In Profile : Popical Island
- Written by Marky Edison
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Dublin's Popical Island collective closed out a busy year with an all day showcase in Whelan's. Over the last five years they've become a fixture on the Irish music scene with new releases coming thick and fast. The Popical Island logo has become a hallmark of indie pop quality. Press notices in the run-up to the show threw out phrases like "bockety pop" and "flamboyantly hipster. " Musos' Guide went along to find out more about making music, the challenges of trying to do it yourself, and run ins with the law.
Thanks to Mike Stevens, Ruan van Vliet and Padraig Cooney for being so refreshingly candid about the realities of DIY. And especially to Padraig O'Reilly for making it happen.
"It worked right from the start. There was a great response. It wasn't a slow build."
MG: How did you start Popical Island?
MS: It started off in 2010. Myself and Ruan, who I play with in Lie Ins, we had this idea for setting up a collective. At the time we were also in another band called Groom, who have since broken up. We thought it would be a fun thing to do. We picked two bands that we already know, who are already our friends and who we feel a musical affinity with. We approached Yeh Deadlies, Padraig O Reilly's band, and Land Lovers, Padraig Cooney's band. They were up for it. We just got together and had a meeting and kicked off from there. That was 5 years ago now. Then different bands got involved. Squarehead got involved, Tieranniesaur, Walpurgis Family, off-shoots of the bands we were in. Along the way other bands joined as well.
PC: I got an email off either Ruan or Mike. It was sent to me and Padraig from Yeh Deadlies saying basically we want to start a collective. We were both enthusiastic about that. We arranged to have a meeting. It got off the ground quickly. We'd been doing stuff before but we hadn't put a name on it or formalised it. There was no big masterplan.
There were other people too but it started with Yeh Deadlies, Groom and Land Lovers. Generally all the bands chipped in with organising things. One of the first things we attempted was organising the first compilation. That was the idea and everything else came off that. The monthly gigs, which were successful for a while. It's an umbrella for stuff that we would be doing anyway. We share a lot of things. We share a practice room. We put a lot of work into building that room.
We were all standard fools trying to pursue music on the Dublin scene. Chasing the dream, in an ironic way. We enjoy playing and its definitely better to play with people there than without people there. And we did think that being together would result in people paying attention to us.
It does draw other people into your orbit. Like the people from the Grand Pocket Orchestra, who weren't involved initially but came into it then. People might have the impression that we're a label, we're this, that or the other and we have a big business strategy. We just have a logo and a place we rehearse and a prolific attitude to making music. So were always putting out stuff. We collaborate a lot. It's a practical association more than anything else.
For better or for worse it concentrated what we do. There's a force acting to make you make a certain type of music because Popical Island is supposed to make this type of music. And I'm not sure that was there consciously before. And I'm not sure it was something we wanted to do.
But it works both ways. There's a certain amount of you trying to make music that's fits into Popical Island. And every single review of the releases has the words "twee", "ramshackle", etc. Even when it's a beautiful production it would still be called "bockety". Perceptions are hard to shake. The bands produce so much different music and different sounding genres. It covers a lot of ground. There's no commonality between for instance what Paddy Hanna is doing at the moment and what Tieranniesaur were doing, or even what Land Lovers are doing. But it's billed as "Popical Island make ramshackle pop".
MG: What's your favourite release on Popical Island?
MS: That's a tough one. Let me think. I have to not mention any of my own. I really love The First Book Of Lessons By Yeh Deadlies, love Tieranniesaur's album. No Monster Club is fantastic. Land Lovers have some amazing stuff. Their new album is coming out next year, so I'll say that one.
RvV: The First Book of Lessons by Yeh Deadlies is probably my favourite. It was a big record for us. We were all big fans of Yeh Deadlies even before we knew them. The first time I saw them I was shocked that we had a band that good in Dublin. It’s a shame they’re not playing anymore.
PC: Apart from my own, its possibly The First Book Of Lessons By Yeh Deadlies.
