`I'm the very antithesis of Irish rock" says the quiet and enigmatic Dublin musician Ken Sweeney, who commands a large cult following thanks to his slow-motion, lyrically-disturbed songs. "There is no hype, there is no bluster about what I do; it's all small scale and I only release music when I feel like releasing it, not when the record company wants some new product to sell in the shops," he continues. Thankfully, he's just "felt like it" again and this week sees the eagerly awaited release of his first album since 1992's mini-masterpiece, Understand.
If you came in late on Ken Sweeney - and most people have - all you really need to know is all that he's prepared to tell you. Aged 31 and from the Navan Road, he's quick to glaze over his past contributions to a variety of Dublin punk and mod bands. More influenced by the softer, acoustic based and melodic ways of bands like the Blue Nile and The Go-Betweens, he and his friend Niall Austin formed the band "Brian" ("I named the band after a friend of mine," he explains) in 1989 and much to his astonishment, their first ever single - a song called A Million Miles which he financed himself and brought out on his own indie label - found itself at number four in that year's Hot Press Singles of the Year poll, ahead of acts like REM and Elvis Costello.
The appeal was simple: at a time when other Irish bands were all chasing the U2 dollar with overblown rock songs, Ken Sweeney was strumming sadly away on his acoustic guitar and singing plaintive songs about the heartbreak of relationships. Not a million miles away (pun intended, cheers) from Nick Drake territory.
Quickly signed to the London-Irish label, Setanta (whose roster also includes The Divine Comedy), Brian's first album, Understand, charted in the indie charts, got the best reviews this side of a Radiohead album and had Ken bleeding all over the tracks as he sang about love found and lost. "It's the only way I know to write songs" he says. "There's always ordinary, everyday characters in the songs, and the lyrics deal with real concerns like arguments and misunderstandings and relationships. Seven years on from that album, I'm pleased to see that it's one of Setanta's biggest selling records behind The Divine Comedy and that's because it sells steadily year in and year out and has just recently been re-pressed again."
Despite the adulation and the prospect of becoming a major international recording star, Ken Sweeney mysteriously walked away from it all soon after the album was released, much to the annoyance of his record company and his cult of fans. He concentrated instead on his day job as a film archivist with the BBC in London ("loads of great Michael Powell films") and nobody could convince him to return to the musical fray. What happened?
"I just felt I had said all I had wanted to say on the album, I had written songs about certain situations in my life and had nothing more to add. I tend to describe myself as a `shy and retiring' type and I wasn't that impressed by the music industry. I didn't want to bring out another album because for whatever reasons in my own life I just didn't feel the inspiration. I have to feel something strongly to write a song about it because I'm all about putting feeling over in music," he explains.
Forgotten except to those who plagued his record company Website to get him to bring out another album, Ken decided to accept a redundancy package from the BBC and moved back to Dublin. "I was home for about six months and I think the change of surroundings and meeting new people inspired a burst of creativity. I went up to a friend's house in Termonfeckin in Co Louth and after years of writing nothing, I put down about 40 songs, which I whittled down to nine for the album."
The demos were paid for by his friend, Graham Linehan, the co-writer of Father Ted - interestingly enough the other Ted writer, Arthur Mathews, played drums on the Understand album. The new album, Bring Trouble, sees Ken in uncharacteristically up-beat and bouncy musical form. Comparisons are already been made with The Lightning Seeds (both acts share the same producer, Cenzo Townsend), and Ken seems finally to have killed off his "shoe-gazing" past with a "pop" album. Has he been at the Prozac then? "I think it's just that I'm more travelled and more experienced," he says. "Certainly the songs could be described as more shiny and more up than before, and there is possibly more warmth to these songs. There's also a bit more technology at play on the album - with drum loops and synthesisers in there."
Lovers of Brian mark 1 need not unduly fret that Ken has turned into a bandana- wearing, microphone-spinning pop beast; you only have to listen to the downbeat Right Through Tuesday track, with lyrics like "The way I opened up to you/ you know every secret thing/ and you've taken it all away with you/ and now I won't smile/ knowing there's no one I can trust" to realise that all the interpersonal tragedy and pathos are still there in spades.
"A song like that is just about a difficulty you have in a relationship and how afterwards you realise that both of you can never recover and the two of you can never quite be as close to each other again. It's getting that over in music that appeals to me, which is why I'm a big fan of acts like Iris Dement and Lyle Lovett. But not all the songs are as personal as that, one song called This Kitchen 5 a.m. is just a detailed description of a certain scene, while the first song on the album, and probably the first single, We Close 1-2 is about my days at the BBC when that phrase became like a bit of a mantra for us," he explains.
There's also plenty of orchestral arrangements on the album; the Royal College of Music was drafted into the studio to lend a classical touch to the proceedings. "Any musician who tells you that he or she doesn't get a complete buzz out of a bunch of violinists playing your music back to you is a complete liar, it was a wonderful experience."
Describing his main musical influences as "Miracle Legion, The Blue Nile, The Stars Of Heaven, The Blades and The GoBetweens" he was, in his own words, "gob-smacked - and that's the first time I've ever used that horrible word" when he was asked just last week to support The GoBetweens at a gig in London next month. He seems much happier at the prospect of playing his songs this time around, mainly because he'll have The Divine Comedy (minus Neil Hannon) as his backing band and he feels he can do the new poppier sound justice on stage. "It feels strange," he says, "after all this time to be back recording and gigging again and I don't think I'll leave it as long next time." And how's his sense of commitment this time around? "Oh it's there all right, I think that it even could be back for good."
Bring Trouble by Brian is released next week on the Setanta label. Ken Sweeney will play live at "Upstairs at the Garage" in Lon- don on April 22nd and will tour Ireland with the Divine Comedy backing band later in the year.