Like every city, Belfast has its quirks. On July 12th a small minority of Belfast light huge bonfires and listen to dirty rave in car parks around the city. It is normal to eat four varieties of bread with your cooked breakfast including soda farl and potato bread. They call mashed potatoes “champ”. In amongst all the chip shops, churches, chapels and piss-head pubs there is a small but thriving underground music scene. This week ’SUP readers will be presented with five days of the very finest in underground, in-the-know Belfast bands and hot-spots that make the city perfect for people who have an idea and want to make it known through the art of noise.
Words by Harriet Pittard
It’s yet another cloudy September evening in Belfast. The music venue Auntie Annies looks like a shabby old man’s bar from the outside, but just like a lot of these Belfast music haunts if you take yourself up the stairs away from the crowd of middle-aged men, there is a decent sized gig venue. The upstairs room is pretty empty upon arrival and strangely it stays that way for most of the night, despite there being a great line up with headliners Times New Viking supported by Lovvers and Belfast’s very own Girls Names.
Not accustomed to the attention, Girls Names are somewhat sheepish about the prospect of an interview, but immediately after their set they willingly vacate to the stairwell backstage for a brief rendezvous, implying that they definitely have something to say for themselves.
Neil and Cathal, two musicians who originally wanted to start a ‘beat happening’ tribute band lean on opposite walls from one another, when asked where it all began neither knows who to speak first. After a brief chuckle over the dictaphone not working, launching himself into the deep end Cathal lead singer, guitarist and song-writer begins.
“It began through a friend of ours, called Mark Reid who’s a promoter who was putting on a Wavves gig and didn’t know who to put down as support” He looks to Neil for back up but Neil happily lets him continue. “About three weeks before the gig he text me and asked if we were going to do the Wavves gig. So that’s when we sort of got together and had a deadline. It was a pretty big gig and we were pretty bad!”
Neil, slowly shakes his head and grins “I think about it now and I can’t believe we had the balls to do it! I only started drumming about three weeks before that gig. I was barely threading together a beat. I still wouldn’t even dare to call myself a drummer. But I might get away with it now.”
There is a very charming modesty that exudes from the two of them, but considering that their first ever gig was with a much more established act on the lo-fi surf-gaze circuit they clearly have ambition and are not afraid to get up there and go for broke.
The Belfast music scene is not exactly over-saturated by lo-fi shoe-gaze surf pop bands who are willing to throw themselves up on the stage just a couple of weeks after conception. Further a field down in Dublin you have the masters of shoegaze in the form of My Bloody Valentine but for Girls Names who have already finished their first album in under a year of forming there really isn’t much of an influential connection. Cathal pipes up “No! I never really listen to MBV” Neil responds “Well I’ve listened to them.” Finding his feet a little more Cathal gets into his groove “I listen to a lot of 80s indie like c86and twee kind of stuff. And also a lot of dark stuff, like Birthday Party”.
Although similar in approach to playing shows and getting things done Neil admits that he doesn’t listen to a lot of the music that Cathal listens to “What he listens to I like, but it’s not what I listen to. So I feel like I’m in the back seat, playing along with it. I think that’s how it works a little bit, cos we’re not trying too hard and we’re not both into the same thing. I love Orange Juice and bands like that I totally get. When we first started we were kind of like a surf band, it was a really basic and surfy kind of sound. I love surf music but there’s different ideas in there too”. It is true, their surfy sound has a much darker tone to it with Cathal’s somber vocals and twisted minor key melodies.
In Belfast Girls Names are one of a kind, but they are very much a part of a family of bands that hang out together and share ideas. When asked about this ‘scene’ Neil does not see it as being made up of one style “I think right now, over the last year or so, something seems to have come together but I don’t know if you’d call it a scene cos all the bands that I’m in to that are involved in it are very different” Cathal chips in “We probably are the only totally guitar based band and then there are others that are more Kraut.”
For Neil the key to the so-called scene is people with good concepts to bring to the table, “there a lot of people here right now who maybe went away and then came back with some good ideas”. Other places and the influences that they bring is clearly welcomed by Belfast musicians, talking about the scene Cathal notices that there’s actually “not too many from town (Belfast) in all those bands.” Although they don’t necessarily come from that far out of Belfast either, Neil is from nearby town Bangor “Its just people escaping shitty towns in Northern Ireland and coming to Belfast, which isn’t much better! That’s what happens in London. All the regional bands and people end up in London. And Belfast is all there is here. When I first came back here (from time spent living in London) I had a real chip on my shoulder about Belfast, I was like “oh it’s shit” and there’s a lot of shit bands around and there wasn’t really anything that I was that into. Not naming any names. But the last year I’ve really enjoyed being here, it’s been really fun.”
The interview is abruptly drawn to a close as their ears prick up to the muffled guitar sounds of Lovvers who have just come on stage. Always eager to hear their contemporaries from across the pond they dash up the stairwell like two little kids. In just seven months Girls Names have an album now recorded and ready to be released. Expect to be hearing a lot more from these two very modest but very motivated musicians.
Girls Names have kindly offered up an exclusive track from their forthcoming album entitled “Blood River.” Click on the right side of player to download, and keep track of their gigs via their Myspace page.
