The Answer: Rebooted, Reborn And Raising A Little Hell

Since exploding onto the scene in 2005 it's been a topsy turvy ride for Northern Irish blues-rockers The Answer. The success many predicted for them never materialised, and over the last few years it felt like they'd run out of steam. 'Raise A Little Hell', their brand new studio album, is powerful proof to the contrary.

We caught up with singer Cormac Neeson to discuss the record, whether or not they're jealous of Rival Sons, and why all rock bands should retreat to the Spanish mountains.

Paul Mahon, your guitarist, said you have the hunger back on this album. 

I don't think it's a case of we've ever lost the hunger. I think, if anything, the record's a little bit of a return to old school values and central to that is the ability we had to block out any background noise or external pressure from record companies, from management, from our fans even. We made this record for ourselves and in many ways it felt like we were making our first record again. That was very liberating and I think you can really hear that on the album.      

It seems like you're revelling in playing music without worrying about the outcome.

It sounds like it would be a very easy thing to do but, as soon as your first album has entered the public domain the environment changes. There's a level of expectation, everybody has an opinion as to the kind of record you should be making. Very often it knocks you off kilter a little bit. But on this album we were able to get back to basics and have a great time writing and recording.     

Long Live The Renegades feels like a mission statement.

Yeah, it's kind of an anthem for anybody that dares to be different: musicians, writers, crazy people in the street. I think the point of that song is it's OK to follow your instincts. If you get a vibe about something it's most likely the right way to go.  Long Live The Renegades is just a call to arms to stick to your guns.  

The grooves on this record are ferocious and infectious too.

We've always felt that allowing all four members to express themselves has added to our own unique sound, our own unique identity, and this record is no different. James and Mickey, time after time, they lay down an amazingly strong foundation for us to have a bit of fun over the top of.

I think a lot of it has to do with the vibe of the studio as well. Our producer Will [Maya] was great at releasing any tension first thing in the day and letting us just get in there and enjoy ourselves. It's a good time rock ‘n' roll record so you've got to be having a good time when you're making it.     

Dare I ask how Will helped release that tension?

It was Will's home town up in the mountains, just north of Madrid.  He was able to introduce us to the local way of life and we were lucky enough that when we arrived the annual fiesta was about to kick off. There were bulls running through the town in the morning, afternoon parties everywhere and all night drinking, like St Patrick's day style carnage, 14 days in a row.

And while we didn't indulge as much as we would on a weekend off we would get out in the morning and sample the atmosphere, then go and work for 12 hours, then get back out there and have a few beers, by which stage entire families were doing the breaststroke in the middle of the street. It was a proper party atmosphere and uniquely Spanish. All that energy and good times fed into this record and helped provide a release for us.

You've always crafted great melodies, and they're all over this record with the likes of The Other Side and Gone Too Long.

I like songs that I'm able to sing back to people, songs that stick in my head and central to that is a good melody. The guys make it very easy for me to go away and work on that side of the music because in a lot of bands there's one, maybe two musicians or songwriters driving the whole project. In this band you can trust each other to hold their own, so it means I can disappear for a while, work out my melodies and spend a lot of time on the lyrics to make sure I'm saying something that makes sense and needs to be said.  

This album has loads of strong, rhythmic hooks.

Bringing a rhythmic feel to the vocal patterns has always been part of what I'm about, inspired in no small way by the guys ripping it up in our rehearsal space in Northern Ireland. Whenever they're playing a particularly dirty, funky riff, you can't really sing anything too straight over the top of that. You just experiment a little bit, take a few chances and see what you come up with. It's just become very natural for us to write a song with a few decent hooks in there. They're markers that the listener can really use as a reference point and use as anchors throughout the record, so the more hooks the better.

Songs like Last Days Of Summer and Strange Kinda' Nothing are a little different from things you've done in the past.

[They] should surprise a few people. There's plenty of light and shade in this record and that kind of diversity has always been a big part of what we do. At the end of every album session we'll go away and do acoustic tracks for bonus material, b-sides or whatever, and we've always said we should put a song like that on a record. Strange Kind Of Nothing just felt like the right way to go for this record. It comes off the back of Last Days Of Summer which is pretty stoner rock. It lands round about the mid-section of the record, and was the right time to have a breather and clear the decks for the rest of the album to unfold.    

