Issue Twenty-Two: The Murder Capital

‘When I Have Fears’ is the debut album by The Murder Capital. It’s an equally stunning and harrowing exploration of hope and fear, isolation and despair, understanding and finding solace in others. On the day of the record’s release, I joined the group in their home of Dublin, Ireland to capture the relief, exposure and ecstasy emanating from this unquestionably vital and rewarding group of people.

For you to have started all this here together in Dublin, how does it feel that it has now all come full circle?

James McGovern: Well, when we started off we were playing shows to five people in upstairs rooms with seats and two of the audience were family, and that wasn’t so long ago.

Gabriel Pashal Blake: This venue (The Button Factory) was where I saw Damien and James for the first time. I just remember coming in on a dark November night, raining like it is now. That was the first time I walked in to anywhere in Dublin and straight away felt like this is something that completely resonates with what I want to do artistically. It was the first time I heard music or saw a performance that was so perfect. So now to be a part of that and to see how far we’ve come in the year and with all the families coming, it feels like a christening or a communion.

The fact that there is a real sense of occasion is obviously a reaction to how your music is relating to people. How have you personally dealt with the way people are responding to your music?

J: That experience has been dripping through the ceiling for a long time, but it’s pretty wild to watch it today, with the record here and a lot of people having waited for it for a while. It’s nice, you see a lot of people at different shows, everywhere, and you recognise them and know them. Everyone’s reaction is incredible really. I would like a little bit more hate…

Damien Tuit: I think we’ve got a lot of respect for who’s stuck around from the beginning till now. It’s kind of hilarious to see how many times Mick & Sonny have caught us, the dedication is unparalleled.

J: Also, we’re at the very beginning now and today feels like another beginning in itself and we haven’t really started. Here’s the record, we have been working on it for a while and we’ve been doing everything we can do to communicate what we want to.

D: It feels like now we’re a band, now we have the album we’ve proved ourselves.

So does this feel like chapter one now?

D: It’s felt like a dark secret, in that people have heard the songs they’ve heard and the record is obviously so much more than just the singles, I think especially with this album. Now that’s it out, it’s completely a load off your mind, and people know who you are now. It’s like if someone knew you from your social media profile and then they finally met you.

J: Its wild releasing it, you feel incredibly exposed. Here’s everything we said, everything we wrote, every single thing we put together, all our experiences over the past couple years together, and everything is just there, and it really is contained within that. It’s a very intrusive feeling but a beautiful one at that.

G: Someone sent me a really lovely text about the songs, they said “each song is a seed now for anyone else to grow now whichever way they want to” and I thought that was really beautiful.

We’ve discussed previously about the importance of sharing your feelings and being able to express your emotions. For you, is this something that has only become stronger recently with the way that more and more people are relating?

J: I think we’re yet to find out man, as this all happens you get less and less time to be creative like you used to be. We’ve been working towards this in so many different ways and then, through the most purest serendipity I’ve ever experienced, we all got to meet each other and form this band. The level of creativity right before we went into the studio was pleasure, pure hedonistic pleasure. Creatively, I feel like our minds are as open and as wide as they’ve ever been, and our perspective on things is broadening and our understanding of each other and the environment we are in. To me, there’s a communal conscience being built all the time in a band. The ten eyes are focusing closer and closer all the time.

G: Understanding expression, one of the biggest things about the album and the process of making it was us learning how to communicate and understand each other, as well as ourselves. So I think we’re still in the afterglow of going through that process, we do it everyday because we spend all our time with each other, and we’re still continuing to communicate correctly the love and respect we have for each other. The process of the album was a huge exercise in learning how to express ourselves, but I don’t think it’s changing, I think it’s just growing.

J: You then always get that feeling of the grass always being so much greener on the other side, because you are lamenting the fact that you aren’t in the studio. But then you don’t realise the way the molecules move under the microscope in how we do a show. Everyone is weaving in and out of each other, everyone is moving, the synchronicity of that, the way that’s changed so much over the last six months or whatever since recording, it’s so fucking different, so that communal consciousness is becoming one of far better use than you ever thought it could. So you are giving and taking, your craft onstage is becoming so much freer, you don’t have to think anymore like you did at the very beginning, you’re just flowing with your friends. When you’re watching a show, you want to be engrossed in it and just experiencing it, you shouldn’t notice things happening. Now it’s the most pure freedom allowed to us in life.

This unity that you share not only attempts to acknowledge a sense of intense loneliness but embrace it as much as fight against it, you are consistently trying to find a better understanding of what you feel, together. For me this unity you share is what has made your music so necessary, do you feel it does the same for yourselves personally?

G: I needed this in my life, I needed to do everything we’ve done, I needed for us to go through all these processes to be able to speak about it. So it would be nice for people to perceive the record we’ve created as somewhere that they can go to and not have to do the work to feel the benefits of it. It’s strange at the start people coming to your shows and really investing in your band, but I finally got it today when I saw Mick at the in-store, maybe the reason why he or anyone comes so often is because this is the place they can find all those answers, feel all the emotions or the understanding that we tried to get to with each other, especially when they come to a show or hear the record. So I can understand the necessity of it ‘cause I felt it very necessary to make.

Diarmuid Brennan: Just on the unity, this is the first band for me where not a day goes by where I don’t think about the four lads, they each individually cross my mind at some point, whether something in passing, I’m constantly thinking about the band and the individuals behind it. All I think about is how we are going to go back into a room together and be able to write, and the way I feel we will be able to write, because we think about each other so much, and we want to get the most out of each other, and also use each other as well. I mean that not in a manipulative way, but we know we’re going to be so constructive.

D: I think to create you have to have faith in yourself or else how can you get past those periods of drought or whatever, you have to believe in yourself. But with a band you can believe in each other and trust that everyone has their strengths, I think that’s what’s so great about us and what makes it work is that we’re all very unique and the chemistry is there that just brings everyone up. It’s nice to be able to have that faith because it just makes you able to create freely when you have that faith in each other.

Words by Ross Jones, illustration by Ian Moore