Reconnecting with Director

The Irish football team can’t fill the pubs as well as the fear of Good Friday can, so Holy Thursday probably wasn’t the best time sit down for a quiet chat in the Library Bar with the lads from Director. But given the chance to be one of the first publications to hear all about the new album, Flux grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

2006 saw Director release their first album We Thrive in Big Cities. The platinum success of the album led to a Meteor Music Prize in 2007 for Best New Irish Act and they followed that up with a Choice Music Prize nomination. After extensive touring with their album, which saw them support bands such as Razorlight, The Fratellis and Modest Mouse, the Malahide quartet took some time out to write and record their second album.

That album is I’ll Wait for Sound, hitting the shops in a few weeks on May 8. Flux met up with Michael Moloney and Eoin Aherne from Director and started off by asking them how the sound of this album differs from the first. “It’s bigger and rockier,” said Michael. Eoin agreed and added that even though some of the songs are similar to the first album, “they have a bigger guitar and drum sound to them”.

They said they’ve been able to be much more adventurous: “I think this album is a lot more musical then the first album. There’s piano, organ and different instruments being used,” said Eoin. Small venues and bad sound systems led the band to want to keep it simple when it came to constructing the songs on We Thrive in Big Cities.

Eoin said that “the sound of the first album came from when we first started playing gigs. The sound in small venues generally isn’t that good and so a lot of the songs were kept simple nearly out of necessity - one or two guitar notes played at a time ‘cause we were always very conscious that if you have loads of big brash things, it just doesn’t seem to transfer well in smaller venues”.

The writing and recording of this album saw the band leave the capital as they headed off to Leitrim for some peace and quiet. “We were very prepared going into this album, we spent about four months in a house in Leitrim, just living there and rehearsing there and playing everyday, getting all the songs to a stage where we could play them live as a band. It was only when we got to the studio that we sort of experimented by adding different sounds,” said Michael. “Everything though was still rooted in what we could play live.”

So when can we expect to see the band live, and are they looking forward to going back out on tour?

“Very much so, really looking forward to it,” Eoin said. “We almost haven’t played enough gigs over the last year just ‘cause we were working on the album so much, we didn’t want to go out and play ‘til we had a new album out”.

“We have seven or eight gigs confirmed… and I’m sure we’ll be playing a good few over the summer, various festivals and things.”

Looking on the band’s website, you can’t help but notice the amount of interactivity they participate in with their fans. They have a forum, they blog, they’re on Twitter as well as having a separate MySpace page where you can see videos the band put up of themselves in the studio recording the album.

So how important do they think it is for bands these days to be accessible and online with their fan base?

Eoin feels it’s really important for them as a band. “It’s great to be able to have those things. Especially at the moment, I mean, people are buying less CDs, so you really need to connect with the people that do want to buy and are fans”.
They said they want to create as much online content for this album as they possibly can. They also maintain the pages themselves. So no inspiration from 50 Cent there.

And who are they following on Twitter?

“I think everyone’s following Stephen Fry,” said Michael, with Eoin adding that the band are currently following fellow musician Jape, the 2FM DJ Rick O’Shea, as well as the Huffington Post.

The promotion for I’ll Wait for Sound is just starting but as Michael says, “We’re just really excited about the album and I guess we just want to get it to as many people as possible.”

So, as the interview came to an end I put it to the lads that the students of UCD, Trinity, UL and Queens have been given the Director live experience. But what the heck’s wrong with DCU?

Well, nothing according to them just the oversight of their poor injured manager who had just joined us. So, maybe we’ll see them in Glasnevin at the start of next year. Until then catch them if you can and keep an ear on the radio. Flux has a feeling that their new songs are going to be all over the summer airwaves.