Band with Immediate presence
 For the first
time in a long time Dublin has produced an excellent young rock band with
a great new album.
Their work is oozing imagination, ambition and great songs. The Immediate
are being held responsible for a record worth buying and a gig worth seeing.
In Towers & Clouds every subsequent listen will reveal another layer
of sounds and smart ideas executed with spirit and brio by the young quartet.
The band’s 23-year-old lead singer Conor O’Brien is a bit
surprised at the reaction they have been getting.
“It’s difficult to explain the new album, what I’m telling
you now is probably something from a review I’ve just read. It doesn’t
sound like my own words, we just made the album and I’m not sure
how to explain it.”
Conor believes the lads have only realised the significance of their songs
after they were written, especially the lyrics.
“We don’t know where the songs came from or why they were
written. They just seemed to flow and this record is the result of that.”
The Immediate are Dubliner’s Dave Hedderman, Peter Toomey, Barra
Heavey and Conor O’Brien.
They did their first show under the name The Subterraneans in the usual
pub rooms around town. Then came college. Dave went to NCAD to study painting
— he’s since had a number of exhibitions of his work in various
galleries, with Conor taking up an Arts degree in English and philosophy
in UCD.
En-route to a performance at The Spirit Store in Dundalk, Co. Louth, Conor
reflects on his life at college before entering the world of a musician.
"I was lucky to go there, that kind of stuff really helps you out
if you want to be a writer,” he said.
“You get access to all these great books in this beautiful library
and I probably was reading a lot of stuff that wasn’t even on the
course. I spent a lot of time hanging out there. I’m now dedicated
to our music 100 per cent. We have so many ideas and we just need to squeeze
them out really, we can’t really help it. We just love what we’re
doing.”
Conor is hoping for even bigger audiences off the back of the reaction
to the record.
“There’s been a great reaction and the crowds have been great,
so it’s good to know there will be more people at future gigs.”
While in college there were spurts of collective musical activity, but
no big plan. Conor admits they never stopped to think about what they
were doing, so it was probably the call from British label Fierce Panda
saying they wanted to release a single which made them think they were
doing something right and that they could continue.
Fierce Panda is the eccentric London label that gave a start to Coldplay,
Keane, Placebo. The Immediate’s Never Seen single brought them above
the rock ‘n’ roll parapet for the first time. They took a
good look around and decided they wanted to keep their heads down and
get stuck in.
“The band we were most impressed with was Supergrass,” Conor
revealed. “They started off on Fierce Panda too. I think the label
is underrated in Britain; Simon Williams really has an eye.
“People like him are really keeping the spirit alive within the
industry because he literally finds something that has a bit of a spark
and just pushes it and not really for any personnel gain but just because
he thinks their music should get out there.”
Major labels were keen to see and hear The Immediate but the band didn’t
like what they heard so they admit to steering clear. Ignoring industry
machinations left the band free to focus on their craft. What’s
emerged is a debut album housing a diverse and exuberant set of songs.
A hugely exciting sense of adventure abounds as different styles zoom
into view and then head off towards the horizon.
But for The Immediate this is more than just lashing out songs. U2’s
Principal Management had also been quietly standing on the sidelines and
leapt on the band, recently taking them under their wing.
“It’s great having Principal Management working with us, we
don’t see ourselves as the next U2 — we don’t see ourselves
as the next anything.
“We are who we are and we’re delighted we have so much support.”
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