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Interview
by SashaS
13-10-2002
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| JJ72 are happy together |
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An evergreen shade
JJ72 on depth and essence of living
The new JJ72 album, ‘I To Sky’, treks from simplicity of the opening ‘Nameless’ to the fuller, elegantly rocking ‘City’ and spellbinding closer ‘Oiche Mhaithe’. It is several steps away from the self-titled debut of two years ago that produced a couple of respectable singles. The band’s disc delivers goods of extra insight, class, expanse, far from neurosis the prospect of second album might bring (to a lesser act).
Positioned around the table, Mark Greaney, songwriter/guitarist/vocalist answers most of the questions but bassist Hillary Woods and drummer Feargal Matthews don’t try hard to forward their opinions, a day after their London club-date to showcase the new material. Quite the opposite to the onstage volume of the rhythm section.
Mark Greaney: “It was only the second time (after Dublin) we played the new songs and the atmosphere is different because it is difficult for people to get into the new songs. And, there is also an expectation now. When we played our (debut) album before it was released, we didn’t really care because we didn’t know whether people will ever hear it…”
MG: “When we did gigs like that, people weren’t saying, ‘Oh, this is gonna be great!’ It is the same thing that happened when we played the Slane Castle (Ireland) with U2 and it was a huge example of underwhelment… For months people were telling us, ‘Slane, it’s just going to be one of the best days of your life’ and it turned out to be another show in front of a larger crowd but not much different.”
Mentioning expectations almost sounds like admitting to feeling pressure?
MG: “The main pressure I’ve felt is to make a better record than our debut… As with anything, you do music and you don’t want to pursue the same path but be more cohesive, effective, powerful and you want more of everything, lots more of everything. The good points of the old album I wanted to enhance, make them bigger and I think that this album is a long, long way ahead of the first one.”
MG: “There was also the added pressure by people who don’t really want to put pressure on you… But, the expectation is quite small compared to somebody like, for instance, Coldplay. So, ours is little, relatively speaking…”
Life, love and losers
Were inspirations different for ‘… Sky’, more general or, at least, less personal?
MG: “Well, different inasmuch the first album was singing about soul, life and all those sort of things, this one is ever deeper, trying to delve honestly into that and not being scared to do it. We did so many interviews after the first album and there was almost this expectancy that you got to sing about things that are lot more extrovert... The lyrics should be about an issue, you know, and for me…”
Isn’t life the biggest issue?
MG: “Exactly… That’s what the whole album is all about! My point is that people have to understand it and not suggest (assumes American accent), ‘You gotta chill out’; ‘What are you singing about, what’s wrong with you?’. This is lyrically easier, I hope, album but it is still with a capital ‘L’…” (as in life, love and losers).
Creativity being a cathartic process, have you discovered a meaning behind it all?
MG: “Comfort… In a lot of things that I wrote on the first album I wouldn’t find… I’d listen to other people talk about it and smile ironically but it is something you realise… You mature and embrace your humanity a little bit more and know that other people have gone through the same thing and can relate to it… None of us are ever going to be an alien, so it is not a common experience… Things that look simple on the outside suddenly are very important and it might appear to be clichés but it is true, it is a snapshot where I’m at the time.”
MG: “One worry I have about what I do is that what we do can be seen as angst with capital ‘A’ and it’s not. Angst has always been seen as a negative thing but the whole thing of yearning on the inside is behind the greatest art motivation.”
Mind machine
Success inevitably brings changes; how have you adapted to your situation?
Feargal Matthews: “It has changed us and if we claimed otherwise, like so many other artists, we’d be lying. The biggest thing you have to adapt to is being away from your family and friends all the time, which brings us closer as a group of people as we are the only ones on this journey. We all hope that translates into better music.”
Hillary Woods: “We’ve certainly wised-up, grown up since the early days and it would’ve been awful if we didn’t change as people… That would have been plainly unbearable…”
FM: “One other thing is to learn not to feel guilty because of what you do and enjoy it while knowing that majority of human race are doing jobs they hate which brings unhappiness to their lives. We can do what we want, whenever we want to.”
MG: “Music is not a job, it is a way of life… There are pitfalls but none are anything like you get it in everyday jobs. This is the opposite from the soul-destroying job… We all are caught in the machine but music allows you to try to make a mark, a real mark…”
HW: “We are mainly concerned with music and everything else is, more or less, a chore. Photographs, videos, everything else, it only makes people aware of the music we’ve made and it has no other meaning. We don’t want to be pin-ups, celebrities, tabloid ‘personalities’…”
Just what evergreen is all about; JJ72 are so clued into such a notion.
Tour dates:
18 October - Barrowlands, Glasgow
19 October - Academy, Manchester
21 October - Academy, Bristol
22 October - Pyramid Centre, Portsmouth
24 October - The Forum, London
25 October - The Forum, London
27 October - University, Lancaster
04 November - University, Liverpool
05 November - University, Newcastle
06 November - UEA, Norwich
08 November - De Montfort University, Leicester
09 November - University, Sheffield
11 November - University, Cardiff
12 November - Metro University, Leeds
13 November - Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton
SashaS
13-10-2002
JJ72’s album ‘I To Sky’ is released 14 October 2002 on Lakota/Columbia
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