The Goo 1
Interview NIALL MCGUIRK PICS: BILLY CAHILL Cian N
ugent's new album - She Brings Me Back To The Land Of The Living is his fourth and, like Arrivalists beautifully pieced together Last of the Written Pages, is borne of caring and respect. In 2020, aged 31, he found himself in a situation where his Mam after falling sick needed family to help her through the greyness of recovery. Cian stood up and provided that and along the way there was plenty of time for reflection. He moved back home, returning to the land of the living and life took a new direction. That road is still open but has produced a marvellous collection of songs steeped in beauty and wonderfully underscored by Cian’s sublime guitar playing. When you picked that guitar up first, what was the driving force? I would like to claim something noble like the desire to speak to the muse but the truth was probably more vain and posturing. I remember one of my earliest encounters with a guitar was my mum letting me smash up a broken acoustic guitar that had been cluttering up the house for years. I think the desire was to naively replicate Kurt Cobain or Pete Townshend's auto destructive iconoclasm rather than connect with music in any kind of intelligent way. The beauty of the guitar is that it is not a clever instrument, it’s an instrument designed to be carried on horseback by our ancestors and used for carousing or serenading. But that does not mean it is not good for rumination too. Initially as a teenager I had little to do and the guitar was a good way to keep myself busy. I was lucky that my mum got me lessons when I expressed interest and I had a great teacher called Garvan Gallagher. It seemed like magic that he was able to translate music into movements of the hands. In a nice turn of events I was lucky to have Garvan play bass on a few songs on the new album. I was always inspired by the idea of expressing something intuitive with the guitar, of reducing the space between impulse and expression. I think the eternal aim for me with guitar is to be able to have a vocabulary that allows me to express an idea as easily as possible, before it loses vitality. I think in my favourite music, the thing that excites me is hearing something that feels like a first thought entirely trusted. As a teenager I loved things by masters like Django Reinhardt, John Lee Hooker and Doc Watson as well as simple raw rock and roll like The Stooges, The Sonics or The Gories. The technique should only ever serve the emotion. I'm not sure how close the style I've ended up at is to what I aimed for as a teenager but I like to think my younger self might see things he likes in the music I make now. I try to stay true to the initial vision. PAGE 8