MG: That's been the first mention for everyone so far.
PC: I'm going to change it then, I'd not be wanting to boost this guys ego! I'm a big fan of the last Walpurgis Family album. It's a super record. I'm a big fan of the first Grand Pocket Orchestra record but that doesn't count cos it came out just before they got involved with us. No, I take it all back. By far my favourite Popical Island record is Mountbatten Class by Ginnels.
MG: You have released a ton of records, do you number them like SST and Factory?
MS: We did, then we just started forgetting where we were. We do so many, I'd say we have about 30 records out. Initially we were doing about 10 a year but now it's more like four or five.
MG: How many times will you be playing today?
MS: I will be playing with Skelocrats soon. And later on I'll be playing with the Lie Ins. So I'm only in two bands at the moment. This is the fifth all-dayer. When we started up Popical Island we decided that we would have a plan so we were all working towards something. Our initial plan was to have a compilation, put that together and have an all day gig from that compilation. So that's what we did.
I had been involved in a couple of all day gigs before and it was a really nice vibe, having people come in during the day, staying for the whole day, coming and going as they please. I really liked that idea. We did that and it was a real success. We did that for three years running and put a compilation out each year and a free day. And since then we decided to stop the compilations but we kept doing the all dayers. We did one in January 2013 and one now for Christmas. It's going well so far anyway.
RvV: Today I’m playing with Walpurgis Family, Squarehead, Lie Ins, and Ginnels. In that order. Every year that we’ve done these all dayers I’ve played in one less band. The first year I played eight times, so three next year. The last two events have been just for fun. And profit. Fundraising for tax bills and stuff like that. Running a venue, personal liability insurance, all sorts of stuff like that that you don’t really think of.
Maybe it’s better to be illegitimate and more underground. And illegal really. Any kind of DIY space that opened up in Dublin had a shelf life of two to three years and came crashing down. Mostly due to legal problems. So we thought we would try to be as legitimate as possible and be like a 'real' venue. And it worked even less. We ran it for six months before we had to shut it down. We had a lot of problems with the police shutting down gigs. For different reasons every time. It'd be “oh you don’t have a fire cert”, then we found out we actually did have one. We didn’t even know that. “Ok, you do have a fire cert so where’s your IMRO licence?” Every time the goalposts would be moved. If a cop wants to shut you down, they’re gonna do it. It’s a losing battle. If you’re setting up a DIY space, hide it from everybody.
I was in Boston a couple of years ago with Squarehead playing some shows. And there was a big scandal at the time where this DIY space called The Butcher Shop got shut down. And they were super secretive. It was below a butcher shop but there’s no signage. If there was a Facebook event it would never be called The Butcher Shop. They would just use any kind of two word thing that begins with B & S, ‘Bucket Socks’ or something. Or the location would be listed as “Ask a punk.” And then this band from outside Boston were playing there on their tour and got an email from a guy called Joe Sly asking the address of the gig that night. They knew no better so they just replied. It was a fake email account set up by the police. And the police arrived that night and shut down the venue. It’s kind of hilarious but I digress.
PC: I'm playing in Skelocrats which is a cross section of Popical people. It's me, Mike Stevens from Lie Ins on rhythm, Paddy Hanna on drums, from Grand Pocket Orchestra, Ginnels and No Monster Club and Bronwyn on bass, who is also from Grand Pocket Orchestra. It's a Ménage a Popical. People like these events. They're always well attended. And they're great craic. Its great seeing the kids come in as well. This is the first winter one. It's weird because my memory of the kids being here is that it's bright and summery. It's a great day for them. And then of course later on it becomes more raucous.
You get into music for the dream of making music but once you're actually at it so much of it is admin.
