“Thought is often your enemy”
Three years on from their highly acclaimed long player ‘Music in Mouth’ Irish quartet Bell X1 released the follow up ‘Flock’ in February. An album that grew from a recording process that involved building a shrine to middle of the road legend Daniel O’Donnell and the whole band growing moustaches. Paul Noonan recently took time out from attending awards ceremonies and promoting to talk to Gigwise about everything and nothing.
Gigwise: You’ve been together since 1999, how do close are you as a band offstage and how do you cope with the pressure?
Paul: I would say that there is a familiar contempt that kicks in with those you spend so much time with, and who have been so much a part of your growing up. So there's a general air of arseyness, like you might have with your family. We deal with the pressure by letting it build, and then cooking something in it, so it's nice and tender.
Gigwise: When songs from your album ‘Music In Mouth’ appeared on T.V shows like ‘Teachers’, how did you feel?
Paul: I suppose that's a marker along the road that begins with playing gigs that only friends and family come to, moving on to gigs that people you don't know come to, to bigger gigs, hearing your songs on the radio, in da club, in the butchers as he's handing you your pork chops and smiling knowingly... and so on. I still get freaked out for a while when I hear something of ours, and for the first few seconds I know I recognise it, but don't realise that it's ours
Gigwise: Your success with that album must have had an effect on you, how would you describe that?
Paul: Well, I suppose it makes it easier to see a future where you can keep doing it. It would be pretty shit if we went to all that trouble and nobody liked it, and we just said "oh, never mind" and slunk back into our hole...
Gigwise: What other bands are you listening to yourselves at the moment?
Paul: I'm listening to Gillian Welch a lot, who I am loving. The Arcade Fire and Sufjan Stevens records from last year are still popular, and I'm just about to put on the new Neil Diamond record, “12 Songs”.
Gigwise: Which band / artist has influenced you most?
Paul: I think that's changed a lot as I've aged. Bruce Springsteen was my first love, at maybe 10 years old. REM were a big inspiration in starting to write music. I love going to gigs and feeling really charged and enthused about music again. Seeing people like PJ Harvey, RadioHead and Sigur Ros always do it for me.
Gigwise: How easy do you find it to put a number together and does any one person take the lead role in moving the song in the direction it takes?
Paul: It's been different from album to album, and from song to song too sometimes. Usually Dave or I would present an idea (PowerPoint is the preferred medium), - sometimes a completed song, sometimes an annoyingly vague thing ("like the bottom corner of that painting!") and we'd play something as a band until it takes some kind of shape that we're happy with. This most recent album was made more instinctively I think, there was more of the end result in the noise we were making as a live band, less of the fiddly touch up business after the fact.
Gigwise: Does Art or Life (if they are two separate things) have most bearing on the music you produce?
Paul: We write mainly about actual events or goings on in our lives, maybe stretched or run into total fiction. The accompanying music is a language that can't be described by the limitations of this one, and has no handy parallel, so I suppose that's the art bit...
Gigwise: When you need ‘time out’ what do you do?
Paul: Man, I just wanna bake!
Gigwise: In your live performances do you find that you become more absorbed by the music than when you are writing or recording?
Paul: I prefer the immediacy of playing live; you can't go back and fix it. Thought is often your enemy, and in recording you end up doing things because you can, not because you need to. Some gigs you get lost in, some you don't...
Gigwise: What would be then top ten on your Album / DVD shopping list?
Paul: I don't have a TV, so I've been watching stuff on this computer for the last while. It's good; it stops you watching too much shite. I need to get the 4th series of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and the first series of the Sopranos. I've been finding it had to find The Royal Family over here...Bonnie Prince Billy and Tortoise, The Faming Lips new record, Gorrillaz last one I haven't got yet. Heard an amazing version of Lookin out for Love by Fleetwood Mac the other day, a live version with just Lindsay Buckingham and his guitar.
Gigwise: When you go on tour what’s the one thing you have to take with you for comfort and how do you enjoy touring?
Paul: I love travel, even just the act of it, sitting on a bus letting your head wander. And this time, for comfort, I'll hopefully be taking my girl...
Gigwise: What do Bell X1 want to tell our readers, in 5 words?
Paul: Don't be no player hater.
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