New transmissions

Happier in the studio than on the road, Dublin band The Radio put the music first, even if that means taking their time over albums, writes Jim Carroll

Back in January 2006, I bumped into The Radio's Stephen Murray. When asked what the band were planning, Murray played a tape of a new song, Satellite. "That will be on the new album, which will be out in a few months," he confidently promised.

Satellite certainly stars on the band's new album Charm Offensive, but the release took a little longer to appear than planned.

Some three years after their Kindness debut first enticed people to turn on The Radio, the band's second album saw the light of day in August this year.

"There was no slacking but, all of a sudden, it seemed that three years had passed by," says Murray about the delay.

Few of their peers have a backstory like The Radio. What began as a studio-based instrumental project called Empire morphed into The Radio when singer Annie Tierney and guitarist/producer Liam Mulvaney came along. After the release of the Kindness album, Tierney amicably left the fold. But the overwhelming positive reaction to the album necessitated The Radio doing more and more live shows, something that was never really envisaged. So Murray put a band together for one-off shows in Ireland and further afield.

A couple of years later, album number two appeared and Murray is now going around the houses to talk about it.

While it may appear that The Radio's transmissions have been a mite haphazard, there's no mistaking the sheer majesty of the songs. If the first album had glittering, spine-tingling indie anthems such as Whatever Gets You Through Today and Remember Me, Remember You, the new album is just as fruitful in that regard with a beefier, cockier sound and masterful songs such as Bruised from the Kisses and One of Two Ways.

"We became a band without actually knowing we were becoming a band," is how Murray describes the genesis of The Radio. "When Kindness started to gather momentum and we began to get interest in the UK and US, it was very hard to get anything done without a band, so we got a band together to promote the album and stuff. I think some people found it difficult to accept that this was a studio thing. It really was an album and a band which began in the studio with no initial intentions of playing live."

MURRAY COMPARES THE group's current set-up to Canadian collective Broken Social Scene. "Everyone has their own thing going on outside of The Radio," he explains. "For me, it's probably more of a vocation. But when it comes together, it's quite a solid unit and a serious concern. It's very friendly and we're trying to keep it that way."

Not touring may be just the ticket in that regard. While most bands hit the road as soon as a new album is ready (and indeed current music business lore suggests that touring is the only way for a band to succeed), Murray is not interested in that approach.

"I'm more interested in the process of making music. If I never play live again, I'd be all right about it. I like it, but it's not the be all and end all of things. I'm not in the humour to travel around playing in toilets. I want to do posh gigs and stay in nice hotels, which is what we do. With touring, you often end up spending all this time to go somewhere and no one comes to see you. If there was a demand, we would definitely tour, but I'm not going to randomly head off around the country and play gigs for the sake of it. I prefer to let the internet and having our songs on TV shows do that work."

Such a policy has already paid dividends. Whatever Gets You through Today from their first album was featured on doctors-and-nurses TV soap Grey's Anatomy and in the film Imagine Me & You.

Murray is confident that the new album will yield similar screen endorsements. "Movies and TV shows are great ways of exposing music to new audiences," he says. "Some of my favourite music I've first heard in movies."

It also means a valuable revenue stream for the band and Murray. "Traditional ways of releasing records with big tours and big record label budgets are gone out the window," he says. "There are a few exceptions, but you're better off getting on with actually doing something and seeing if it will snowball from there. You have a lot more control and it's more enjoyable."

Before The Radio, Murray was a member of Rollerskate Skinny, a Dublin band who enjoyed cult success in the 1990s. "It's only in retrospect I think that people have talked up the band and the albums," says Murray, who remembers the eclecticism of their sound most fondly. "We had so many influences. I thought the 1990s was a really healthy decade for music because there was so much music that people were drawing from. I remember we were listening to Tom Waits, rave stuff, Public Enemy and loads of 1960s stuff."

Rollerskate Skinny ended on a sour note and there's little chance of them hitting the reunion trail. "It wasn't the most amicable of break-ups, it was all very acrimonious," admits Murray. "But I've met up with Ken [Griffin, singer] in New York and I still see Ger [Griffin, guitarist] now and then.

"I've always said no to the idea of getting together again and I really don't think it could happen. I don't think there is any reason to do it. There might be a financial incentive, sure, but no one is offering us any money."

YOU ALSO GET the sense that Murray has no pangs to relive past glories when he has The Radio to occupy his time. He looks after the business side of the band too and that takes concentration.

"At the minute, I'm not making any music whatsoever. The problem with musicians is we make records and then we start thinking about the next one right away. I've consciously stopped making music to make sure Charm Offensive gets all my attention. It's so easy to lose the focus on something you've spent so long on. You're so immersed in that world that by the time you come out of it, you sometimes just don't know what it is you've done."

Charm Offensive is out now on Reekus and a single, The Other Side Of Life, is released on Nov 23. The Radio play Radio City, Dublin on Fri