O Emperor are on the crest of a wave. Since emerging onto the live scene just 18 months ago, the band has become one of the highest profile alternative acts in the county, and one of the most acclaimed.
O Emperor are Paul Savage (vocals/guitar ) Philip Christie (vocals/keyboards ), Alan Comerford (lead guitar ), Richie Walsh (bass ), and Brendan Fennessy (drums ).
The Waterford quintet have established a strong and growing fanbase around the country due to their regular tours; their live appearance at Electric Picnic was hailed as a triumph by the critics; The Irish Times has called O Emperor “Ireland’s answer to Grizzly Bear”, while Today FM DJ Paul McLoone has championed the band on his radio show.
Then on October 1, O Emperor’s debt album Hither Thither was released on Universal to enthusiastic reviews, reaching number six on the Irish charts.
“It’s always nice to get a reaction, good or bad,” Paul tells me during my Thursday afternoon interview with the band. “We wanted to get it out to the whole country and the name is established now. We want to keep on gigging and getting people to the shows and keep writing for the next album.”
Although O Emperor’s rise seems sudden the reality is quite different. The members have all known each other and been playing music together in various guises for the past decade.
“In 2006/07, that’s when the band became a little more coherent and that’s when O Emperor started off,” says Paul.
So how did the band come upon its regal moniker? “It came from a bit of a mad dream that I had,” says Paul. “The dream was of a black and white movie and the name of the film I was watching was O Emperor. That’s all I remember of it, but the name stuck.”
The five friends, who hail from the Dunmore East/Waterford city region, ensconced themselves in a house in Kinsale a couple of years ago, where they “made a studio from scratch” and recorded an album’s worth of songs. “We did that for six months and had it ready to go but then we thought we might shop it around to people,” says Richie.
The move paid off as it allowed O Emperor a chance to develop some of those songs further, write new ones, and re-record them in a more professional studio environment. Four songs from that unreleased album were re-worked for Hither Thither, while the atmospheric ‘Heisenberg’ was retained from the original recording.
Some 1,000 copies of the unreleased album are in existence (“It’s got its own charm,” says Richie ) and the band say they might look at revisiting a couple of tracks with a view to re-recording them for their next full-length release.
Hither Thither is a highly impressive debut, featuring intelligent, beguiling, melodies; impeccable vocal harmonies; and skilled musicianship, as heard on such songs as “Po”, “Taloned Air”, “Don’t Mind Me”, and “Sedalia”.
There is a strong influence of the early 1970s singer-songwriter/Laurel Canyon movement in these songs and the band cite Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Bread, Fleetwood Mac, The Band, and Led Zeppelin as influences. “Gilbert O’Sullivan has also been an inspiration, being from Waterford as well,” says Philip, “but you don’t go shouting about your love for Gilbert O’Sullivan...”
However O Emperor’s rustic sound, keen sense of melody, and lush harmonies have led some to dub them country-rock or roots rock, even though they are no such thing. “People mistake our use of vocal harmonies and acoustic guitar for that,” says Paul.
“I can’t think of ourselves as folky or roots but people can think you are if you’re a band that concentrate on the songwriting side of things,” says Philip. “It’s nicer to take in what you can from the whole spectrum rather than just one genre.”
“It’s surprising what people will brand you with,” laughs Alan. “We have been dubbed ‘Hawaiian rock’ just because we use a slide guitar! Is there such a thing as ‘Hawaiian rock’?”
What is not in doubt is that O Emperor are songwriters of sophistication with enormous potential to develop most promisingly in the years ahead. ‘Sedalia’, a song about two gangsters on the run, is among the highlights of Hither Thither and features possibly the album’s most sublime melodic moment.
“I was watching a programme on Sedalia which is a town in the States where Scott Joplin spent a lot of time,” explains Philip, “and also I was watching again Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and that’s where the idea came from. I also had this piece written that was a bit like Neil Young and the middle section came later. I just put the three pieces together and they worked.”
Songwriting for O Emperor is very much a collaborative process, hence Richie’s description of the band as a “songwriting co-operative”.
“Someone might come in with a couple of chords or a lyric and put it out there for the band,” says Paul, “then everyone puts in their own ideas.”
“Everybody puts their own stamp on the song,” says Alan, “and that will bring a different style and evolve in an interesting way each time and make it something to explore, otherwise it would become a niche sound and boring.”
O Emperor are keen to return to the studio to write more songs and begin work on the second album, but before that there is the ambition to get the band known outside of Ireland.
“We’re excited to start writing new songs as we have been living with these ones for a long time now,” says Paul. “We will be touring around Ireland and then Spain before working on a UK and Europe release for Hither Thither and the whole thing starts again.”
O Emperor play The Stables, Mullingar, on Sunday October 24 at 9.30pm. Support on the night is from Peter Doran and Arthur Johnson. For more information and tickets contact (044 ) 9340251 or email [email protected]
