The Jubilee Allstars do not rock - no, not
in the slightest. They're the sort of band
who would probably report such "rock"
activity to the authorities as being a breach
of the peace. What they do is something very
slow, introspective, moody, lo-fi, countryish
and pretty darn good. Evoking as they do
the sort of musical spirit that seeps languidly
through the work of Alex Chilton, they're
the best possible antidote to the big guitar,
lousy lyric sound that threatens to bludgeon
people into submission.
Originally on the Dead Elvis label, now with
the Sony offshoot, Lakota, the band who used
to be known simply as Jubilee, added the
Allstars for a variety of boring legal reasons
and impressed many with their first Lakota
EP, the truly wonderful By The End Of The
Night - which received a Melody Maker single
of the week accolade.
With a new EP in the shops, titled Which
Kind, we frog-marched bass player and singer
Fergus McCormack into a small room, shone
a very strong light into his eyes and accused
him of being a propagator of wilfully lo-fi,
country-tinged, melancholy music. He 'fessed
up soon enough: "We definitely have
country references in our sound, but we're
not really a country band in that respect.
The lo-fi thing is a bit strange. I think
we get called that because we're not very
good at playing. We also get a lot of Stars
of Heavens-type comparisons, if that's any
help." Yes or no on that one? "It's
sort of embarrassing because I idolised The
Stars of Heaven. I suppose for many people
writing about us, it's a sort of vindication,
because The Stars were one of the few bands
doing anything of worth back in the U2-dominated
sound of Irish music in the 1980s."
How do you answer to the charge of shoe-gazing?
"That's one I can't understand at all.
I remember when we did the John Peel session,
the sound engineer turned to us at one stage
and said "have you got any songs a little
less introspective?" and we didn't.
We can't help it, that's the way we write.
Our music may be a bit dour at times, but
we're not like The Red House Painters or
anything. Some people come up to us and say
we remind them of The Violent Femmes, a band
none of us has ever heard, or else they mention
all the 4AD bands. The reality is most of
our influences are American, particularly
bands like The Replacements and Big Star
with Gram Parsons thrown in too." Ever
worry about becoming a band for musos? "Yes."
For a band who regard recording on an eight-track
as tantamount to over-production and who
say they won't be doing many gigs in the
near future because "we've done two
recently", there's a feeling within
the industry that they won't be bothering
Bryan Adams on the stadium front this year.
The real danger, though, lies in Jubilee
becoming that most dreaded and sanctimoniously
worthy of entities - a critics' band. "That's
the way it's looking at the moment,"
says Fergus, "and it's not something
we can do anything about. But we don't want
to be like our heroes and have all the press
like us but not sell any records."
The Which Kind EP is currently available
on lovely seven-inch vinyl (which plays at
33 r.p.m., but even if you play it at 45
r.p.m. you still won't have any problem keeping
up) and also on less lovely Compact Disc.
At the other end of the spectrum, Creation
hopefuls Three Colours Red, one of the better
bands on the Brats tour, come back to play
Whelans, Dublin on Saturday night . . . On
quite the other hand, retro no-hopers Reef
are at the Red Box tonight, but the real
gig at the venue happens tomorrow night when
DJ extraordinaire Carl Cox gets down to business
(doors 11 p.m.) . . . By far and away the
best new Irish stuff around at the moment
is the debut EP by Roscommon band The Marbles.
Glam pop a gogo is the order of the day from
these excessively talented little urchins.
They play The Abbey Inn, Tralee tonight before
going off to do something in Paris, after
which they'll be at the Virgin Megastore,
Dublin on March 20th and Eamon Doran's on
March 21st.
|