Words to the wise

Amid the current musical climate, awash with punk rock kids, dublin hop-hop devotees Messiah J The Expert are a welcome breath of fresh air. On the eve of the release of their third album, they talk to Jim Carroll

IT SHOULD come as no surprise that Messiah J The Expert now instinctively finish each other's sentences. That's what comes from spending almost 10 years of making tunes together, tunes which are getting better and better every time they go back to the well.

John Fitzgerald is Messiah J. He's the one who knows you shouldn't take the power of words for granted. During the interview, he cites KRS One as a big influence over the years, and that makes complete sense.

Cian Galvin is The Expert. He's the one who gets so excited about the sounds he hears in his head that he can't get the words out fast enough to describe them. Enter the Wu-Tang( 36 Chambers) rocked his world, but Endtroducingchanged his life.

The two Dubliners have been through good times and bad times together. It can be a hard-knocks life making hip-hop tracks in a climate often uncomfortable with that idiom, but they've kept trucking.

Today, they look like the cats who got the cream - for a very good reason. Their third album, From the Word Go, is where MJEX really come good. Radio-friendly bangers ( Turn the Magic On), spirited lyrical gems ( Looking for a Long Term Thing), righteous anger ( Jean Is Planning an Escape) - all present and correct.

The pair, then, have finally found what they were looking for.

"After we toured the last record," says Galvin, "we sat down and had a look at what worked live and what worked on record, and we knew right away where we were going. The missing element from the first two albums was structure, so we had to get rid of the fat that was in the way of where we wanted tracks to go. All the structures are so tight this time out, and the album sounds right as a result."

Moreover, they've added some sharp ballast to their lyrical canon.

"Our biggest problem with music in general is a lack of substance," says Fitzgerald. "So I wanted to deal with unchartered territory and write about stuff I wanted to hear about. A song like Jean Is Planning an Escapereflects what happened to so many people I know who've had serious problems with relationships going bad and where there's violence involved.

"Writing a song like that is trying to show that people do think about these things even if popular music doesn't necessarily reflect that. Part of it is growing maturity, I suppose, but it is also about showing that I do give a flying fuck about what is going on around me and don't just think about myself all the time."

On From the Word Go, Messiah J The Expert appear to reflect the confusion and ennui of many of their peers. "A lot of people our age know what is going on, but they feel disconnected from politics because they don't think it matters to them," Galvin says.

Fitzgerald adds: "There's a general confusion about everything, which is why so many go down the taking-the-piss road. But that's really lowest common denominator stuff, because they don't really understand or get the issues involved.

"Yes, our peers are cynical about politics in this country. The stance we're taking is that we don't know it all or even pretend to know it all, but we're trying to make people aware that this is stuff they should get to know about. We're as confused as everyone else!"

Both are a little surprised that very few other Irish acts have used what's going on around them as fuel for songs. "The feeling, I suppose, is that it's not really cool to talk about this, it's not what 14- or 15-year-old kids want to hear," says Galvin. "People in bands stick to writing songs about love because it's a safe route. But there has to be more than that."

"I think there has to be more talk about political issues from people our own age, not some fiftysomething career politician coming out with loads of jargon," says Fitzgerald. "Bands, though, are afraid to speak about political issues because they feel they have to have all the answers or be on a podium, but that's not the case. You can take an interest and be flawed. You can't be a hypocrite, but you can be flawed."

Flogging the new album will involve more trips abroad. "Last time, we spent a large chunk of change bringing the record out in England and it didn't really work," Galvin admits. "We found out that our big chunk of change isn't really that much over there. If you want it to work in Britain, you have to tour, you have to build up the fanbase. You might go a bit in the red but you have to do it and get out of your comfort zone and play to that dozen people in Nottingham. It might not all work out, but you have to do it."

Both are still juggling the demands of day jobs. While they could, as Fitzgerald puts it, "be real bums and just scrape by" with band income alone, they prefer to put every cent acquired from live shows and album sales back into the group.

"Our thing from day one has always been to put back every penny we made into the music," says Galvin. "It's never been a case of using the cash to buy a few pints and a bag of crisps, but using the money to get a new piece of gear or a decent microphone, or pay for horns and strings like we did for this record.

"It's hard because there are times when you could do with the cash, but we wouldn't then have had the money to make this record sound as good as it is. We didn't want to cut corners with it. We wanted the record to be the one people will remember for all the right reasons. It's what will always be there."

• From the Word Gois out now on Inaudible. The band will tour Ireland throughout November. For more, see http://messiahjandtheexpert.com