With a brand new album ‘Live Well, Change Often’ on the way – their first since 2011, and a bunch of live shows and festivals on the cards, Dublin three piece rock outfit and strumming all the right chords across the scene…
We caught up with Mark Austin ahead of the album release.
Hi Mark, how are you? You’ve a new album coming out ‘Live Well, Change Often’, what should people expect from that?
I suppose sonically it’s a different sounding record than the last one. A bit more refined, as you can probably here from ‘Cherrybomb’. So, it’s not the same record as the last one, which would have been stupid to put out the same sounding thing as the last one, so we made a point of getting our songs together and making them the best that they could be.
I think I probably sing a lot more on this record, whereas on the last one there was a lot of shouting – Not that that’s a bad thing! We didn’t try to repeat ourselves basically so I don’t think you’ll hear any repetition but you’ll definitely hear the same band.
Speaking of ‘Cherrybomb’, it’s been pretty well received and has been getting a lot of radio play – do you guys pay attention to critics responses or do you just tend to ignore it?
If we paid any attention to critics we’d be in a mental asylum or something! You know, it’s a personal opinion – you’re either gonna dig or you’re not, or you’ll have an opinion or it’ll make no impression on you – they’re the four outcomes of critics.
To be praised or to get good press, that’s obviously the shit that you want, if someone gives you bad press you’re gonna be like “fuck you”!
Yeah but then there’s the whole thing where if you’re gonna listen to the good ones, you have to listen to the bad as well…
Yeah, as a band we don’t care like, we’re gonna do this and we’re gonna do the next record and the next one regardless of what people say. But the only thing about critics is, if you get lots of good press, well then more people are gonna trust it because they’re the filter and people will take a chance on listening to you but it doesn’t affect what we do if we get good, bad or indifferent press really.
What was it like recording this album with the last having been back in 2011?
Yeah there’s was a long time in between but the majority of that time was spent touring. It was different because we stopped touring around late Summer the year before last and then gave ourselves from September to January to write the record. So we had that time to demo and figure out who we were gonna work with and all that stuff.
We had been so active ’cause that’s a big part of this band, playing live, so to not have that for that amount of time and then go off and make a record which takes whatever amount of time it takes, it wasn’t easy to do when you’ve done it for so long.
But now we’re at a point where I’m talking to you about the new record coming out soon so it’s all good!
Is there one song on the album that was the most enjoyable to work on or that means the most to you?
I think for us, the song that holds the record together is ‘Supernatural’. It would have been one of the earlier songs written off the record, maybe even the first. It’s a fuckin’ monster of a song! Five and a half minutes long. That’s where the title of the record comes from, the first line of that song “live well, change often”, and we always wanted to build the record around this song. ‘Cause it’s a bastard of a song! it doesn’t stop and it’s mental, it’s like a preacher. I don’t even know what it is! And live it’s just got an incredible energy.
That’s The Minutes. If I had to give you one song off the record, that’s us!
Speaking of live performances, you guys have been announced for T In The Park, along with a few other festivals and the likes. Looking forward to that?
Absolutely yeah! We played it a couple of years back and it was great. It’s very similar to Oxegen over here. Traditionally it was held on the same weekend as Oxegen and the acts would swap over on the days. We played two years back on the T Break stage I think and it was great. It’s great to play outside your own home and be received well – that’s what it’s all about for us.
It’s great to be an Irish band and play in Ireland but if we kept doing that for the rest of our career it wouldn’t be a very long career. So the chance to go over to the UK for T In The Park and Reading and Leeds and all that, it’s stuff that we jump at.
Definitely. And they’re big festivals as well, and if you’re saying there’s a few big songs on this record, that should translate well to a festival crowd.
Yeah I think we’ve definitely got a festival setlist. With stuff from the old record and then some of the stuff off the new one. I think if you see us at a festival you’ll be like “yeah, I get this!”. It’s not rocket science or brain surgery, it’s just a rock band rockin’ out. We’re pretty good at that.
Being an Irish band, how do you feel the music scene over here is doing? Is there anyone we should be looking out for besides The Minutes?
I dunno, we sort of just look after our own stuff. We don’t really pay much attention to anyone else but there’s a couple of bands going around like The Hot Sprockets, We Cut Corners. But otherwise I’m not sure, like we do our own thing and inevitably through playing shows, you meet other bands and some are great and others are shit and they’re the ones you just forget about.
But at the end of the day, it’s the same as being a critic, it’s just our opinion. It’s all just opinions!
That’s it exactly – basically what music is!
Absolutely!
Thank you so much for that interview – best of luck with the release and I’ll see you at the launch in Whelans.
No Problem! Yeah you should, it’s gonna be a great night.
Check out ‘Cherrybomb’ from the forthcoming album released on May 9th below: