Dublin rock band Lir are back with a new album - 20 years after they began. But though they missed out first-time around they're still shooting for the top, writes Kevin Courtney
ONE LEGEND that deserves a more prominent place in the annals of Irish rock is the story of Lir. It's the tale of five kids from Dublin's northside who wanted to become swans, but ended up having their wings clipped.
Now, nearly 20 years after they first cast their magic spell on Irish rock, Lir are releasing their first album in 13 years, a live recording that encompasses their ever-changing musical palette, exemplifies their virtuoso playing and vibrant songwriting, and encapsulates their enduring appeal for Irish fans. Recorded in Dublin's Vicar Street and Whelan's in 2006, Lir Livecatches these local legends in full flight, and goes some way towards making up for lost time and momentum.
"We were determined to stay together as a band, and have always been friends, so it was never a hassle for us to get back together and play gigs for fans or other people who are interested," says guitarist and original member Ronan Byrne, "and ultimately to put something else out and to prove to people that we're in it for the long, long haul. We're still going to put stuff out. Is it good or not? We certainly think it is."
Byrne was just a teenager when he and four pals, singer Dave McGuinness, bassist Rob Malone, keyboard player David Hopkins and drummer Craig Hutchinson formed Lir during the late 1980s. Inspired by Led Zeppelin, Nick Drake and Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, Lir set their musical sights high right from day one.
They unashamedly used odd time signatures, brain-twisting song structures and finger-mangling musicianship, while still putting across an air of pastoral simplicity in their gentler moments. It was prog-rock blended with folk, psychedelia and a sprinkling of pop. When word got out about these teen wizards from Kilbarrack and Donaghmede, the musos came out in force, and Lir were garlanded with accolades and conferred with "next big thing" status. They had effortlessly conquered the complexities of the 9/8-time guitar solo - conquering the world should be a doddle.
"There were factors that stopped the band from getting somewhere," says Byrne, with just a tinge of bitterness in his Dublin brogue.
"All this band needed was a tiny injection, just a slight push. The band was offered every record deal under the sun. How we couldn't be signed I'll never know. Every other Irish band at the time got a major record deal. That's what we needed. Not independent deals here and there, in Bhutan and Iceland or wherever. A major record deal, where you would get that tiny bit of exposure."
Ronan can't elaborate on why things went pear-shaped, because the band are still involved in a legal wrangle with their former managers, but he believes Lir were never really given the chance to fulfil their enormous potential. When they were touring the US during the early 1990s, and blowing audiences away, they were being offered deals "left, right and centre". On one particular night in New York, says Ronan, three of the world's biggest record companies offered to sign the band on the spot.
Nothing came of it.
"Everybody else seemed to be getting record deals and they had half the management that we were supposed to have," laments Byrne. "And I don't know how we slipped through that. There were too many rock'n'rollers around us. We weren't rock'n'roll - we were real. We were surrounded by people who felt this massive buzz and energy off us, and really we should have been given that record deal and given a little dig-out, and it would have worked for us."
Lir still have a sizeable fanbase at home willing to come out and sing again to such Lir classics as Wickerman, Halcyon Days, Travellerand There are More Things. The band still reconvenes at least once a year to play a gig for the home crowd; in January 2006, they played a gig in Vicar Street alongside Damien Dempsey and Republic of Loose. The show forms the bulk of Lir Liveand, along with a few tracks recorded at Whelan's that same year, provides a nice, nostalgic trip through the many stages of Lir - from the fresh-faced prog-rockers who played like 40-year-old veterans to the steely guitar quintet of the mid-1990s to the sophisticated pop-rockers of today.
These days, the band members are busy with their separate careers, either working with other bands, or releasing solo material, or both. Byrne has his own band, Earthquake Hair, and moonlights with a reggae outfit called Weedway. Bassist Rob Malone is a member of David Gray's band. Drummer Johnny Boyle, who replaced original drummer Craig Hutchinson in 1997, plays with The Frames. Colm Quearney, who was drafted into the band in 1994 after keyboard player David Hopkins left, has released two solo albums, and is working on a third. He was, he confesses, Lir's "biggest fan", and would go to see them play in local pubs and venues.
When his own band, Dragonfly, broke up, Quearney got a call from his young idols to ask him to join. "I was absolutely gobsmacked to get the opportunity," recalls Quearney. "Within a matter of weeks we were touring Ireland for Christmas, then touring America for three weeks, and then making [second album] Nest. It was an amazing experience."
The band were signed to an indie label, WAR Records, in the US, in what Quearney refers to as a "grassroots" deal. What that meant was non-stop touring across the small towns and venues of the US for nine months a year, building an audience from the dirt up.
The gruelling schedule took its toll: keyboard player Hopkins was first to go, followed soon after by drummer Craig Hutchinson. The band returned to Ireland broken, battered, but not beaten. When their song, There Are More Things, appeared on the soundtrack for Irish film I Went Down, the band realised there were more things left to do.
Recently, Quearney and Byrne wrote up a list of the songs Lir had recorded that still hadn't been released, and the figure came to more than 100 songs - "full studio recordings," stresses Quearney.
The band aren't ruling out the possibility of putting out the best of these unreleased nuggets, but for the moment they're excited that their live energy has finally been captured on CD. Lir Liveis on local label 1969 Records, run by Darragh Bowen, and home to Pugwash, The Pale and Dave Couse.
They're also excited about another project in the pipeline, a documentary about the band by film-maker Shimmy Marcus.
"He was doing lights for us for years," says Quearney, "and he was always recording our gigs, with our blessing, just for his own enjoyment. Then it turns out that over the years he becomes a film-maker and a really good one, and he has all this footage . . . And he knows our story inside out, even more than we know it."
Lir Liveis on 1969 Records.
Lir play Whelan's on Wexford Street, Dublin, tonight