WAS 29.99 NOW 19.99 DISC 1 1. Archive Material 2. A Job Worth Something 3. Wear My Medals 4. They Were Never Our People 5. Rolodex City 6. Different Kind of Holiday 7. Carshade 8. Central Tones 9. Recycle Culture 10. Econymo 11. Nothing To Write Home About 12. Im Wild Second album from Irish alt rock band, recorded with Daniel Fox (Girl Band). First for Full Time Hobby. Debut album was nominated for Irish Music Prize 2020, had a playlisted single on BBC 6 Music (Dunkirk) and picked up coverage from Stereogum, NME, DIY and Uncut. “From the very start, we’ve always wanted to be a ‘career band. We don’t see the point in not constantly making music - if you’re lucky enough to be able to make music you like and enjoy it, why put restrictions on it?” says Kilian O’Kelly, one of the three guitarists in Silverbacks. His brother Daniel, who takes care of vocals and another of the guitars, nods in agreement. After the release and acclaim provided to their debut record ‘Fad’ in 2020, it would have been understandable for the band to take a step back and take stock of their achievements thus far. Not so - writing sessions began early in 2020 for what they hope to be the follow-up, with Dan sending files back and forth from his new base in Paris while the others - Kilian, bassist and vocalist Emma Hanlon, guitarist Peadar Kearney and drummer Gary Wickham - remained in Ireland. They spent their downtime from live commitments refining and shaping their ideas, taking to the studio when they could with producer Daniel Fox (Girl Band) to try and push themselves and their music forward. Wear My Medals their latest single and first for new label Full Time Hobby gives an indication of where they’re headed. Fizzing with energy and excitement, the band career through the track with their joy ripping out of the speakers, topped by a stunning vocal turn by Emma Hanlon. “We always set out while demoing to write ‘Emma Songs’ - songs that we think will specifically work for Emma’s vocals” says Dan. “We were quite a ways through the latest batch before we realised we hadn’t gotten any Emma Songs down so herself and Kilian got to work.” Riffs on endurance athletes and their dietary peccadilloes, wrestling heels and control, it’s at turns brash and soothing, screed and lullaby. The characteristic guitar interplay remains from previous works but there’s a new found tautness to the lines, focussed and locked with a thunderous performance from the rhythm section. Lauren Gregory, director of the song’s video, shared some insight into what inspired the artistic direction she took: The band gave me complete creative license, so I really got to let my imagination run wild. For the swimming scenes, I took inspiration from the movie "A Philadelphia Story", a scene in which Katherine Hepburn is swimming and climbing out of a pool. When I was working on the boxing scenes, I watched a lot of footage of Muhammed Ali warming up before fights, jumping and punching the air, and tried to emulate his movements. Out of everything, sculpting the hands playing bar chords on the guitar was the most fun. How do the band think the people who reacted so well to their previous record will feel about this move forward? “We don’t really know - people say we’re post-punk, but we aren’t really. Some people say we’re an indie band but we aren’t that either. I don’t know, sometimes it’s more fun just to see what comes out when we write and let everyone else worry about what it is” says Kilian with a grin. Happy in their own world of writing, recording, refining, release and repeat, Silverbacks live for their work, allowing their creative impulses to dictate where the songs go next. It’s going to be an interesting journey. Full biog: In years from now, anyone seeking to make sense of what life was like during a global pandemic should extend their research beyond the newspaper clippings and dive into the 21 JANUARY 2022 Silverbacks Archive Material Product info Label Full Time Hobby Configuration 1 x 12" Vinyl Album Sales Date January 21, 2022 Order Due Date December 24, 2021 Genre Rock Subgenre Post-Punk UK Price 14.99 UPC/EAN 5060626463868 Box Lot 12 Product Code FTH422LP Explicit N Contact [email protected] The Lighthouse 370 Grays Inn Road London WC1X 8BB United Kingdom art produced during the period. Archive Material - the aptly-titled second album by Dublinbased art-rock quintet Silverbacks - will make for a particularly illuminating listen on the subject. Capturing the absurd mixture of monotony and creeping disquiet experienced by many of us this past 18 months, it’s simultaneously sobering and wickedly droll. Spend more than five minutes in the company of brothers/band founders Daniel and Kilian O’Kelly and you’ll quickly realise this playfulness is hardwired. Reminiscing about their upbringing in Brussels, they gently rib one another about their early creative abilities. “When Kilian started writing music, around the age of 14/15, it was like, oh shit, thats better than what Ive been doing - maybe I should latch on to him a bit,” older brother and lead singer Daniel chuckles. “And that’s still the case,” guitarist/vocalist Kilian bats back, grinning. They laugh too recalling how - prior to the existence of streaming services - they used their dad’s extensive record collection as a lending library, much to his disapproval. “The rule in the house was [you could borrow] just one CD at a time,” Daniel explains. “It was like borrowing a book: you’d check it out for a night and then the next day hed be immediately chasing up on the CD asking, ‘Where is it?’ And then he’d fine us.” It was via these limited loans that the pair first discovered the work of Frank Zappa, the Beatles and Miles Davis, as well as some of the records and bands that would go on to inspire their output in Silverbacks specifically. “Television’s Marquee Moon was a big one,” Daniel recalls. “Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain was another. And then Sonic Youth generally.” The siblings’ songwriting partnership only began in earnest when Daniel moved to Kildare to study music in 2008, with the pair swapping ideas over email under the band name Mighty Good Leaders. Two years later, Kilian joined Daniel at college in Maynooth and - after changing their name to Silverbacks - they expanded the line-up, recruiting course mates Peadar Kearney on guitar and Emma Hanlon on bass, alongside a revolving cast of drummers. This arrangement continued until 2014, when Peadar left Ireland to live in France and the band reverted back to being a bedroom project. The current incarnation of Silverbacks officially began two years later, upon Peadar’s return to Dublin, with drummer Gary Wickham completing the line-up. The five-piece’s first release together - ‘Just For A Better View’ - arrived in 2017, instantly picking up praise from an array of blogs. 2018-single, the BBC 6 Music playlisted ‘Dunkirk’ extended their audience even further, showcasing Daniel’s sardonic lyrical style as he played a man having a mid-life crisis on the site of the former battleground. As a result of the single’s success, they gigged solidly for the next two years, touring Ireland extensively, and playing shows across the UK and Europe with Girl Band, in-between working on their fulllength debut, Fad. Recorded with Girl Band-bassist Daniel Fox - who the band had initially admired for his production work with Paddy Hanna - its release was initially scheduled for November 2019, before being put back to March 2020 for logistical reasons. When the music industry was derailed by the pandemic, its release was postponed indefinitely. Frustrated, the band took control and opted to put it out in July 2020, against the advice of their label. Daniel explains, “We knew it was a risk, but just for our own sanity, we just needed to get it out there and move on to the next thing. It was a leap of faith that paid off, with the Irish Times declaring the 13-track collection “seriously exciting”, DIY Magazine calling it “an excellent example of how a debut should be 21 JANUARY 2022 Silverbacks Archive Material Product info Label Full Time Hobby Configuration 1 x 12" Vinyl Album Sales Date January 21, 2022 Order Due Date December 24, 2021 Genre Rock Subgenre Post-Punk UK Price 14.99 UPC/EAN 5060626463868 Box Lot 12 Product Code FTH422LP Explicit N Contact [email protected] The Lighthouse 370 Grays Inn Road London WC1X 8BB United Kingdom done” and it getting nominated for the RTE Choice Music Prize Irish Album of the Year. Not that the band hung around to revel in the acclaim: they were already hard at work on the follow-up. Archive Material only cements Silverbacks’ status as one of Ireland’s most fascinating bands. Recorded at Dublin’s Sonic Studios in November 2020, with Daniel Fox undertaking production duties once more, it finds the band leaning into their early influences, delivering idiosyncratic indie-rock packed with intricate, Tom Verlaine-esque “guitarmony”. Other reference points for the record included Neil Young, Weyes Blood and - on ‘Wear My Medals’ in particular - Bradford Cox and Cate Le Bon’s collaborative record Myths 004. Where Fad found Silverbacks focused on recapturing the live experience rather than reveling in studio experimentation, Archive Material skillfully traverses the line between the two. As a unit, they replicate that irrepressible live energy via complex arrangements incorporating everything from wistful Rhodes (‘Carshade’) to congas and Gang Of Four-style bass (‘Different Kind Of Holiday’). Thematically, the record is every bit as rich, displaying an anthropological approach as exemplified by the album’s artwork. The initial premise for ‘They Were Never Our People’ came from a YouTube comment, portraying the decline of a town that has lost its footfall as the result of a bypass. Meanwhile, ‘Central Tones’ is an empathetic character study of someone seemingly content to trade off former glories, but secretly deeply unhappy. On several songs, the pandemic functions as a particularly effective prism through which to examine ideas of community. ‘A Job Worth Something’ finds Daniel reflecting on his real-life experiences working in insurance while his sister treated patients on a COVID ward, and the feelings of futility and guilt he felt at the time. ‘Different Kind Of Holiday’ was inspired by the ways in which previously uncommunicative neighbours bonded with each other during periods of enforced confinement. Throughout, his observations arrived drenched in the same surreal strain of gallow’s humour that many of us were forced to adopt to lighten the toughest moments of the lockdown. Daniel explains, “I cant remember who it was, but I saw a musician who said that theyd be keeping away from writing anything about the pandemic, because who wants to hear about that? But I’d much rather hear about an event via someone who actually lived through it, rather than someone writing about it retrospectively.” Keenly observed and vividly rendered, Archive Material is an eye-witness account of human resilience as much as it is a compelling indie-rock record. Future historians take note.