Rough trade

Concerto for Constantine are getting ready to be hustled around the country as part of 2fm2moro2our. Tony Clayton-Leameets them the morning after the night before and finds out what's new.

AAH, this is the life: swish hotel bar/restaurant, shooting the breeze with Irish rock musicians who have seen UK chart action and lived to tell the tale; extra-spicy Bloody Marys on the table; non-national staff shaking their heads at the apparent madness of the country they have chosen to work in. Which, come to think of it, is the correct and proper response considering it's not even noon.

The waft of celebration is curling around two members of a newly-formed, imposingly-titled Irish rock trio - Concerto for Constantine (drummer Binzer, aka Paul Brennan, is awol). The Bloody Marys are out because the very early morning hours have been spent locked in mortal combat with lethal cocktails. The idea had been to celebrate the writing of a new song. A good idea at the time, perhaps, but in the cold light of day not so.

Gavin Fox, formerly of Irish band Turn and Scottish band Idlewild, looks like something even a very gracious mother would have second thoughts about continuing to love. His band partner, Mark Greaney, formerly of Irish band JJ72, looks like an equal measure of pleasure and pain.

The musicians are part of one of the most highly anticipated new Irish rock acts of the past few years; interestingly, very little is known about the music, as Concerto for Constantine haven't been toiling up and down the country. Although this will soon change as they are part of the 2fm2moro2our - see details above right.

So, in what is perhaps a first for The Ticket, we can't tell you that Concerto for Constantine are going to change your life. What we can tell you with some degree of certainty is that they are taking the plug-in-and-play approach: whack it in, wham it out, thank-you-very-much-and-goodnight. It's quite a change from the pair's previous bands, each of which seemed to be more obvious and structured, and not always in a good way.

"Turn had been doing it for years," says Fox between sips of the hair-of-the-dog. "We were on our third record, doing it independently, and when I got the offer to go to Idlewild I thought it was something that might be a good thing to do. I had a great few years with Idlewild, and then I went back to Turn. That, as we know, fell on its ass pretty much straight away, yet I'm glad I got to do a few shows with them."

In-between the Turn and Idlewild days, Fox gigged with Declan O'Rourke, did some shows with Vega 4, and pondered his future. So did Mark Greaney following the demise of JJ72 - which, lest we forget, scored two direct hits in the UK Top 20 album charts (for the self-titled debut in 2000 and I to Sky in 2002) and four UK Top 30 hit singles.

"Gradually it went down the tubes," Fox says. "When an original member left we were wondering whether we'd carry on, but we did. In retrospect we perhaps should have called it a day. When we initially went into the music game we were very cynical, so the stuff that happened to us within the industry didn't break our hearts.

"After we split, I contemplated making a solo album; I did some solo shows around Britain in May this year with Simple Kid. It was great fun seeing people come to see a support act with their JJ72 T-shirts on.

"The tour on my own was good, and it was certainly good to play again, but the gang mentality was missing. I was doing bits of recording here and there during the summer, but my heart wasn't fully into it, messing around generally, coming up with tunes, but always coming to the conclusion that I had to have a band to play them with. When we first started playing something immediately clicked. And when I was writing songs, I felt they needed something brought into them that would make them not sound like JJ72."

This seems to be somewhat of an issue with Greaney, but he's at pains to stress that it's only because his voice (as well as JJ72's music) is quite distinct.

"Well, it's the only other band I've been in, and my voice is identifiable, so you can't get away from that. The important thing for me was to approach something completely different from the JJs, insofar as I'd have ideas, but I didn't want to come to Gavin and Binzer with finished songs."

"Being a songwriter is like being an instrumentalist," says Fox. "You have your style. Mark will always write a certain way, so his new songs needed different people."

Is it exciting to be starting from scratch, a sense that you're each back to square one?

"It doesn't feel to me like it's back to square one," replies Greaney. "I feel like I'm playing now what I'd always heard in my head. Even after all the years of playing, you have to remember that I'm only in my second band. To be honest, I feel like something of a novice."

"There are loads of ideas floating around our heads," comments Gavin. "We're all off into geek territory. You know what, though - it's coming together so well I keep saying to myself, what's the catch? It's too easy!"