I was worried about you guys around the time of 'New Horizon', primarily when I read a Classic Rock interview and you said: “We need to get to that next level and we need to get there soon.  If we don't then we're gone.” How do you feel now?

Yeah, I'm a lot more together than I was around the time of that article. We had a lot of shit going on behind the scenes, we'd just changed labels and management and whatnot. There was a real sense of instability, quite a volatile situation. It meant that it was impinging upon the important stuff, which is making good music, getting out there and playing a great live show.  

But this record everything settled down, we've come off the back of a few successful tours and we've signed a record deal for another two records to the label that put out 'New Horizon'. We've got a much more stable platform to develop and it means we can leave all the shit that we're not good at to the guys that are good at it, the business end of things, and just focus on making music. The album benefits from that, our own sense of perspective has benefited from that, and we're ready to go, we're rebooted and reborn.  

Were you ever close to calling it quits?

Never actually. I mean, there's been a couple of points along the way when you have to take a step back and get some sense of perspective, because it's a weird old life living on a tour bus for a couple of months at a time in a different town everyday, not getting back home for quite some time. So you gotta be doing it for the right reasons and from time to time you need to remind yourself that you're one of the lucky ones getting to make music for a living.

When you toured with AC/DC you seemed set to break big – can you explain why that didn't happen?

I don't know, man, it's just one of those things. The stars are either going to align or they're not, and that tour did us a lot of good in that it got our name out there to territories like America where no one had heard of us.

A lot of our music benefited from watching AC/DC play every night, learning a few things about the arts of song craft, building up a bit of life experience, which is absolutely essential to keep making interesting and important music. So I don't think that time was wasted by any stretch. We gave it everything we had on that tour, we breathed it in deep and there's definitely no regrets.   

When you see Rival Sons on Jools Holland does it give you encouragement or is there a part of you that thinks: 'We've been around longer than these guys – that should be us.'

Oh no, it's massive encouragement. I think it was a real struggle for us when we first started out because it wasn't cool to be doing what we were doing and we were very much out on our own. And now there's a couple of bands that have gone down that road and it's good to see. The more bands playing our kind of music the stronger it bodes for the future. So it's an exciting time.

There have been quite a lot of words written about younger rock bands struggling to write a classic like The Boys Are Back In Town. How does that make you feel?

I hate reading stuff like that because you can't judge the music of today in comparison to what was a hit in 1971. And you can't keep looking back, especially if you're playing rock music. You've got to stick to your guns and do your own thing because Phil Lynott wasn't looking at what was happening in the music scene 40 years before he was around as a reference point to writing Boys Are Back In Town. That completely goes against the rebellious spirit of rock ‘n’ roll music, so I think that's bullshit.    

What does the future realistically hold for The Answer?

Just onwards and upwards, my friend. I think this record is strong enough to take us to the next level and pick up some new fans and hopefully impress some of the older ones. So we're just gonna get out there in March and start touring this new record and see where it takes us.

The Answer Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:

Thu March 12 2015 - ABERDEEN Lemon Tree
Fri March 13 2015 - GLASGOW Glasgow Garage
Sat March 14 2015 - NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE Think Tank at Riverside
Mon March 16 2015 - GRIMSBY Yardbirds - Grimsby
Tue March 17 2015 - LIVERPOOL Arts Club
Wed March 18 2015 - SOUTHEND Chinnerys
Thu March 19 2015 - NOTTINGHAM Nottingham Rescue Rooms
Fri March 20 2015 - BIRMINGHAM Library, Institute
Sat March 21 2015 - SHEFFIELD Corporation
Mon March 23 2015 - NORWICH Waterfront
Tue March 24 2015 - BRISTOL Thekla
Wed March 25 2015 - BRIGHTON Concorde 2
Thu March 26 2015 - LONDON O2 Academy Islington
Fri March 27 2015 - EXETER Lemon Grove
Sat March 28 2015 - SOUTHAMPTON 1865

Click here to compare & buy The Answer Tickets at Stereoboard.com.

Related News