The New Cue #253 January 16: The Murder Capital
Good morning!
How was your weekend? We hope you enjoyed Friday’s subscriber-only recommender edition featuring interviews with The Black Keys and Fontaines D.C. alongside your regular delivery of new musical goodies…
In today’s New Cue we chat to James McGovern from The Murder Capital about the band’s excellent second album, Gigi’s Recovery, which is out on Friday. It’s a free edition because we’re generous like that, so make sure once you’ve subscribed you share it with all your friends and tell them what altruistic types your pals at The New Cue are.
Enjoy the edition,
Ted, Niall and Chris
Start The Week With… The Murder Capital
Initially the solo project of Irish singer James McGovern, a matter of days after McGovern decided to form The Murder Capital as a band instead, his best friend tragically killed himself. The visceral, emotionally raw songs that made up 2019’s debut album When I Have Fears dealt with McGovern’s flailing sense of grief, and despite its bleak subject matter and the austere post-punk backdrop his new bandmates set it to, it gave them a top 20 hit.
This Friday, the band release the follow-up, Gigi’s Recovery. Though they haven’t sacrificed any of their intensity, there’s more shades of light this time around, both in the lyrics (McGovern says this album is about life rather than death) and the music, which brings in a far wider range of sounds (Radiohead’s In Rainbows was a big influence). Chris called up McGovern at home in Dublin last week to talk about how the record came together, how he feels now looking back on the band’s debut and whether he had any New Year’s resolutions.
Hi James
Hey Chris, what’s the craic?
I’m good thanks, how was your weekend?
It was good, man. We’ve just been in rehearsals for the tour so working away every day and getting the show ready.
How does it feel to be back in the saddle after nearly four years?
It feels perfect. We’ve been working that whole time, but I just want to feel the physicality of it again. I’m done with being sent statistics. I want to go shake some hands.
Was it hard writing and working on music but not having that regular connection with audiences for so long?
It’s a necessary part of the process to go away and become more introspective, but a huge part of the process for this record was the isolation and the introspection, which then gave the album its character. It became about realising what little control we have within the human condition. I suppose it’s about taking control over the few things that we can and taking ownership of the past in order to look to the future.
When I Have Fears came from a very specific place of grief for you and for the band. When it came to making the next album was there any trepidation thinking about what it was going to be about and not wanting to cover those themes again?
That’s exactly how it started. Writing about grief and loss, specifically about suicide, is a very intense emotional experience. If I separate my own grief from that and look at it purely from a writer’s perspective, it’s a very rewarding place to write from because you’re getting so much intensity out of it. So trying to move out of that and thinking about what else to write about, everything else felt disingenuous for a period. I figured out how to navigate that and it was by letting go of trying to control it and just writing about what was going on around us and what was happening internally and externally. It became about looking to the future. Having written this record together in isolation in rural Ireland for a year and a half, we had to start thinking about what was possible and had to start creating scenarios of idealised or idyllic love and an idyllic outcome. There’s definitely a darkness in the undercurrent of Gigi’s Recovery though.
There’s still that intensity there…
If you need to recover from anything, whatever it may be, whatever sort of fundamental change you want, there’s usually a darkness there. I think everyone has a shadow within those periods of isolation that we were confronted with. There was no more room for the bullshit. If there was friction in the band before maybe it would blow up and then you’d move on, you’d brush it off and just keep going on to the next thing. But if you’re sitting there and you’re metaphorically holding the gun to each other’s heads and someone’s acting like a prick you kind of have to iron it out for real. There was a lot for us to confront within ourselves, but that would spill out into our relationships with each other. So a huge point of change for us was just being able to trust each other and take ownership over what we were doing.
How long were you out in the countryside for?
A long time. We did the first lockdown separately in our own homes, and then we met up at the end of May 2020. We did about three months in Dublin then we headed out to Donegal for a month and then we did eight or nine more months in Wexford and it was predominantly in lockdown so we were well and truly alone. We were a 20-minute drive from any sort of town or shop so there was nowhere to hide. Whatever mirrors we’ve been running away from over the years before were put right in front of us.
Relatively speaking, you hadn’t known the rest of the band for that long before you made When I Have Fears. Outside of the day-to-day of touring, was that the longest you’d hung out with each other?
Yeah. I suppose you come together as a band and you bring your shit with you, and for us that happened very quickly and then you’re out in the road. When you’re on the road, there’s no room for change, there’s only room for maintenance and it’s exhausting. As much as it’s my favourite place to be, it’s also exhausting. You’re just getting through, you’re not really evolving too much. When we were out there making this album we were alone, it felt like that old world had departed to a different side of the galaxy, so we had to iron out the creases ourselves. To make authentic music it requires honesty. We were calling out our own shadows and just being like, we need to change this darkness.
Would you say this album is even more of a group effort?
Everything we’ve ever done has been a group effort. I guess it was just more shared. When I Have Fears came from more that just my own grief. Gabriel [Blake, bassist]’s mum passed away in the first week of recording and Cathal [Roper, guitarist]’s uncle passed away around the time as well. We were surrounded by it, it seemed like we were haunted by it. There was a bit of dissociation for some of the lads in the interview process last time, because they’d be being asked about my grief which was difficult for them. But we were together for that whole time so we helped each other get through those things together as a group. I think with this record it’s much more reflective of us as a whole.
The first track you released from the album, Only Good Things, is very specifically about optimism and the future. It’s not exactly Shiny Happy People, but was it a challenge for you after the first album to write a song with that viewpoint?
It required a total stripping of cynicism to write that song. Even though I still feel like it’s not completely at face value, you know, there’s something more to it. It’s one of those songs that like, even the few times that we’ve played it live now I’m still kind of grappling with how to perform it and how to feel it. It feels different to me at different times.
How does it feel playing the songs from When I Have Fears now?
We still haven’t played it. We’ve only been in rehearsals for three days and we’ve only been playing things off Gigi’s Recovery. But we did a fair few festivals last year so we’re not totally detached from it. I’m excited to be able to have more songs to choose from and have a deeper breath of narrative to perform and bring these different levels of intensity. The songs on When I Have Fears are still fucking intense to play but I think that’s the nature of the beast, you just have to be able to do that. I won’t name names, but I remember seeing this video of one of the bigger bands out there at the moment, and they’re kind of onstage complaining about it, like, ‘This is so tough for me…’ or whatever. I get that the show can become a difficult thing but you still just have to turn up and lean into it. Whether you have to bleed out that night or not, that’s the nature of the beast.
Has the process of forming this band, making an album about your grief and going out and performing it night after night made you a better or a stronger person do you think?
Definitely. I’m an only child so I didn’t have to answer to anyone really in a sense. I was out on my own. Having the band is very much a situation of family but also became a place where you were held accountable for your own actions. At a certain points with treating my body like shit and that hedonistic overindulgence - that stuff gets called out a lot quicker in that in that situation and I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful for how much more respect I have for myself throughout the process of this band.
Do you have any resolutions for 2023?
No. I learned a long time ago that nothing really changes from them. I love January. I love that feeling that there is a fresh start in some sense but if you’re expecting it, it’s really setting yourself up for a disappointing start. Having a New Year’s resolution seem like some sort of self-battery to me. A good resolution is to be kind to whatever parts of yourself were good in the year before and to continue on with them. Focus on them more because they already exist.
Good advice. Thanks for talking to us, James.
Thanks, Chris. See you.
CC