Four summers ago the radio waves were awash with the sun-kissed sound of The Thrills, their woozy ways had us all California dreaming for the duration of the hazy season.
The Dubliners cruised through the success of their debut ‘So Much For The City’ – its key singles flooring festival crowds across the globe; ‘Big Sur’, ‘Santa Cruz’ and ‘One Horse Town’. Its follow-up, ‘Let’s Bottle Bohemia’, turned up the heat but stalled in the critical stakes, and the five Thrills got burnt in the process.
After two years hidden away without a peep, it was more a question of whatever happened to The Thrills and not Corey Haim. What did happen was they convened to make the album that was to make or break them, retreating back to not only their hometown for inspiration but their own lives before music changed everything.
With such anticipation awaiting their return, The Thrills chose to stage an intimate comeback show at Clash’s Sunday Sessions party in London to showcase their most personal work yet. The songs on new album ‘Teenager’ deal with the innocence of youth and here they were about to debut these songs live to a bar full of all-day revellers.
It was all about the energy. It was all about getting us back in a room and all the takes had to be 110% exciting; there was no room for anything else.
Some hours before, Clash gathered the band together, fresh off the plane from Dublin, and tried to allay their fears with the distraction of an interview and the comfort of words…
Last time we spoke was upon the release of ‘Let’s Bottle Bohemia’, which ultimately faced a response that paled to that of your debut. How was life for you after that album and what did you think of its reception?
Conor: There was definitely a mixed reception to the last album. It was an awkward record. But whenever we get approached by random people in the street it’s usually to say that it’s their favourite record of ours. When your first record goes well it’s very easy to get a little bit cocky. We were very sure of ourselves at the time – in a good way – and we were on a roll. I think, yeah, we probably thought that everyone was gonna love the record and get it. Some people did and some people clearly didn’t, but that’s what gives a band character and it’s part of a band’s story to deal with that. We took it in our stride… There was a couple of dark nights, I won’t pretend, but by and large I think we got over it and picked ourselves up.
There must have been the challenge to live up to your debut on your second album, so how did the pressure fare this time around?
Conor: Well see, this record actually feels like a debut record.
Daniel: It feels like more pressure than both of them.
Conor: Yeah, there’s more on our shoulders on this one. I think we’ve given everything to this record – we really put our heart and soul into it…
Daniel: With the first and the second, I don’t think we ever were even thinking about pressure. With the first one, we signed and we went so quickly to record an album, and everything just happened then. The second one, it was almost just like the momentum got us through that. Only after the second one was the first time that we actually had time off to actually sit down and go, ‘This is what’s happened…’
The second album followed the first quite quickly, and then there was the lengthier time between then and now. Do you wish you’d been able to get this one out before now?
Conor: To be honest with you, we never intended to take quite this long on the new record, but we certainly intended after the touring and promotion of the second record to take a break – we definitely needed to do that. Everyone needed a time out. We had a few rough ideas and we hit a wall with them almost immediately. So everyone dispersed for a few months and started getting their lives organised. And then we regrouped, and when you regroup it takes a few months to get back – you don’t just pick up where you left off, you have to build up and get back into the stride of things.
There seems that ever-present theme of escapism on this record. Your debut was an escape to the US from home, the second was slightly darker, an escape from the trappings of fame and attention, but this one is escaping back to the sanctuary of home and so you’ve come full circle. What does Dublin represent to you now?
Conor: Just before we signed, I suppose we were all a little bit resentful. We weren’t very happy there; we were bored to bits by it and wanted to get out of there. Then we spent four and a half years touring and on a tour bus, so I think by the end of it we were actually all very much looking forward to getting home. We were living at home again and getting our lives together again, so I think there definitely was an appreciation for it and I think we were more interested in acknowledging it in the songs subtly and we didn’t wanna be projecting anything else; we wanted it to be very natural and real and honest. I do think it’s far more closer to home than the previous ones. But it’s also a record about youth; that’s where we spent our youth so it tied in like that.
The lyrics are very introspective and deal a lot with retrospection and regression. What led you to think back to your youth as inspiration?
