Andy Cairns, Therapy? Interview

Posted on 6th Apr 10 by Paul Groome | 1

A few weeks ago, Drop-d had the opportunity to catch up with Therapy? head-honcho Andy Cairns.  Following the release of their Crooked Timber album, Andy was in justifiably good humour and looking forward to the months ahead.  Discussing their past, present and future, we discover why Therapy? hadnt been as content with their most recent release since Babyteeth and why they’ve been taking influences from some of the jazz greats.

Andy and the boys

Drop-d: What’re you guys up to at the minute?

Andy Cairns: Well, this is our twentieth year anniversary this year, and we’ve been talking over the last few weeks about the plans we have for the rest of the year.  We’re looking to put out some sort of release.  Definitely the live album but we’re looking to record some new material too.  We’re getting offered some shows before the festival season kicks in and then we’re planning on a tour that’ll run up until Christmas.  We’re just trying to keep busy really.  Once we get to the end of April and into May, we’ll be into the thick of it.

Drop-d: The Crooked Timber album seems to really have brought the band back to their roots.  It’s an album that I wasn’t sure Therapy? wanted to make, or perhaps were even willing to make.  What was the thought process behind recording the album?

Andy Cairns: Well, actually I’ve heard that quite a lot from a few different people to be honest.  I think we’d found ourselves in a bit of cul-de-sac creatively.  And because we became very popular for a lot of the melodic rock albums we’d recorded in the 90′s, people sort of forgot about the the pre-Troublegum music that we’d done.  Some of the more interesting stuff that we’d done.  When we started into the the writing sessions for Crooked Timber, we just started to become aware of the other bands around that have the whole melodic-rock thing nailed.  Greenday, Foo Fighters…  And we started to discuss what sort of music was floating our own boats.  And we just came ot the conclusion that it wasn’t melodic rock anymore.  So we just started the songs from the ground up.  We scrapped the songs we’d already written and we went into the studio and began from scratch and it was just like the old days.  We started working around songs concepts.  Like ‘Enjoy The Struggle‘ was influenced by Charlie Mingus, the jazz bassist.  And that came about from talking about Helmet.  Obviously Page Hamilton (from Helmet) is a big jazz head and was once telling me that he’d get ideas for riffs from old jazz legends.  And then Bad Excuse For Daylight was influenced by a lot of dark dub-step music that we’d been listening to.  So, one of us would mention a theme or a concept and we’d just develop it from there. After a few weeks of this we were finding it was a lot more satisfying than just trying to compose a three and a half minute song.  It also thought us an important lesson, that we like to develop the music that we’re happiest with rather than simply trying to fit in.  And I really believe that it we hadn’t made Crooked Timber, I wouldn’t be talking to you now.  It really is the album that we had to make in order to stay relevant.

Drop-d: That’s interesting about your influences for the album.  Although there’s quite a rock attack to the songs, you were actually listening to completely different styles of music. Rather than a lot of heavier influences that I would have imagined would have contributed to an album like Crooked Timber.

Andy Cairns: Well, yeah.  A lot of the heavier bands that I’d been hearing were piss-poor to be honest.  The guitar sounds are over-compressed, the kick drums are barely audible, and the vocals vary from screaming to these weak lifeless, vocal lines.  I hadn’t heard anything as mass produced since the 80′s with all the hair metal bands. Every single band seems to be either emo or screamo.  And none of them are very good at it.  I mean the rock bands that I like Portal and Lightening Bolt.  Bands like Mastodon and Queens Of The Stone Age.  The rock bands that I was gaining inspiration from were bands like Sun.  And we started also looking for other inflences outside of the box.  Bands like Code9.  The pulsing riff of Bad Excuse For Daylight we got from Stravinsky.  A part of one of his movements sounds like it could be part of the one of the longer tunes on …And Justice For All by Metallica.  It gave us some extra fuel for inspiration.

Drop-d: So all of the songs were approached in the same way that Babyteeth and Nurse were approached? The finished album is a consequence of the recording process rather than the band already having a finished product in mind prior to recording?

Andy Cairns: Yes, that’s it I suppose.  We were more influenced in those days be everything that was going on around us.  It was all part of the writing process.  Life was part of the writing process.  Around the time we recorded Babyteeth, we were staying for a few days with a friend of ours who was living in student digs in Coleraine University.  This one night, the RUC caught wind that there was a load of marijuana in the house for some reason and the house was raided.  One of the guys in the house had written ‘Satan’ on a mirror and the RUC took umbridge to this, and marched us all off the cells for the night.  The following day we wrote Loser Cop which had this sort of jazz influence to it, because the previous night we’d been listening to John Zorns Naked City album when we’d been raided.  So this time around we took that approach again.  Allowing everything that was going on to influence the songs that we were writing.  And it worked extremely well.  It’s very refreshing.  Also being signed to a new label, we could have easily tried to write a few Screamagers and Going Nowhere’s.  But there’s no real point in a bunch of 30 and 40 year old lads trying to emulate what we’re already done before.

Drop-d: Therapy? had gone through several stages throughtout their career though. Troublegum was adored by metal and indie fans alike.  Everyone seemed to jump onboard for that album.  But the Infernal Love period seemed to blindside fans.  The obvious change in image, but also the slight change in musical direction.  Was that a reaction to the direction we felt the band was going with Troublegum?

