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El Diablo
El Diablo are three twenty something journalists from
Dublin who play country music in their spare time. They have just
released their first album length collection of songs written and
recorded over the last twelve months. El Diablo are Anna Carey,
Patrick Freyne and Pól O'Conghaile and they spoke to Old Weird just
before taking the stage to officially launch the 23rd Psalm Café.
The record
bears the fruit of recording sessions begun during the summer of
2000 and includes one song ('Jerusalem Hills') from the Nashville
sessions of May/June this year. According to Patrick there wasn't
any great master plan last year to record an album, "It was more
like pieces falling into place slowly, just colliding on the way",
he says. Anna describes it as something that "grew organically"
out of an original session with just four songs. If this all sounds
like a happy accident, then I think that is just what these three
Diablos would have you think. Tellingly, their day jobs are label
boss, music journo and website boss, then I feel that there is something
of a definite plan for the Diablos.
I was curious
as to why they picked Country as their medium of choice, particularly
as both Patrick and Pól are involved in the rather more noisy and
loose NPB. "It reminds me of being a kid, crawling around on the
ground listening to my Dad's tapes", Patrick confesses as his mates
howl with laughter. Anna's father's favourite bands were The Byrds
and The Flying Burrito Brothers, who she was always aware of as
a child and who she rediscovered for herself when she was 18. Both
herself and Patrick bonded over Gram and Emmylou duets whilst in
University. Interestingly Pól explains "we all have different definitions
of the work in our heads. We're coming at it from different directions.
Funnily enough we get asked these questions more in Ireland, when
we were over in the States they considered us folk".
So just how
did the denizens of Country Central take to three young Dubliners
playing them at their own game? As Pól said, they were considered
folk, "that's because we were in Nashville, the Country Disneyland
and we weren't wearing the big hats", explains Patrick. "People
thought we were really out there and I thought we were pretty nice
folky music to listen to," he elaborates. Whilst in Nashville the
band played and recorded with Tim Smith who has played with all
the big hitters, past and present, including one of Patrick's heroes,
Kris Kristofferson, who reckoned that they could do really well
as everything else is really schmaltzy. They also played the 23rd
Psalm Café, which gave them the album title.
The album
then is a strong and confident collection of narrative tales such
as 'Jerusalem Hills' and 'Shitkickers Inc.' and deeply personal
songs such as Carey's 'Maryland Bed' "written about two days after
the incident in question" and Freyne's 'Fists', "I like the idea
of a song that says the way you're feeling very simply…. it's very
non specific, anyone will do" he says, sitting about a foot way
from me. Pól is keen to stress that when putting the record together,
they didn't want it to be "too over styled" and they worked to achieve
a balance between the narrative and personal.
So as the
band get ready for the nights show, we wind things up with a healthy
discussion of certain acts mentioned in previous reviews, where
El Diablo profess their love for the Beautiful South and the Cranberries.
Sorry lads.
23rd Psalm
Cafe is out now on Catchy Go Go records - www.catchygogo.com.
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