Interview, Dominic Coyle, Pocket Promise

Posted on 4th Aug 09 by Paddy Murphy | 1

Northern Ireland’s newest indie group Pocket Promise released their debut album I’ve Been Here For Ages yesterday, but it’s not indie as we know it. Drawing influence from the likes of Efterklang, Mogwai, Elbow and Pavement, it’s far from the average indie by numbers record. Drop-d got on the blower with multi-instrumentalist Dominic Coyle to get all the info on the record, touring plans and generally what makes the band tick.

Drop-d: Hi Dominic, Congratulations on the album, give it a plug there and tell us about any gigs you’ve got coming up?

Dominic: Thanks it’s out on the third of August and gigwise…well by then we’ll have done Indie-pendence in Mitchelstownand Cyprus Avenue with the Panama Kings the following day. Then on the forth we’re playing in the Roisin Dubh, Galway with the Panama Kings again. We’re having the official launch on the sixth in the Menagerie in Belfast and then in The Purty Loft in Dun Laoighaire on August fourteenth. We’re in the process of getting some more together for September because we wanna get out playing more especially with the record coming out.

Like what’s the point hanging about waiting to get signed and sending off demos and all that when you can just do the graft yourself

Drop-d: August seems like a strange month to be bringing out a debut, like, if it had been out at the start of the summer, then you could’ve hit up some of the festivals…….

D: Aye….we’ve had the album for a bit of a while…like, it’s almost two years since we began recording it. It took quite a while to get it recorded, mixed and mastered and everything else. We had to put it back but…well, we’ve done it all ourselves and we’re releasing it on our own label, Stop:Go Music, and we could have put it off again for a while and waited but it’s just come to the stage where we’re just really really happy with it and we want to put it out there, just to see what happens. We released an EP last year called Waving At Strangers and it got us a good few gigs and alot of really good coverage as well. So we wanted to keep the ball rolling and keep up some momentum.

Drop-d: You just said there that the record took two years to record. When I’ve listened to the record, each time I come away from the songs hearing a new element or a new sound, you weren’t resting on your laurels for the two years, you must all be perfectionist?

D: Well the thing is the recording process only took about seven weeks. Although saying that it was pretty intense, we’d start at midday and go until three or four the following morning. The reason it took two years was just that there was alot of mixing going on and alot of going back and forth between us and the producer, David Odlam (Josh Ritter, Frames and Ham Sandwich). But….. I think we’ve learned a good bit form this, in that, by this taking so long we’ve learned when to leave a song alone, because you could spent the rest of your life trying to perfect a song but you come to realise that when it’s done, it’s done and it’s time to put it out.

Drop-d: You’re all multi-instrumentalists, and I read that you used a shed load on the previous EP, was it the same for I’ve Been Here For Ages?

D: Yea…well kind of because the EP and the record have both come out of the same recording sessions. The reason we even did the EP was because we had all these songs and we wanted to get something out because we weren’t well known here in Northern Ireland before that so we wanted to get the name out and then get serious about the album. But, yea, regarding using multi-instruments, sure, why not mix things up a bit? You know, it’s fun to try and put in new elements into songs that have been written on say a guitar and then try matching another sound on another instrument to it and especially one that you’re not overly familiar with. Makes things more interesting for both us and the listener.

Drop-d: Give us some of the history of the band.

D: Well, we all know each other for years, actually our first gig was exactly nine years ago just a wee while ago. For the first few years though we were all in university. Some of us in England and some of us in Belfast so we’d only be able to get together at holidays like Christmas and during the summers. It was cool because every now and then we’d play a couple of gigs and all the time we were writing songs and coming up with our own sound. Then in 2005 we all graduated from university and decided to move to London, we wanted to get serious about the band and wanted to actually live in the same city as each other for longer than a week at a time! So we moved there and that’s where most of the songs were written. There’s a great together-ness on the record I think. Like living with your mates you really get to know them and I think you can hear that on it.

When we get together then little bits and pieces that you’ve heard and that have made an impression on you will begin to find it’s way into your own music

Drop-d: How do the songs come about Dominic? You a jam band or is there a head bottle-washer?

D: Usually we’ll come together after a while of not playing together and we’ll all have our own seperate ideas and then we’ll just start jamming. Sometimes all the ideas work together and sometimes they don’t but we change a few things like a line here and there, maybe change an instrument but, it usually works out really well. We’re lucky with Cormac (Fee, singer) he usually has plenty of lyrics written so he can fit them around a song after it’s been put together and it doesn’t have to be the other way around where a song has to fit the words, he likes to fit the words around the songs. Although saying that, there are times when he’ll just come up with words off the top of his head while we’re playing away. There’s no set way to writing our songs and we all like that man, sometimes it’s one idea sometimes it’s four and sometimes it can just come out in a jam session.

Drop-d: I hear plenty of influences on the record but what I really like about it is that every listen reveals a new quality to each song, much like listening to Mogwai or Efterklang or even Elbow…. although you’re a far happier bunch that Elbow, they’re good musicians and all but god they’re a miserable bunch….

D: Ha! Yea, well cheers man because they’re all bands that we listen to. Like, Efterklang there you mentioned, Mogwai too, they’re the kind of bands that somebody would have playing in the car or in the house and you know good music like that is bound to wear off on you. And when we get together then little bits and pieces that you’ve heard and that have made an impression on you will begin to find it’s way into your own music.

Drop-d: You run your own record label Stop:Go Music, was it set up because you wanted the freedom of being able to write and record the songs in the way that’s best for you and not have some suit standing over you dictating to the sound engineer that you need to sound like all the indie bands across the water?

D: Well yes and no. We were offered some deals when we were in England but nothing amazing and it wouldn’t have been worth our while so we just set up our own thing. Like what’s the point hanging about waiting to get signed and sending off demos and all that when you can just do the graft yourself. This way we’re only depending on ourselves and not on others. And we’re happy to do it this way, proud of it even because it’s all up to us and we don’t mind working hard to achieve something.

Drop-d: What’s the plan for the immediate future, other than the gigs have you started writing for the next album?

D: Yea, well we’re back living in the North, we’re in Belfast and we’re really enjoying it too. We’ve started writing yea and it’s stuf that sounds alot chirpier than this one, well not chirpier, because the record isn’t depressing or sad or anything but….maybe it’s a sign of the times because we’re all really happy at the moment with the band and our sound and the record getting released. As for the future, I couldn’t tell you man. We just wanna be playing gigs and hopefully the record will be recieved well. I’d say we’ll take a small break and chill out, hopefully finish off writing songs for the next album and then we’ll head back into a studio to record them. But for now we’re happy to have the record out and to be playing gigs in front of people and hopefully they’ll like the album as much as we do.

Pocket Promise

Tags: Cyprus Avenue, David Odlam, Efterklang, elbow, Menagerie, mogwai, Panama Kings, Pavement, Pocket Promise, Roisin Dubh, Stop:Go Music, The Purty Loft, Waving At Strangers