Director returned with a bang to the Royal Theatre Castlebar on Friday October 30. Their second album, I’ll Wait For Sound, was released in May charted at No 11 in the Irish charts and was preceded by the single, ‘Sing It Without A Tune’. Their second single, ‘Moment to Moment’, was released In Ireland in July. The band are due to tour outside of Ireland to support the release of the album in UK/mainland Europe on September 21.
Since their irresistible bid for notice on the Dublin rock circuit in 2005, Director’s crafted, intelligent guitar music has stood them apart from the usual suspects. The band’s genesis saw three Malahide college entrants, guitarist Eoin Aherne, bassist Rowan Averill and frontman Michael Moloney, playing together, sharing an aesthetic and with a few songs already starting to form. They began to take the operation seriously, assuming roles and casting around for a drummer to complete the outfit. Moloney, while studying for his degree in music, made the acquaintance of just such a drummer, classmate Shea Lawlor, whose interests were in harmony with those of the group. Director were complete. A year later, after an arresting sequence of live shows, amid growing popularity, Director recorded their debut record, We Thrive On Big Cities, for Atlantic Records.
It seems like the typical back-story for a rock quartet but Director are far from that. In everything they have done, the band have demonstrated an atypical and businesslike directness. The de rigeur posturing of the typical indie-group is absent. The goal was always to write accessible, immediate, enjoyable pieces of music. Director constructed their songs with an auteur-ish pop sensibility, compromising neither on artistry nor mass-appeal. Their first volley of live shows couldn’t fail to win converts. The sheer speed with which they commanded major-label attention was no fluke. They meant business from the very beginning. In late 2007 work began on an entirely new set of songs guided by the same exacting standards that had informed their debut. A space was rented over a Dublin pub, and the band threw themselves into a four month-long intensive writing period. Adopting a disciplined song-writing regime, the group often concentrated on a single song for days, moving on only after they were happy that some significant progress had been accomplished.
The final product, I’ll Wait For Sound, is testament to the relentless professionalism and integrity of Director, a focused, powerful, eloquent work and a manifest development on their previous record, vindicating every day of its some two-year gestation period. It is Director’s self-possession, so much in evidence here, that sets them apart and makes them such a distinctive voice in contemporary music, marking out the release of I’ll Wait For Sound as an event worthy of anticipation. Tickets are on sale now at €20 on www.ticketmaster.ie as well as from The Royal Box Office on 0818 300 000. For further information please check The Royal Theatre and Event Centre website on www.theroyal.ie or www.ticketmaster.ie