Andy Cairns: Well, yes, Infernal Love was a reaction to what we’d done on Troublegum simply because every album we’d done up ’til that point was different from the previous.  The popular songs on Troublegum were sort of a tribute to the punk bands that we’d all liked growing up in the North as teenagers.  Bands like Stiff Little Fingers and The Undertones.  So we figured that the next logical step would be to try something else. We’d been working a lot with Martin McCarrick, the cellist, and he’d worked with Dead Can Dance and This Mortal Coil.  We’re listening to a lot of Nick Cave and The Badseeds, the Tindersticks and This Mortal Coil.  And because we were listening to so much of that music, that was the direction we figured we’d head in.  We didn’t sit back and say “we’ve sold ten times that amount of albums with Troublegum than we have with any of the other albums.  Its a winning formula.  Let’s just keep doing that.”  Instead, we thought “Right, we’ve done the pop-punk thing.  What’s next?”  It wasn’t some thing we thought of in terms of a career.  So we got the cellos out and started to go down that route.  Actually, the whole imagery on the album sleeve was supposed to be a piss-take.  We thought people would find it humorous to use those pictures and imagery following the success of Troublegum.  The fake mustaches falling off.  The smoking jackets.  And it was sort of reaction against Britpop too.  Not that we’d didnt like Britpop.  But the pop-punk gap in the market had now been filled with Ash.  They had that section of the market sown up.  We really didn’t realise the amount of shit that it would cause.

Drop-d: Despite any confusion around the imagery of Infernal Love, around that time you were still doing good business as a band.  You were getting good US tour slots with the likes of Helmet.  Did you feel that were close to making a big splash in the US at that point?

Andy Cairns: It’s funny.  The relationship we’ve had with the market in The States is really odd.  The albums that were picked up by the fans and adored are the real curveball albums.  Babyteeth.  People absolutely loved it in The States.  It didnt sell by the bucketload but it was critically adored and a lot of musicians that we know had that record.  Nurse also got some very good reviews.  But Suicide Pact in 1999, it actually ended up making it onto a few critics end of year polls and that sort of thing.  Troublegum, of course, did well, but that was based around the radio singles.  The albums that the punters picked up were the early ones though.  I think it was also a reaction to the whole grunge scene though.  The impression we were getting back from the fans was “we already have a thousand bands doing this sort of thing.  But the John Zorn influenced stuff, the Suicide Pact stuff…  THAT sounds totally new to us.”   And when we worked with Jack Endino in 2001, that was his favorite Therapy? album too.  With the new one, that just come out in the US, but we were getting some very good reports back from the pre-release reviews.  So hopefully it’ll get some attention for us.

Drop-d: Despite the obvious turmoil in the north over the years, Therapy? have never focused or relied on any political or religious content for lyrics over the years. Was this avoided deliberately or did you simply find more interest in different topics?

Andy Cairns: Well I think we have a lot more cultural references about the north buried in our music than people had realised.   We never went for the Stiff Little Fingers/U2 route of putting it on a plate.  We’ve never had a Sunday Bloody Sunday/Free Nelson Mandella because we never felt we could do it convincingly.  There’s small references to incidents though.  The second album, Pleasure Death, has a song on it called Shit-kicker.  A friend of ours lived on the Antrim Road in Belfast which is Provo heartland and we occassionally go around and hang out at his flat.  Anyway, one of his flatmates had pissed off the IRA and when he arrived home to his flat  someone had broken in, messed up his and his girlfriends bedroom, and written in lipstick on the mirror “This is Warning Number 1″.  And that’s the opening line of Shitkicker.  So there’s plenty of little anecdotal tales like that rather than laying out for everyone to see.  We’d rather have it like that because if you get a political song wrong, nothing sounds worse.

Drop-d: Well, that’s something I would have thought was a bit irksome.  A song attempting to capture a sentiment on a very delicate topic, yet falling short…

Andy Cairns: Well, I think that bands and musicians from the south had a very poetic way of writing about these issues and problems in the north.  Christy Moore have done it and Moving Hearts have done it very well.  The Wolfe Tones. Even to go a bit further, Light A Big Fire have also attempted it.  But for everyone that can do it properly there’s also a Belfast Child, you know?  I mean it’s a gorgeous song, but it’s done by a Scottish band.  Even The Cranberries, bless ‘em…  I didn’t mind the Cranberries at all up until Zombie was released.  I mean, what the hell was that all about?!

Drop-d: Ha!  Yes, that’s the one I had in mind alright…   In a lighthearted way though, Therapy? have never really made any glowing mistakes.  Or have they?  Is there any aspects of Therapys? career where you think “Christ, what were we thinking?”, or has it all been part of a logical process to get where you are today?

Andy Cairns: Ah, we’ve made numerous mistakes throughout the years, and I’d like to take the high road and say that they have all been part of the band developing into what it is today.  But in fact, I think we’ve just had the good grace to never make one almighty, bloody awful mistake, and then be seen to make a comeback.  We have had a spate of albums, from Semi-detached in 1998 to Shameless in 2001, where we had a few good songs on those albums but also some seriously God awful ones aswell.  We just had a loss of direction and focus.  And the chemistry just didnt really gel.  Then again, it’s been a long road and we’ve learned several valuable lessons.

Drop-d: Which Therapy? album do you feel grasps what Therapy? are about?

Andy Cairns: Either Babyteeth and Crooked Teeth I would have to say.  Crooked Timber was approached with the same attitude and vibe that we had on Babyteeth.  I wouldnt be able to pick either one, but those two I think grasp who we are and what we do, and certainly helped us point in the right direction again.

Drop-d: Amen.

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Tags: Andy Cairns, ash, charlie mingus, Code9, Cranberries, crooked Timber, Foo Fighters, Greenday, Jack Endino, john zorn, Lightening Bolt, Martin McCarrick, Mastodon, metallica, Page Hamilton, Portal, shameless, stiff little fingers, Stravinsky, Sun, The Undertones, therapy?