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Brian Cullens Love Bullets: Clean And Simple |
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Written by Aoife Barry
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Wednesday, 07 May 2008 |
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Page 3 of 4  When it came to releasing their first EP, Ask for
Directions, the band put their energy into making sure the record
sounded and looked good – the 12" vinyl comes encased in a beautifully
designed pink sleeve with a special boardgame and poster inside. Not
your usual debut release, then. "I suppose it was our first [record] so
we decided that we'd make it a little bit special," says Paul. Rachel
agrees, saying: "It was a good process, it was a learning process."
Part of the learning process was discovering that the first batch of
records had a huge hole in the sleeve and had to be replaced, which
left the band at least momentarily disappointed. For the next release,
the band are going with CD format, but want it to be just as special as
the first one. "One of our mottos is 'why not'," explains Cadwell. "So
with these kinds of ideas, the idea of someone saying you know,
'why?'... We'd always respond with 'why not?'"
For Brian Cullen's Love Bullets, there seems to be a sense of them not
being part of a certain scene or movement. Rachel elaborates: "There
are many scenes going on in Dublin at the moment. But I think kind of,
I dunno whether it's ok to say, to be outside a scene or whatever, but
I think for us we're dfferent from a lot of bands 'cos we're not in it
to be on the cover of a magazine or for people to go 'God there's that
bird from Brian Cullen's Love Bullets', or 'there's that guy from Brian
Cullen's Love Bullets'. We're really just in it for the music and
playing live and doing gigs and that kind of thing. So, we're not in it
to be seen as such."
I ask Rachel if she is ever conscious of being the only girl on stage
when the band perform. "Sometimes it comes into your head," she says.
"The odd time when we were playing our first couple of gigs we'd get
the odd 'show us your tits' kind of thing – the usual. But, I dunno, I
felt really like 'hang on – you're down there and I've got a microphone
– you stupid boy!' And then one time we had 'show us your tits, blah
blah blah', so I started talking to the guy about preferred forms of
sanitary protection – sanitary towels or tampons and…and then Caldwell
slagged him about his Sgt Pepper style coat and the guy just shrank
back into himself. It's not something I think about. I think in many
ways, being a girl in a band has done us a lot of favours."
Cadwell agrees: "I think a lot of people underestimate Rachel, because
she's a girl. And then when she blows their expectations out of the
water that they almost pay more attention because they're
expecting…people seem to be expecting Rachel to fail because of the
pure fact she is a woman and when she astounds them that makes it even
more surprising. And they assume she must be bass or something, you
know, playing two strings on the bass, when that's ME playing two
strings on the bass!" he laughs.
"There is that assumption of 'oh you must be the bass player'. No, I'm
the guitar player. 'Oh, the rhythm guitar player'," recounts Rachel. "I
don't consider myself to be a girl in a band, I just consider myself to
be whatever in a band, just a person in a band. But I think yeah a lot
of people have gone 'oh you're the girl in the band…aww isn't that
cute?' Look at ya!"
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