I think if you talked to me three years ago I would have been mad enthusiastic telling you what we have coming up. I'm not that enthusiastic person anymore. That said, I'm putting out a Land Lovers album in a few months time and, it's the music that keeps you going. The whole running of a pseudo business is not what it's about. We've had people say to us that we don't have our shit together. We should be doing this. We sound be doing that. But maybe we're the wrong people to be doing this. Or maybe we're the right people to be doing this. We're all musicians. We don't really care about that other stuff. We only want Popical Island to operate at this very tenuous low level. Just a logo and an idea.
MG: You got the Guinness grant in 2013, how did that come about?
MS: Somebody involved with Guinness let us know about it. Said to put our name in, we might get some money out of it. Of course, lots of people applied. We decided we really had to go for it. There's no point applying and advertising Guinness on our website unless we're actually going to get something for it. So we made a really good video to go along with our pitch and made a very solid pitch about what we needed the money for. They were very positive towards us. We got a big wad of cash and it was fantastic. It enabled us to set up our current practice/recording space.
MG: The Pop Inn?
MS: Yeah, it was great. It gave us a real shot in the arm. It was what we needed at the time.
RvV: It was very good to get The Pop Inn. It’s an invaluable kind of thing but the running of it has taken over a lot of our day to day lives. It’s hard when you're DIY, or you practice DIY ethics, you forget that you have to become a social media whiz. Then learn how to fill out tax forms and insurance forms. You have to legitimise and be professional. And most of the people involved just want to have fun and play music. And suddenly you're a bouncer at a nightclub. It's like “How did this happen?” I’m confiscating drink off underage kids and telling people to stop having fun. It’s weird.
But the Guinness thing was funny because they did it just that one year. I guess they didn’t get out of it what they wanted. I felt kind of embarrassed at the award ceremony because the Alzheimer’s choir got a grant and this company called Foodcloud who take wasted food from supermarkets and redistribute it to people who need it. And then there’s us who are going to set up a venue and rehearsal space for us to drink cans in. So it was a bit ridiculous. I guess they cancelled the Guinness project after that. Not completely our fault.
PC: It's been a double edged sword to some extent. The idea for the Guinness grant was that we would have an all encompassing headquarters to rehearse and record and gig. And we did try to have gigs at the start but we had so many problems with the legalities of that, we don't do them anymore. It was an enormous headache. It was scary. We won't be doing that anymore. I'm not sure the will is there, or the money. We spent so much making it a good rehearsal space but that doesn't equal a viable venue in the eyes of the Garda Siochana. But if we lost The Pop Inn we'd be bereft. We use it every day. There's been loads of records made there. It's the source of our commonality. We use each others' gear. We break each others' amps.
MG: It's been a venue as well.
MS: It was previously a theatre. What we decided to do was to make the place usable. We had been renting out a space and it was pretty awful. We were always getting complaints from the neighbours. So we got a place that was a good location, put the money into it, soundproofing and rebuilding. We really gutted the place and put in the stairs, the soundproofing, two practice rooms. We spent the money wisely. It's fantastic. It's still going now. We practice there and can record there as well.
MG: With the amount of bands that you have how do you decide what's coming out next?
MS: Every band releases its own stuff. I'm in Lie Ins so we'll just go on the thread and say we're planning to release an album in 2016. Someone will say we've got one coming out in February and someone else has one coming out in June, so we try to stagger them. Try to have at least a month between new releases. Just making sure that we're not getting in the way of each other. I don't think it's ever been a problem. There's always time to do stuff. It is up to the band themselves. It's not like myself or Padraig are saying “You have to release an album!”.
"I don't know of any indie that's making any money at all"
MG: It must make it a bit easier having that support framework.
MS: Yeah, the bands are releasing stuff themselves and they could do that on their own. They don't have to have a Popical Island logo on it. We do have a bit of experience I suppose, so our collective experience means that a band like Shrug Life, who put out a record last year with us, they could easily have done it themselves. But the fact that they were associated with us meant we were able to help them along, sending out emails, and some of the donkey work really. It just meant that when posting to blogs they'd go “Oh here's the new Popical Island record”. People would see that association and might respond to it a bit better.
