The Devlins used to pride themselves on subtlety. Their new album goes for a tougher sound. If there's a more understated and subtle band than The Devlins working in Irish rock music, they must be hiding under a rock somewhere, silent and cold and aloof. Tony Clayton-Lea likes what he hears.
The Devlins are as sweet as a very sweet nut, as subtle as a surreptitious glance and as polite and assured as a Jane Austen heroine. But what's this? The band's forthcoming album, Waves, is crunchier than toast. What happened to subtlety? What happened to understatement?
"One of the reasons for the change is that I've seen a lot of my favourite bands over the years get softer and softer and lose some of the things I liked about them," says Colin Devlin, half of the fraternal pair that makes up the core of the group - and the possessor of the kind of Pre-Raphaelite looks that make him stand out as one of Irish rock's most photogenic figures.
Peter Devlin, who is thinner of frame and hair, is also present, but as he's a recently minted father he's suffering from a lack of sleep, so his contributions are muted more by lack of energy than anything else. "The babysitting is working out fine," he says valiantly. "There's no pressure."
Colin - no babies, bright eyed and bushy tailed - continues talking about certain bands ("Prefab Sprout, for example") that once made records with an edge. "But then they slowly went into an area that lacked something. And I was worried that kind of thing might happen to us. We didn't want it to happen, and we ensured it didn't."
And yet it could so easily have been otherwise. In existence since the early 1990s, The Devlins released their début album, Drift, in 1994, to immense acclaim. (Rolling Stone described it as stunning; Billboard made it a record of the week.) Three years later the follow-up, Waiting, won more acclaim, including five-star reviews in most of the music monthlies and broadsheet arts pages. Then came a five-year hiatus until the release of their third album, Consent, which stemmed the flow of plaudits somewhat.
Clearly taken with one-word album titles - and what subdued words they are too - Waves marks a change in the band's stylistic output. Although it isn't exactly revolutionary punk rock, guitars nevertheless play an important part in making it The Devlins' punchiest record yet.
"It would extend to touring, also," says Peter, "where you've got to keep up the onstage edge, where knowing what gets people going in a club as opposed to the seated theatre is important. Also, the fact that we've set up a live studio scenario, and rehearsed the songs as if we were rehearsing for a tour, rather than layering the sound - which we have done in the past - has added to the immediacy."
What excited Colin about the recording of the new album, he says, was turning up at the studio and playing in an unfettered, pared-down way.
Gradually tiring of the soft 'n' nice tag that has been placed around their neck from the start (reaching a peak with 2002's somewhat underwhelming Consent), it seems the mood The Devlins are experiencing right now is one not so much of outright anger but of concerned irritability.
"What we wanted to do was to create the mood with guitar, voice and rhythm," says Colin. "We came to realise that you don't need some of the other stuff: you either have or have not the quality to evoke a really great emotion in people. So it was about exciting us, primarily, to feel alive."
Having started on a major label, they then embarked on a road of prudent independence and reasonably lucrative licensing deals; the brothers have nothing in common with the type of struggling artist normally found nursing a coffee in a grotty café.
For the past few years the Devlin brothers have retained ownership of their work, licensing both Consent and Waves to record companies around the world. Their label for Ireland and the UK is Rubyworks, owned by Denis Desmond; the band has licensed Waves in Germany to Rough Trade and is talking to other labels about distributing the record in Canada and the US.
"On a purely selfish level we were determined to keep our eye on the ball with this one," says Colin. "We were pissed off that not many people heard the last record, so this time we wanted to remind people that we were still around."
As if to prove this, the band's material remains a favourite of film- and television-music consultants in the US. Their songs have been heard on the soundtrack for Six Feet Under and the new Mike Nichols movie, Closer (starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen), which is due to be released towards the end of the year.
"It's timely for everything," says Peter, "to get name of the band out there again. So many people are saying that this new record is more radio friendly, more instant and uptempo, rather than full of the soundscapes of the previous record."
Colin cuts in: "You don't start out with that in mind, because if you did you'd end up failing.
"You can't second-guess things; you see bands doing it and you can spot it a mile off."
Cue a sighting of The Devlins. Specks in the distance. Still polite and mellow, but this time out with a little more push and shove and swagger. How well it suits them.
The Devlins play the Half Moon, Cork, on August 7th; RóisíDubh, Galway, on August 10th; and Whelan's, Dublin, on August 12th, 13th and 14th. Waves is released on August 6th
