More about: The Murder Capital

From the release of their thundering debut album When I Have Fears, The Murder Capital have developed somewhat of a cult following. Now three years on, we catch up with the band, sitting down in an East London pub with five lads facing one of the most highly anticipated returns in recent years.

Despite the success of their first album, the The Murder Capital are clear that the sound and direction of their previous work will not necessarily define their future. On their sound, frontman James McGovern smirks, “That’s up to the perception of the box creators.”

“There’s always that moment that you get in writing a song and it's like, alright, I need the rest of the boys around now before it becomes a Murder Capital tune,” explains bassist Gabriel Pascal Blake. “It doesn't always have to be the five of us in the room to further an idea, but yeah, it definitely becomes a Murder Capital tune when all of our hands have touched it.”

From Donegal to Wexford, the band’s journey throughout their writing process left them isolated together throughout covid, working towards that all important common goal – album number two. On living and working together, James jokes, “It was like being on big brother, but there were no cameras, and you weren’t getting paid.”

“I don’t miss it,” sighs guitarist Cathal Ropper. “We were just working in the sitting room. So like, it’s lockdown. You can’t go anywhere, you can’t see anybody else, and you were just working where you’re living - so if it doesn’t go well one day, or if it doesn’t go well for two weeks, that’s just the space you’re stuck in mentally.”

On their creative process, Cathal comments, “it would be a mixture of us talking about texture and whatever James was feeling narrative wise, and then that was sort of letting the song evolve in a sort of unusual way because we were all looking at it through a different lens and getting different hints as to where it should be going.”

Drummer Diarmuid Brennan explains, “We wanted to get away and test the boundaries. We didn’t want to just be defined by the first thing that we wrote, because we met and recorded that all within the first nine months of knowing each other. So, I think there was a lot of time taken to just get to know each other, and know each other’s process, and really feel out the next album. There was a lot of teething going on at that point to get the album to where it is now.”

“There was a lot to do with the environment of the first record being there already that was a lot to draw from,” adds guitarist, Damien Tuit. “There is this thing with the music where the sonic kind of came first, and more and more as we explored this world did it reveal what we were writing about.”

"The time we were able to spend alone let us really find out the emotional depths of a lot of the songs,” says Gabriel, “and then once we got to be in London for the last six months of writing, it was the main time that the vigour and the life came into the tunes.”

While their work began in earnest, they faced some creative challenges along the way.” I don’t think it was necessarily the cliché of the second difficult album,” muses Gabriel. “I don’t think for a second we wanted to recreate what we already put out… It took a long time to write, but in the end, we were assured in the state of wanting something that sounds like living life and living life for the future. The first record was so much about loss and grief, and makes you think about the past, and especially in lockdown when the future was sort of uncertain, you’re projecting what your hopes are and what you want to get out of the future.”

James continues, “The challenges weren’t external, they were in a creative sense. They were set up by ourselves, so our ambitions are what took us the time to write the record that we did”.

"The biggest achievement that you’re gonna have is that you’re gonna still be a fucking band."

Inspired by their lockdown watching of Last Chance U, the band turned to James’ dad as a coach figure. Gabriel explains, “as we were driving back and forth from Donegal we would stop off with Big A and he was just able to be like, ‘You know some of the best tunes are written when you go off to the beach and have a swim, if you’re just trying to nail it in the room all the time sometimes you’re just hitting your head off the wall, but if you allow yourself to go away sometimes it can just land to you.’”

“We were just so adamant to get the album done and making it be right that he was like ‘You know, you think the biggest achievement out of this lockdown and this pandemic is that you’re gonna have a record at the end of it. The biggest achievement that you’re gonna have is that you’re gonna still be a fucking band.’”

“Once we were able to take the pressure off that really rigid focus on trying to make something work and realising that the most important thing is making your environment together work, then you can actually get what you’re looking for. Letting go is a big thing. You need to let go of something for it to come back to you a lot of the time, and that was kind of what that was about.”

“Divorce rates went up during the pandemic, and we could easily have had some divorces between us,” laughs James, “but we came out with 5 rings on our fingers.”

“For all five of us to be satisfied with something, like deeply, and in a certain sense takes that length of time,” explains Gabriel, “and now that we have the record that we do, it’s like thank fuck we didn’t sell ourselves short at any point in that process! We did all end up having a record that we’re completely confident in because of what it gives back to us - and that took a bit of time - but thank fuck we did take the time to do that.”

With the band now dispersed across Paris, London, and the island of Ireland, it’s clear they are entering a new era with a striking sense of confidence. Awaiting the release of their sophomore album Gigi’s Recovery, fans can be assured that The Murder Capital are a self-assured band who are undeniably content that the work they have made is well worth the wait. “It sounds cliché, but it’s all about the process,” says Diarmuid, “the process was so important for us to go through, and we’re all the better because of it.”

Gigi's Recovery arrives January 20th

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More about: The Murder Capital