Conor: It kind of crept in for a while. Maybe the second record was a little bit cryptic in places, and I kinda liked the idea of doing something that was very direct and honest. It’s usually a mixture of songs or films or books you’re reading. I was kind of enjoying the early Beatles songs. The original idea was an album called ‘Teenager’, and ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’… Nothing too grand but that was just of that world and of that time. Maybe if we had churned the record out quickly it would have stayed in that world, but because we spent a bit longer then I think it started to become a record about… It’s still a record about adolescence, but also being able to leave it behind and what I imagine it will be like when you’re even older. So all aspects of it.
There was a couple of dark nights, I won’t pretend.
Teenage life is being played out in music by those that are experiencing it first hand, like The View and Arctic Monkeys for instance. How does your teenage opera compare to theirs? Can you sing about teenage life if it’s a decade gone?
Padraic: It’s not like an album of youth about getting in fights in the street or going to kebab shops like the Arctic Monkeys. It’s an album about youth but from a narrative of an older person. Not old, but older! (Laughs) So it’s not an album about going out and getting pissed, it’s about what you’ve learnt along the way and what it was like, and the regrets that you have about your youth. It’s not competing with those types of bands.
Did you have intentions of how you wanted to change sonically? Where did you want your sound to go?
Padraic: It was all about the energy. It was all about getting us back in a room and all the takes had to be 110% exciting; there was no room for anything else. Everything had to be us and just us.
Conor: Especially with an album called ‘Teenager’. We wanted it to be lively and bold.
Why did you choose Tony Hoffer to produce?
Padraic: It wasn’t necessarily a sonic thing, because the album sounds very different from the first record. [Hoffer produced debut ‘So Much For The City’]
Conor: For a long time we were very against the idea of using anyone that we’d used before, so for a long time we were just putting him to the back of the list. Then we kind of thought about it. Tony’s made a lot of different types of records; he’s worked with lots of different types of people. We had to get over a certain block of using Tony again. We’ve nothing against him personally; it’s just the idea. It’s once you realise that just working with the same producer doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re stepping backwards. That’s the thing: he had no interest in making the same record again. He was like, “This has to be different”, and he was very encouraging like that.
You’ve toured with R.E.M, U2 and Oasis. You must have seen rock life to its excess. What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen or experienced while out on tour?
Conor: We had a couple of great nights with Oasis. We were walking through Toulouse and we had a day off before the gig. We just heard this voice shouting down at us from about three storeys up, “Fuck off you Irish cunts” – this thick Manchester accent doing a vague impersonation of an Irish accent. It was Liam telling us to meet him at the bar. Unfortunately Kev missed his flight so Kev missed this legendary drinking session. Kev was in a Gatwick hotel…
Daniel: It was the best night of The Thrills EVER and Kev missed it!
Padraic: We were drinking with him for three hours before we even leave the place and then we go to this ludicrously nice Chinese restaurant, the whole band came down to meet us and we all went out together. So Liam goes, “Where the fuck is the other guy?” And we’re like, “He’s stuck in a hotel.” So he goes, “We’ll call him!” So Liam calls Kev, pretending to be Noel, and says, “Do you not like our kid or something? What’s the problem, do you think Liam’s a real dick or something? Is that why you’re not here? I don’t like him either. Do you think he’s a real dick?” And Kev was like, “Yeah Noel, I think he is an asshole, yeah.” And then Liam was like, “Fucker! He just called me an asshole!” (Laughs)
Daniel: I’ve never seen anyone drink and be able to stand up as much as him. I mean he was drinking brandy and beer at the same time, so it was two drinks a time. We met them at 6 in the evening and I left at 4.30 that morning and he was still going. I reckon he was minimum drinking three beers and three brandies an hour, and we were out for about 11 hours.
So, what’s next for The Thrills?
Conor: We’re gonna do some very intimate gigs around the UK and Ireland. We’re doing a good load of festivals and then we’re doing a bigger club tour after the summer and then a European tour and then hopefully we’ll release the album in America. The new songs really lend themselves well to playing live. I think in the early days that was a challenge to make those songs work; we were very much into crafting songs and trying to get into the studio. But these songs, they feel live, and a lot of the new sounds really add a whole new dimension to our live set. When you’ve been away from the touring life for this long you really can’t wait to get out there and play the songs.
