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Feature: Jack Foley
BELL X1 continue to win friends in all the right circles, thanks
to the success of their second album, Music in Mouth, which
was released last year.
The quartet, comprised of Paul Noonan, Brian Crosby, David Geraghty
and Dominic Phillips, have been making music together, in many
guises, since the early 90s.
The album was recorded over the course of 2002, in a series of
locations, from Ridge Farm Studios, in Surrey, and The Fallout
Shelter, in London, to various houses in Dublin, Kilkenny and
London, and is notable for the way in which its love songs rearrange
the emotional furniture, revealing a bittersweet heart, where
Biblical references and childhood board games rub shoulders with
sensual lyrics, and vivid imagery develops like a treasured photograph.
The band take their name from the first aircraft to break the
sound barrier, piloted by Chuck Yeager - as documented in Tom
Wolfe’s famous book, The Right Stuff, and the movie that
ensued.
Says Noonan, who provides vocals, guitars, drums and assorted
other noises: "I love that clean-cut but sinister spirit
of the age of discovery that you find in America in the 1960."
Commenting on the album itself, he points out: "The record
is one of love songs, yeah, but kind of in drag, meaning we¹ve
tried to put an angle or a quirk into them. It¹s a very personal
record partly inspired by losing someone close, but not wallowing
in the experience.
"We wanted to make a joyful record, one that celebrates
people in our lives, or those who have wandered through and beyond."
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The themes, then, are universal - friendship, love and loss -
but they're delivered in a way that is anything but maudlin. In
fact, most of the songs are uplifting at their core.
Bell X1 started the song writing in a house in Wexford, listening
to a lot of Talking Heads, Television and Blondie in the interim.
"Skinny white boy music," laughs Noonan, before dismissing
suggestions that the album is downbeat.
"The ability to make banality seem joyful is a great skill,"
adds Noonan, using the Heads song ‘Heaven’ (from
Fear of Music) as a touchstone. "We've always found it harder
to do joy than sadness, but if you can communicate some of that
‘what-ails-ye’ feel while sounding kind of happy it
becomes much more potent."
While they hardly fit into the so-called New Irish movement –
"is there such a thing?" - Bell X1 are aware of a new
optimism abroad in their homeland.
"There used to be a lot of bitching in Dublin, and I used
to find the band scene intimidating. But that’s finally gone,"
says Noonan. "There’s an awareness of the mechanisms,
which I think you can call a new independence. We’re friends
with people like the Frames and Damien Rice, who have shown you
can be successful and also get out of Ireland, and we admire the
Jimmy Cake and The Tycho Brahe. But I also enjoy the shameless,
unselfconscious approach of the Super Furry Animals."
Music in Mouth marked the second album from Bell X1, following
hot-on-the-heels of their debut, Neither Am I, which was
released in Ireland, in October 2000.
Ever since then, they have built up a loyal following, released
a couple of well received singles, played some great gigs, indulged
in some extra-curricular activities (Paul drummed and sang on
Gemma Hayes’ ‘Night On My Side’, while Brian
toured with Mundy) and written the songs that make up Music
In Mouth.
Oh, and for the record, the title for the album comes from the
poem, The Planter’s Daughter by Austin Clarke: When night
stirred at sea/And the fire brought crowd in/They say that her
beauty/Was music in mouth.
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