It's a foot in the door, the hardest part of being in a band isn't writing songs it's getting other people to acknowledge it.
I was in bands for yonks and that's how it was for me, and for every band. Always struggling to be heard. When I was in Groom, myself and Ruan were recording an album and the recording engineer's wife was involved with The Ticket (The Irish Times music supplement). She said that if you send in an envelope, they get envelopes all the time, but if there's a stamp on it from a PR agency it tends to get looked at first. So we were thinking that we can't afford to buy PR but we can create something like that that would be recognised. We had no expectations. It worked right from the start. There was a great response. It wasn't a slow build.
MG: You've good people involved in it, I remember talking to Padraig (O Reilly, Yeh Deadlies) about this about 15 years ago and the vision that he had for what he wanted to do in music is almost exactly what Popical Island has become.
MS: Padraig's vision was key. There are some people who have a really clear view. Ruan is like that too. Where with myself, I'm more of a grafter. I just try and get things done. You need the ideas people and you need people to get things done. And it works in our favour.
MG: Were there other DIY labels that inspired you?
MS: When we started off, The Richter Collective. They did hardcore and electronica, mostly hardcore. A lot of the guys at Popical Island know those guys. We got some inspiration from that. To be honest we kind of stole their idea. But we figured we could place ourselves in opposition to them. Musically were very much the opposite. They weren't doing the type of music that we were doing. We had a bunch of indie pop bands who don't do what The Richter Collective do. At the very start what we did was gave Mick from The Richter Collective a shout and had a meeting with him to pick his brains and ask his advice. He gave us some really good advice. Great guys, and we were never really in competition with them. They were doing completely different music. It's a shame they've disbanded.
There's lots of little labels around Ireland. There was a collective called Things You're Missing. I was involved in that. They revolved around thumped.com's messageboard. That started there. There was a few bands and it was a really great idea. The whole idea was a collective and getting together. And it was based around that website but also semi connected to Road Records as well. The whole idea being bands releasing their own records, getting together organising tours, and stuff like that. It had a certain amount of momentum and then it died a death. I think the reason it died was it didn't have any musical identity. It was just any bands that were willing to come along to the meetings. It was very egalitarian in that respect.
But one of the things we decided was not to go down that road of having any one kind of music. To take tight control of the music. There were a few different things on the scene at the time. We didn't want to be like a label. The whole thing was about labels back in the day, "Oh, that's such a cool label". I think that independent labels have been on the way out for a number of years now. I don't know of any indie that's making any money at all.
There are so many labels that are doing it as a labour of love. I think the reason we've had any success is because there is no money involved. For 2016 we're going to put a few records out, Lie Ins, No Monster Club, Land Lovers, and others. So I'm really looking forward to that.
"If a cop wants to shut you down, they’re gonna do it"
MG: What DIY labels were an inspiration to you?
RvV: All the typical ones, K Records and Dischord. More than any record labels it just never seemed like there was any other way to do things. When I first started playing in bands in Dublin. I didn’t really know about an Irish music scene. As soon as you start learning about it the first band you probably hear of is The Frames. Certainly back then in the '90s The Frames were all DIY. It was just the way everybody worked. Ireland’s too small for any kind of industry. Anyone who pretends they work in the Irish music industry is kidding themselves. It’s not a thing. It was just second nature.
MG: Any music city in the UK has a population as big as the whole island. The industry does seem to be a whole bunch of people trying to make something individually.
RvV: It does and the big labels have their Irish division and when you hear a band got signed to them, it just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t get pushed outside the country. You can get bands that are popular enough to fill an arena here. But they never seem to push them outside the country. Whereas someone like Bobby (Aherne, No Monster Club) has done everything himself and has records out on US labels and German labels and gets to go off and tour with no money and no muscle, no big backing.
"Every single review of a Popical Island release has the words "twee", "ramshackle", etc. Perceptions are hard to shake".
