What does the new album sound like?
I think it’s just a step on from the last two albums. It’s pop songs played by a rock band, very up beat. Cool as fuck basically. We’re really pleased with it.
How was the making of this record different from previous sessions?
Well, we recorded it in Spain - in a big house down near Malaga so it was pretty chilled out, we didn’t get to stressed by it all. Really good food, beautiful weather, great drinking. You don’t go out until midnight there, so we would work in the day and then go out until about six in the morning. This time we had about 30 songs demoed for the album and we picked the 13 best one’s to record, we were pretty well prepared and that’s a bit different for us. Normally we just make it all up as we go along.
Any bizarre stories from the recording sessions?
Nothing specific, just a lot of drunken madness and we were doing a lot of mushrooms and stuff like that. We did record some of it in Van Morrison’s studio and we met Van the man, he was really cool. Did we give him mushrooms? No! I wish we had done.
Is there any truth in the stories that you went bonkers after Nu-Clear Sounds?
Yeah definitely. It was when I went to New York and the Big Day out tour in Australia. I just went on a total bender for a few months and got a lot of stuff out of my system. But it was a creative time and I got a lot of good songs out of that time, most of them big upbeat pop songs for some reason. Then I went back to Northern Ireland with all these basic ideas and finished them off.
Do you feel any pressure after the low sales of Nu-Clear Sounds?
No, no really. I just feel kind of driven to sort it out, you know, and get this album done. But that said it wasn’t like a conscious effort to write commercial songs, they just came out that way. We did take a bit more time over this one to make sure we got it right.
So people are going to like this album then?
Yeah, I think they’re going to love it. The songwriting has come on in leaps and bounds. It’s great.