"Shake The Age"	Raygun
n/a	August 1995

"It's a lovely place," says Catchers' singer Alice Lemon, "but you're not going to get much done here in the way of becoming successful or anything." The "here" at issue is the almost painfully picturesque Northern Irish town of Portstewart, a tiny coastal village where sightseeing and even pub crawling beg the word "quaint". A nice place to visit, or live, but the Catchers, en route to becoming successful or something, are about to head off to the New World. If all goes well, right-thinking American indiepopheads will fall in love with their charming nature and their very wonderful evocative sound. Powered by the energetic guitar of lead singer/songwriter Dale Grundle and the strong, supple rhythm section of drummer Peter Kelly and bassist Ger Fitzgerald, the ultramelodic songs of the bands' debut Mute have a hooky sweetness that stands in stark contrast to the dark lyricism. As they traverse through shimmering acoustic folk (Beauty No.3 and Epitaph) and angular, edgier guitarpop (Hollowed and bittersweet single Shifting). Alice's angelic voice spins candyfloss around Dale's grim introspection, her self-described "la-la-la innocent little girlie-thing" intermingling with his rich lead vocals and romantic, disturbing lyrics. In all truth, Grundle hails from a nearby village even smaller than Portstewart. So small, in fact, that for him, Portstewart was where the action was. He grew up your average shy, smart kid, playing his artistic voice. Eventually he came to the epiphanic realization that music would be his life's work, and when the time came to record some demos, he invited Alice, whom he knew through her older brother, to help out. "I was thrilled about it of course," says Alice, "cause everyone knew Dale, cause he had left school and was somebody really cool, 'cause he had this flat and he didn't have his parents around and stuff." "She just blew the top of my head off," Dale remembers. "It just added this completely different dimension to my songs. I just knew that she had to be there." The cherubic Ms. Lemon found her voice singing along with Billie Holiday and Kylie on her bedroom radio. Like the heroine of some British film from the sixties, Alice's energy and talent and sheer personality were too big for the small-town constraints of Portstewart. If the soft-spoken Dale is the soul of the Catchers, then the more effusive Alice is the band's heart, her crystalline harmonies giving light to Grundle's darkness and in turn giving their music that little something extra to make it special. "The things that Dale writes about, I know exactly what he's saying without him having to explain it to me," she says. "I can relate to it so easily, it's like an instinctive reaction singing his lyrics, like singing something I'd like to say myself but don't have the ability to do. I mean I've tried to write poetry when I was in really deep depressions, but it was embarrassingly bad." Equally influenced by Kerouac and both Dylans as it is by Spiritualized and the Jesus and Mary Chain (whose sonic experimentalism is evinced in Catchers' electrically vibrant live performances), Grundle's songwriting is fraught with the dramatic intensity of Irish spiritual forebears like Van Morrison. Asked how he sees himself, Dale takes the piss, calling himself "a sad alcoholic poet." Musing on his career, he adds, "It's a weird thing to do with your life. If I hear someone talking to me or I read it in print, you know, 'Dale Grundle, blah-blah-blah songwriter,' just to see that, it sounds totally weird. When did that happen? When did I get to that stage?" It should be noted that for all intents and purposes, this is the blah-blah-blah songwriter's first real interview, a process he usually avoids by allowing the more ebullient Alice to act as spokesperson. "I muttered a few words on the radio once," he says softly, "but that's about it. I enjoy what I do, and I feel I have to do what I do, but to be put in the position where I have to explain what I do or give reason why I do it or how I do it just seems a bit too much." "It's not like explaining a job,"says Alice. "It's like explaining your whole personality." The Catchers' songs expose more of Dale's passion than any conversation over coffee and cocktails ever could. "That's the way I express myself," he says. "I don't tend to really talk that much. I wouldn't say I'm the most articulate person, but given time to put things into lyric form, I can give a lot more. It feels weird to keep on explaining." Alice, of course, has no such trouble and is glad to discuss her friend's art. As Dale sits beside her, she watches as he sips a pint and explains the central theme of his songs: the passage into adulthood, the moment of childhood's end when the world loses its candy-coloured glow and the blood and bone become visible. "Some of the lyrics were written when Dale was like, 14," Alice says, "and he would add them onto some lyrics he'd write now, looking back on experience. So it is about a loss of innocence because half of the song he was innocent and young, and now he's more experienced. It's like reading an old diary and commenting on what you experienced before." From Portstewart to Dublin to London to a chateau in France (where Mute was recorded with producer Mike Hedges), Catchers have been fortunate enough to escape the isolated place where they came of age. As with pop bands since the dawn of time, the music has enabled them to live a life very different from the work-pub-bed trap that is the future for most of their old friends. "Coming into a situation where you find yourself involved with all this music and culture that you never knew existed, especially coming from somewhere that is so isolated, can be a real eye-opening experience," Alice explains. "Through Dale's songs, which are saying 'We've got to leave, we've got to get on with some kind of life,' we've been able to not be stuck. It's about being able to do something that's from inside of you instead of some kind of life that's forced on to you. And everyone can relate to that, 'cause everyone's felt stuck sometime." Ever unstuck, Catchers have since taken up residence in the concrete Brooklyn wilderness, light years from Portstewart, geographically and spiritually. It's an odd place to find the band, but they're used to being a bit out of the loop. "I don't think we fit in," Alice says, with no small pride, "especially when you look at bands like Elastica and Oasis and all those. That's a completely different ballgame from what we're trying to do. Maybe we're just too honest."