The Goo 1
PIC: NORMA BURKE NOV-DEC 2022 Ste: Absolutely. Ha
ving the final say on ideas is very liberating and we embraced it wholeheartedly. One of the main factors with self producing was the time it allowed us to breathe and mull over ideas without the pressure of a ticking money clock when producers are involved. That time was invaluable and it allowed us to hone our ideas down to a point where we were all happy and in agreement about committing music to tape and what the next steps would be. We had a great engineer working with us tho, our friend (and ex band member) Mick Heffernan, whom we trust implicitly. Lyrically I was able to find a theme for the album and what I really wanted to talk about, what I really wanted to say and what I wanted to portray us as a band and I thought it was really important that I could focus on it and kind of kind of make sure that it was one cohesive idea rather than just a load of shite splattered against the wall. and that’s exactly how I feel. Not to sugarcoat anything and just go with it. The album deals with a lot of the issues that are affecting society today. Was it important for you as a writer to address them head on? Fiachra: I can’t help but write about what’s annoying me or what’s in my head. Myself and my wife have gone through shit because the houses we were in were sold and then we are queuing up outside a cottage down in Harold’s Cross for four hours with 300 people trying to view the place and these things were really angering me and I thought like, why not write about this stuff? This is what’s bothering me. I was in Guadalajara - my wife’s Mexican - and you see people moving up from the southern regions of South America, trying to get through Mexico to get to America to better themselves. And then you hear people giving out about immigrants and all that stuff really annoys me. A lot of people are angry about these things, particularly with Dublin and the housing crisis. It has affected so many people and it’s not just me. I found it was quite liberating when I just said Fuck it, I’m going to express myself THAT’S WHY WE MAKE MUSIC, TO HELP PEOPLE THROUGH SHIT THAT WE’VE GONE THROUGH You have a government that is full of people who are clearly landlords, and there’s no way around it. They don’t even pretend that they’re not landlords. So they’re all in it for themselves. And it’s so blatantly obvious. I don’t even think they try to hide it anymore. It’s a divide and conquer society at the moment. We used to rehearse on the northside of Dublin and I remember driving home on a Sunday and you’re driving through a city that is empty and dead. And you look around Merrion Square and you have all these beautiful Georgian buildings, and they’re all empty. Every single one of those buildings is empty. That is disgusting. You’re talking about a housing problem in this country. You have so many buildings in this country that are empty. They don’t want to put people in those houses because that will lower the value of them. They are assets. They’re sitting there and they’re going up in value. It’s disgraceful. What’s the plan for the next year or so? Uisneagh: The album is out there on all digital platforms worldwide and we’re getting great feedback. There’s loads of people contacting us from all over the world and to be honest that’s the most important thing to us as artists. Fiachra: Obviously it would be great to have masses of people following the band but when someone contacts us saying some of your songs saved my life when I was going through a bad spell, that means more to me than playing in front of 10,000 people. That’s why we make music, to help people through shit that we’ve gone through. Ste: And we’re gonna start working on new music that’s going to be even more dancey! Heart Of A Nation is out now. Columbia Mills headline The Academy on Friday 25th of November. Tickets available online from ticketmaster.ie PAGE 9