own band, Groom, with an iron fist.Ha ha. Well, it kind of has to be that way. Some of the guys are a lot younger than me. They have other jobs. Some of them even play in other bands. So they need a bit of structure, you know?
You chose your drummer based on the facial expressions he makes while drumming.Yeah, he's from Cork and he's a kind of crazy guy. When he drums he makes these monster faces. They're really gruesome. Anyone that intense has got to have a screw loose.
You apparently invited another musician to join the band because he's from Belgium and you figured there aren't that many people from Belgium in bands.That's also true. He's very reserved. Very measured. He never raises his voice or loses his cool. We kinda figured it was because he was this completely unique person. Then we went to Belgium. Turns out they're all like that over there.
You wrote your most recent album abroad.Yes, for this album I went to France for six months with my wife and children and stayed in a town called Carcassonne, which is near Toulouse. I went jogging every day and wrote many of the songs in my head as I went along.
The band is called Groom. The album is called 'Marriage'. You even told me your favourite Woody Allen film is 'Husbands and Wives'. Any particular theme there?No. I'm married eight years. My wife has heard some of the songs and occasionally asks: "Is this song about me?" And I've said: "No." (Laughs.)
Have you ever lied in that situation?No. The songs are stories. But even when a song is inspired by people I know, it's still not necessarily about them. There's one song on the album that's about a man who feels sick on the way home from work. It's psychosomatic. He just can't face seeing his wife again. It's a very generic story but I had to specifically assure my wife that it wasn't autobiographical.
Is it tricky balancing work and family commitments?My wife Mide is very patient. She'd want to be, I suppose. We have three girls, aged six, four and two. During the summer we did an all-day Popical Island showcase upstairs in Whelan's. My four-year-old, Anna, ran onstage during our performance. I think, secretly, she wants to be in the band. She wants to play the drums.
Tell her to practise her monster face.Ha ha . . . I hadn't thought of that.
Some of your influences come from outside the music world. In Ireland we're obsessed with Seamus Heaney.He's obviously a great craftsman but I would lump him in with that whole singer-songwriter brigade in that his work all about being Irish and eating potatoes and being hung up about the Famine. I prefer Philip Larkin and TS Eliot and Rimbaud.
Rimbaud must be pretty popular on Popical Island. Isn't there another band on the label called Drunken Boat?They're not on our label but they're friends of ours. Rimbaud is obviously this extremely romantic figure but I find him extremely dark and disturbing too.
Any rock'n'roll war stories?Not really. We did play a gig in Belgium that time. On the way back to where we were staying, it had started to snow. So we wrote in the snow on some car windows "Belgium is dull". Other bands would probably trash their hotel room. We write in snow on car windscreens. That's how pathetic we are.
Finally, if Popical Island could have one fantasy signing, who would it be?Well, if you asked anyone on the label they would give you a different answer. But I'd have to say The Kinks. They just kind of embody everything we're about. They're rock. They're pop. They're folk. They wrote great songs and told great stories. But they were also slightly perverse.
Groom will be launching their new single This Golden Age on November 10th in Shebeen Chic, 4 South Great George’s Street, Dublin 2
