By day, he drums for Bell X1, but by night he becomes Neosupervital, one of Ireland's most distinctive performers, writes Tony Clayton-Lea
Some people now working within the lax parameters of pop music once started off by wanting to write a tune but not really knowing how to do it. Drummer Tim O'Donovan was one such desperate soul; like many of us, he'd have a notion of a melody, but how to carry that melody through for a few minutes, add a chorus (or not) and whittle out the fluff - now there was a challenge. Then one day he heard a Dandy Warhols song and - hey presto! - it came to him: they were using four chords yet still managed to forge an appealing tune out of them. And so it came to pass that on the day in question Tim went into the nearest unmarked phone box and removed his sweaty, underarm-stained shirt to reveal the letters "NSV" on his broad, masculine chest.
Is it a bird? No. Is it a plane? Er, no. Is it Neosupervital? Actually yes, we very much think it is.
O'Donovan is indeed the one-man band Neosupervital, and vice versa; but he's also the drummer with Bell X1 (at least for their live shows; this allows original band drummer Paul Noonan to step into the spotlight and be drooled upon by the rather more uninhibited of the band's female fans).
When Bell X1 are away, however, Neosupervital begins to play, which is why O'Donovan has been busy of late on the live gig front. You really can't miss him, either, as visually Neosupervital is something of a misfit - a Gordon Gekko-yuppie type with sci-fi specs. Think a superhero who flunked out of X-Men college because he just wouldn't pay attention. Think a musician who wasn't content with hitting animal skin for the rest of his life. Think one of the more interesting, slightly left-of-centre pop acts Ireland has produced in quite some time.
"I didn't sit down and plot a graph and come up with what might be an interesting concept," says O'Donovan, implicitly distancing himself from the self-consciously manufactured work ethic that has cast a shadow on certain other Irish bands we could mention. Neosupervital's debut gig was at the wonderful Wonky showcase event at the Guinness Hop Store a few years ago. Armed with a sharp-suited dress sense and a guitar-shaped keyboard (or something like that), he surprised the usual seen-it-all audience.
"I had always loved the dress sense of the showbands and the likes of The Shadows," he says. "Some might say it's a bit cheesy but at least they made an effort. I just wanted to try something a little different. I also loved the idea of trying to put on some kind of show while you're on stage, and make it seem like you're having a bit of fun. Too often I've been at gigs where I wanted to believe the band or the artist were having fun, but they just seemed miserable - or they wanted to appear miserable, perhaps. If you're surrounded by people having fun then you'll have some fun yourself, so I always aim to put on a show that I would like to go and see, and play music that I would like to hear. There's a selfish motive, I suppose."
O'Donovan is right when he says bands who like to project a sense of fun on stage often run the risk of being termed a novelty act, but when you're injecting scripted fun every night, novelty itself runs the risk of turning into continuous loops of cliche. "I was always aware that the big letter 'N' might hover over certain acts, but I'm eager to make people understand that what I do is as much about the music as anything else. The bottom line is being able to back it up with decent tunes, and hopefully every stage show I put on is slightly different to the previous one. I'd be very conscious of not going through the motions."
AS A DRUMMER in one of the most popular Irish bands of the past five years (and prior to Bell X1 he was in several of the most unrecognised), has O'Donovan ever felt it should be him out there under the spotlight, drowning in the salacious warmth of fan adulation? Not really, he says; he mentions a couple of drummers (Jim Keltner and Charlie Watts) and says they know where they belong - they provide a necessary beat and they don't showboat.
"There's only so much you can do behind a drum kit without getting a big gong or setting fire to your drumsticks, and as a drummer I'm quite happy to sit there because I love it and get lost in the whole thing. Drum solos bore me to tears. I have the odd album by Buddy Rich - whose technique is unquestionable - but I like drummers most when they drum within a song. When they go off on a tangent and do a drum solo it loses me. A lot of the pompous 1970s long-winded stuff loses my interest after the first, ooh, 10 minutes. What informed this album more than anything was trying to get some kind of uniform sound."
If the "uniform sound" that O'Donovan is talking about means an album's worth of songs primed by a singular aesthetic (basically, the best bits of 1980s pop fused together with wit, strangeness and charm), then it's something that most of us would be advised to embrace before our aural arteries become clogged up with commercial music cholesterol.
"I hate it when pop gets too sweet and sugary," says O'Donovan. "It's like drinking too much cola. You need something to draw you away from that and to sometimes hit you over the head. In essence, that's what I want to do with Neosupervital."
Yet O'Donovan knows how very easy it is to be accused of repetition - the trick is to somehow get away with it with either a smart mixture of bells, whistles, smoke and mirrors or to make things suitably different so that not too many people will notice.
"It's a fine balancing act - everyone is up against it - but I'd like to think that I've achieved it."
Neosupervital (the album) is on release; Neosupervital (the one-man band) perform at Indie Delights, Derry (today); Radar, Belfast (Sept 14); Cyprus Ave, Cork (Sept 15); Crawdaddy, Dublin (Sept 15); Bell X1 begin a tour on Nov 22 (at Belfast's Mandela Hall) culminating in a performance at Dublin's Point on Dec 1