Crayonsmith

Having just released his second album, White Wonder, Crayonsmith maestro - Dubliner Ciaran Smith - talks about moving from the bedroom to the recording studio

Do you feel White Wonder is a more fully realised album, compared to Stay Loose?

More realised? Yeah, I guess. I found that when I went out and played live, I was very conscious of the audience and their enjoyment and very conscious of the pace and tempo of the show so I ended up writing faster songs and that seeped into the writing of the second album. I learnt a lot more about sounds between Stay Loose and this album and wanted to get into a proper studio. I’d done the lo-fi album and now I wanted to do, as you say, the fully realised album where somebody else is in control and we’re (Ciaran, Ruadhan O' Meara, Ronan Jackson) just left to our ideas.

Every review of Stay Loose mentions the words ‘lo-fi’ or ‘bedroom recording’, was it a conscious effort to get out of the bedroom?

Yeah it was. I guess Stay Loose was the equivalent of a four-track album. With the next album I wanted the beats to be bigger, let everything have its own space and in terms of doing the drums and the beats, every drum sound had its own channel, nothing was compressed and with that you get a bigger sound. And then having Steve Shannon to produce helped expose us to thing we hadn’t thought of before.

How much of a challenge was it to strike a balance between the dense beats and production and the more melodic and harmonious aspects of the songs?

It’s really interesting combining live drums with sample drums and juxtaposing organic sounds and synthetic sounds but I won’t go near the sampler until there’s a nice melody there. I’m not going to throw a load of noise on it just to be wanky; it’s always to serve the song, those chords, the melody and the vocals. With that production it was a painstaking process to choose the right drums and beats, like do we need an 808 snare to add to the whole musicality? That kind of thing

One thing that’s mentioned as having particular influence over the album is the Anticon label's output. True?

Absolutely. Everything that comes off that label, we just love. It’s a real can do attitude where everything goes. You can get an old shitty Casio beat and make it sound amazing. Like, have you heard Alopecia by Why? (RW - Yes, we were just about to get onto that…). The second song on that record, Good Friday, the start of that is just a basic Casio beat that everyone encountered when they’re 8 or whatever but just put through a filter, it sounds so cool. It’s about textures, disarming the listener with stuff that’s beautiful to the ear and the song just creeps into the listener’s head because it’s been made so accessible.

It’s all about being unique. Do you know Good Enough by Cyndi Lauper, it’s on the soundtrack to the Goonies? The snare in that, it’s not even a snare, it’s more like the clipboard when a director shouts action, but that stays in your head because it’s such an unusual noise. The sound is so built into the song that you know what’s coming up as soon as you hear it.

Have you always had an ear for those unique sounds?

It’s just a catchy thing. Like with Marquee Moon by Television, the opening chord of that, you know what it is straight away. Or Billie Jean or Beat It. It’s all about getting the listener in the first few second. You know Subtle? The shit that those guys are doing, they’re giving you so much bang for you buck, it’s incredible. They give you the best of every zone of music. I don’t know how to describe it, It’s like the best kind of selection box – you get rid of Opel Fruits and you put your Malteesers in or you get the best of Cadburys and the best of Nestle.

Do you find you’re predominantly influenced by American bands? You can certainly hear stuff like Pavement and Grandaddy in the more melodic side and Animal Collective and even Why? in the more inventive moments.

It’s funny, we were coming back from Belfast last night and we were talking about how we can’t wait to go out on tour in America (with Islands in June) just to see how it connects with the audience out there. I do agree with you, I’m obsessed with American music; nearly everything I listen to is American. I’m still listening to New Order and stuff like that but with the English music I do listen to, you can tell they were conscious of American music when they were making it. I’d be happy to go down as sounding American because it’s just what turns me on. The last thing I want is to sound like an Irish band.

That’s the one thing with Stay Loose and White Wonder is they pointedly don’t sound Irish. Do you think you stand out from Irish bands?

I don’t know. That’s really for someone else to answer. We play with our friends Bats and Hooray for Humans and then there are other bands in Ireland that we’d never play with, it would be a disaster of a night. There is, how can I put it, a collective that could be branded as American sounding, not just Crayonsmith (Ciaran also includes Giveamanakick). They’re all into the whole Stephen Malkmus/Pavement lo-fi thing working hand in hand with going into good studios and getting your record sounding as good as it can to compete with other bands out there.

Do you think there might be more scope for Crayonsmith in the States?

I find the DIY scene in America is a bit more open minded because you can do anything over there, if you’ve got a big huge album with lots of production and you just turn up for a show with an acoustic guitar people just accept it for what it is. It’s more of a grassroots thing. Whereas in Ireland people think you have to wear a blazer, a scarf, skinny jeans, a fringe and all that. I think crowds here can be duped a bit by bands who look the part and we’d be listening going the fucking songs have been left behind. That’s where I get confused but in the States you can turn up in shorts and sandals and people won’t care.

So no plans to style the fringe?

No, because I’m going bald and can’t grow a fringe (laughs). It’s good though, one less thing to worry about and you can get out of the house five minutes earlier.

And finally, have to talk about the artwork which is again done by D.A.D.D.Y’s Mike Ahern and is absolutely fantastic. We love it but what’s going on? Can think maybe a Children of Lir thing with the swans but then there’s the baguettes and the armour…

(Laughs) I’m definitely glad you said you don’t know what’s going on because we don’t really know either. OK, basically Ronan (Jackson, bass) came up with the title White Wonder and Mike said he loved the name. I’d met up with him and gave him themes, adjectives, MP3’s of what the songs sounded like and just from hanging around with me, he got where I was coming from. When he heard the title White Wonder, he had the idea of a white knight trying to go around doing good and looked back at all these Renaissance portraits of people like Joan of Arc where they’re glance is cast towards the sky and they’re being idolised. He said how about we take the piss out of that and we have you looking all earnest and regal and pure but surrounded by something ridiculous like swans. If you look at the picture, the swans have no interest in me where as in the Joan of Arc picture, the crowd are fucking wetting themselves over her. As Mike said, it’s a lo-fi version of high-brow art.

And I don’t know if you’ve seen under the cd, but you can see what the photoshoot actually looked like (Ciaran in front of a white sheet with a couple of swans). It’s just on the canal in Dublin by Harolds Cross and you can see an old man behind thinking what the fuck are you doing - a bunch of muppets on the canal. It sums it up though that no matter how dark or serious the subject matter on the album is, you have to laugh at yourself.