Back for good

Pat Clafferty moved into soundtracks after the split of Mexican Pets. Now he's returning to live music, writes Tony Clayton-Lea.

Voices from the past can be terrible things altogether, mixtures of comfort and dread that are probably best left alone. So when they release records you pick them up with fear and listen with apprehension. They're never as good as they used to be, are they? But sometimes - and it's only ever sometimes, because even musicians from the past know they can't really go back and pick up the pieces from former-glory days - someone comes along and gets it right. Gets it perfect, in fact.

It's because of this confluence of talent, songwriting and fate that Pat Clafferty, the former Mexican Pets songwriter, is telling The Irish Times his story. And it is not a hard-luck story, either, but a lesson in how to return to the fray with perceptiveness in tow and dignity intact.

When Mexican Pets, a fine Dublin rock group that released acclaimed records on the Therapy?-backed Blunt label, decided to split up, in early 1997, Clafferty did the sensible thing and started working for a living. It was at what is now the Irish Film Institute that he started phase two of his life, composing soundtracks for low-budget, low-profile short films. It was great, he says, because the work stood alone and was clearly defined.

"It seemed ideal, having come from a 10-year band situation that had all the things that come with it, to being totally on my own and in complete control."

Fast-forward to 2003 and Clafferty is very much in business as a soundtrack composer; he's still working on small but creatively valuable projects - including several by his film-maker partner, Orla Walsh, and a humorous rap song for the RTÉ comedy Paths To Freedom, about which the less said the better - and still nursing a solo-album project from sickness to health. His guitar is lying in the corner of a room, mewling pitifully and aching to be strummed.

Come the summer of 2004 - guitar well and truly on the mend, Clafferty on a sabbatical from soundtrack work - we have his solo début, A Prayer To St Jude.As the Pope will tell you, St Jude is the patron saint of lost causes. We're assuming the title is ironic, as Clafferty seems an organised type of chap, embarking once more into recorded and live-music territory but this time strictly on his terms. There's no pressure to perform, he says, and no financial burden. "I have a band that is playing with me live, but I'm in it for fun. I've let them know that, and there's no big problem with it. It's a healthier attitude to have, and if more people had that attitude they'd get more out of it. Amazingly, people are still putting too much into getting signed. The pressure they put themselves under!"

But then Clafferty now takes a broader view of life. Over the years he has become politicised, getting involved with the Irish Anti-War Movement and the Irish Social Forum. This year the Green Party wanted him to run in the local elections, in north central Dublin - an invitation that Clafferty ultimately turned down. "I feel happy enough to make my statements, if I have to, in a creative way. I don't think I'm cut out for politics, anyway; I'll do some benefit gigs, but for me music is the outlet."

Clafferty has just finished working on the soundtrack for another RTÉ comedy, Stew, which starts next month. In the meantime he's plugging away at getting the subdued, affecting A Prayer To St Jude heard by as many people as possible.

As much as it can be, the future is planned: bigger film projects and a follow-up record are all on the horizon. "Because of my foray into film I'm interested in exploring the sonic architecture of that. I deliberately tried to keep silence in the songs on the album: it was just as important to me to insert what you didn't hear as what you did. That was one failing Mexican Pets had: there just wasn't quite enough space in the songs."

He's content to be a target for praise and panning once more but realises there's little he can do to influence either leaning. "Once you get to put out a record you place yourself on the map, perceptually anyway, and you can take the direction you like. Strangely enough, you listen to the reviewers and see what direction you're going in. Melancholia was one \ word that was mentioned, but then you look into the writing and realise there was an element of that."

He says he experienced a change in mindset that let him leave behind the reclusive nature of soundtrack work to get out on stage again. "I had seen what I could do for myself musically and sonically for film, but I wanted to see what I could do for myself in song. It's possible that some of the songs on the album were written for a film that they didn't quite fit, but I also wanted to see if I could do it as an experiment. Once I had the main batch of material recorded I left it alone for a month, and when I came back to them they still seemed like good songs."

Making the record didn't cost much, either, and therein lies a lesson. "I just love the idea that you can inexpensively record songs," says Clafferty, his tone slowly but surely travelling from serious to almost giddy. "I've done pretty much everything connected with the record by myself. Like I said, I'm in it purely for the fun of it. I'm going to record another album soon, and that'll be for me, too."

A Prayer To St Jude is on Purdy Records. Pat Clafferty is at Spy, Dublin, on Sunday