Immediate Gratification

It may finally be time for a ticker-tape parade down O'Connell Street. For the first time in years, a Dublin rock band has produced an album brimming with imagination, ambition and bloody great songs. It has, you will agree, taken a long time.

But it can be done and it's The Immediate who have done it on this occasion.

Gloriously wide-eyed melodies, avant-garde sensibilities and a very sharp mod ethic are what you'll clock the first time you hear debut album In Towers & Clouds. Every subsequent listen will reveal another layer of sounds and smart ideas executed with spirit and brio by the young Dublin quartet.

But explaining what they did and why they did it? Well, that's another story entirely. Halfway through this conversation, band members Conor O'Brien and Dave Hedderman admit they're still finding it difficult to get one side of their brains to explain what the other side actually accomplished.

"We're doing interviews now and we have to think about reasons why we did certain things," says O'Brien with a smile. "You're asked questions about things you've never questioned before. You're asked about events where you weren't even thinking about what you were doing at the time."

Hedderman has further evidence of this. "Our favourite songs, for instance, are the ones where we only realise the significance of them after we've written them, especially with lyrics. You didn't know where it was coming from or what the impetus was."

There's little in the band's backstory to suggest what was to come.

Hedderman, O'Brien and Peter Toomey initially met while attending St Conleth's school in Ballsbridge and began writing songs together. Barra Heavey joined later on.

"You know those sixth form, middle-class nerdy kids you always read about in music interviews?" asks O'Brien. "That was us. We would be sitting there dissecting guitar lines."

Away from the common room, their own musical likes were all over the shop. "The Kinks were the first band I ever liked," remembers Hedderman. "I used to know Lola off by heart, but I had no idea what it was about. My sisters used to be in stitches when I would sing this song about transsexuals to my family as a party piece."

Green Day, Radiohead and Britpop also played a part. "Our first songs sounded exactly like Green Day," says O'Brien. "We didn't know what punk was, so we thought Green Day were the business. We sounded like them for a while and then we started mixing in some Kinks as well. It was all over the place, but it still sounded good."

Those early days were about feeding an obsession. "I'd come home from school, forget all about homework and spend the night recording on a little four-track I had," says Hedderman. "I ended up with hundreds of tapes of all these solo jams."

They did their first shows under the name The Subterraneans in the usual pub rooms around town. When college came calling, Hedderman went to NCAD to study painting (he's since had a number of exhibitions of his work in various galleries), with O'Brien UCD-bound for an arts degree in English and Philosophy.

While in college there were spurts of collective musical activity, but no big plan. "We've always done this with our eyes closed," says Hedderman. "We've never stopped to think about what we're doing. It was probably the call from Fierce Panda saying they wanted to release a single which made us think we were doing something right and that we could continue."

Fierce Panda is the eccentric London label that gave a start to Coldplay, Keane, Placebo and many more. 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.

"We realised from the start that it was best to keep things at our pace," says O'Brien. "We did have major labels coming to see us, but we didn't like what we heard about them so we stayed clear. I think it suits us better to do things under our own steam. It helps that it hasn't been a roller-coaster. It's been more of a push-buggy, to be honest."

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 about more than just lashing out a few songs.

"We've always been obsessed with the idea of art," says O'Brien. "So many people produce such crap. They don't use this thing called writing or art as a tool to get whatever they have inside, which is really good across to the world. They call themselves artists, but you don't have an automatic right to be an artist, you have to earn it.

"We're earning that right because we treat it with such care. We know it's a strange thing to want do for a living, but the better the work you do, the more you earn the right to do it."

Adds Hedderman: "I think about what I do in much larger terms than if I'm going to be able to survive next year. I know it's very impractical but, right now, we're on a real creative buzz and we're trying to create something that's much bigger than us. We've touched on it with this album, but what's to come is so exciting."

What's interesting about The Immediate is how they don't fit within any of the capital's many micro-musical scenes. Instead, as O'Brien points out, they're going in a different direction.

"We grew up in middle-class Dublin during an economic boom and it was a spiritually bereft place. We were slightly well-off kids who had no problems getting guitars and equipment, but you had to search for something a bit deeper than what was happening in society around you. You had to really dig for your own space.

"I think that the recent success is one reason why there is such a dissipation in terms of music and culture in Ireland at the moment. Everyone is going in so many different ways because there is nothing to bring people together. Maybe that will come with an economic collapse!"

When they look around them, they recognise that they've become detached from so much of what's happening in the city. "We live out in Malahide," says Hedderman, "and when we come into town, we see something that seems so weird to us and that happens more and more. You're looking at something that you're not a part of and that's an inspiration."

O'Brien sees "this conflict between the absolute and the relative and how to deal with it" as an ever-present theme in art and culture. "We find ourselves doing things and only afterwards realising how it fits in and how it connects. You don't want to be too self-conscious about it, but you want to be aware of it to let it flow."

While the band themselves are pleased with how In Towers & Clouds turned out, they've already turned their minds to the second album. "We're working on new stuff and we just can't turn off," says Hedderman. "There are a lot of sleepless nights because we figure we have to get these ideas down right now. We have to catch these moments before they disappear, and they tend to come late at night."

Both Hedderman and O'Brien sound genuinely thrilled about what's to come. "We know we're onto something here," says the latter. "We're not simply going to take a load of euros and change what we're doing. We know what we want to be. This album? That's just the first step in making a sculpture.

"Maybe on the second album, we'll make some legs. This is just the foundation."

In Towers & Clouds is out now on Fantastic Plastic