Dolittle presents The Cast of Cheers, New Years Eve (1 Viewer)

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Dolittle presents….




THE CAST OF CHEERS
+ guests
NEW YEARS EVE, The Workmans Club


Tickets on sale 9am Friday Oct 19th from www.tickets.ie & Ticketmaster outlets Nationwide



“8/10 - One of the punchiest, most immediate albums we’ve heard all year”NME

“Zesty, youthful indie-pop” – Time Out

“Brilliant” – Sunday Times Culture




For your own sake, and for The Cast Of Cheers’ sake, please do not ask about the name anymore: the story is not very exciting and to keep themselves sane, front men Conor and Neil Adams, bass player John Higgins and drummer Kevin Curran all started making stupid stuff up in interviews. They’re running out of things to say now.

And more importantly: there are much, much more interesting things to talk about.

Two years on from the ripples caused by 2010’s free download album ‘Chariot’ – a 33-minute debut of taut, complex-yet-addictive post/math/dance-punk songs – The Cast Of Cheers are about to release their follow up ‘Family’. In between now and back then, they have gigged incessantly, continually garnering new converts to the cause. They signed to Schoolboy Error/V2 Records who, expecting things to get bigger and bigger, suggested that they might want to quit their jobs and relocate from their native Dublin to London. This happened in August of 2011, when the four moved into a house in Stratford close to the new Westfield Centre and “one decent pub”.

“It was good for us as a band,” Neil says of this arrangement. “Because we didn’t know anyone else, we were hanging around together all the time, we were practising together, we were doing gigs together and recording together...”

“Bar being in each other’s beds” adds Conor “we were in each other’s faces all the time.”

Singers/guitarists/brothers Conor and Neil Adams have remained in the Capital, while bass player and drummer John Higgins and Kev Curran have moved back to Ireland to be with girlfriends in between onslaughts of touring. The thinking is that now people know who they are, that there’s no need to exist in such close proximity all of the time. Plus, the intense period has had the desired effect: in ‘Family’ they have a record that perfectly captures the frenetic, melodic, excitement of what they do live.

Recent single ‘Animals’ (see excellent video) was written during the London stint, while debut single (see other excellent video) and album opener and title track ‘Family’ is the oldest song of the ten. But the introduction of genial producer Luke Smith meant that things mutated a lot in the studio, so that it sounds as fresh and vital as the first set.

“Things like [album closer] ‘They Call It A Race’ and ‘Family’ were written after we first started gigging, but they’re totally different now,” Neil says. “When we were recording, Luke was adding a lot to them…”

Conor: “…in fact, he was taking AWAY a lot of things: there were loads of guitar layers and mad stuff, and he just stripped it all back. He understood what we were trying to do.”

The Cast Of Cheers’ songs mostly begin in a similar way: as the main songwriter, Conor will make up riffs and loop them on a Line6 guitar pedal, then bring them to the band, who will build on them. “And then the lyrics come then, often in the studio,” Conor says. “There’s always melodies, but in terms of actual words, there’s a lot of experimenting going on. For ‘Chariot’ I was reading a lot of zombie books, so it was bits and pieces of imagery, world apocalypse stuff, but kind of abstract – it didn’t mean too much. This one is more personal: it’s more about all of our stories, encounters with people and specific conversations. But I think songs generally should be open to interpretation. We don’t want to be too abstract, but we want people to make up their own minds about it all.”

This fits in with the overall philosophy of The Cast Of Cheers at this juncture: ‘Family’ is an album that, while retaining the characteristics that so bewitched people the first time around, is wholly intended to be accessible. Witness the glam-stomp of ‘Human Elevator’ or the rumbling epic ‘Palace And Run’, or the frenetic pop of ‘Trucks At Night. “We definitely keep it in mind to keep songs catchy and poppy,” Neil stresses. “We want to connect with more people. That’s the whole point of coming to London, that’s the whole point of touring so much… that’s the whole point of being in a band! We recorded about 25 songs for this album, but the ten we’ve gone with are with that in mind.”

Conor: “We could have picked 10 that would have sounded like ‘Chariot’ Part Two. But we’ve gone with these because at the moment we want to get through to more people. We’re always trying to dumb it down, if anything. We used to be in really technical bands, and I think we overplayed, like, ‘Look at this crazy riff, or weird time signature’ or whatever. But people don’t react the same: they’re just bewildered. But having said that, our version of dumbing down is THIS album, which isn’t really dumb.”

Neil: “The stage we’re at now, the name of the game is to get more fans. When we’re 12 albums in, we might do some crazy prog rock thing with loads of backwards drums and all that, but not now.”

“I think it’s the energy of The Cast Of Cheers that people are into,” says Conor. “Live, we put everything into it. We might be playing a support slot to people who might not be into it, but the heads soon turn because we’re jumping around like mad people. I hope that comes across on this new album, because that’s what we’re all about.”

More and more people are turning their heads, and keeping it that way. ‘Family’ will only make this a more frequent occurrence.


http://www.thecastofcheers.com/
http://thecastofcheers.bandcamp.com/
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For more info please contact Julie at [email protected]
 

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