Interview by Greg Phillips

Irish quintet The Thrills made a huge name for themselves worldwide in 2003 with the release of their stunning debut album "So Much For The City". Featuring impressively constructed pop songs, beautiful melodies and gorgeous arrangements, the follow-up, "Let's Bottle Bohemia", was another giant leap forward for The Thrills in their quest for world domination. Australian Musician's Greg Phillips caught up with singer and main songwriter Conor Deasey at the band's Melbourne soundcheck during their first ever tour of Australia.

GP: I read that you all told your friends and family you had singed a record deal well before it looked like occurring ...

CD: When we were younger we signed to an independent label in Dublin and they dropped us out of the blue, but we decided not to tell anyone. We didn't want everyone dwelling on that. There was a year between that and signing with Virgin records. So for a whole year we had to pretend we had a deal. It was a bit of a strain.

When you bring your songs to the band, do you have a fairly set idea of the way you want them to sound?

Something like 'One Horse Town', I had the riff. I had been sitting with that for a while. Other times I'll think I have it in my mind, but something like 'Santa Cruz' took a long time because there are so many bits to it. Often you lack perspective too. When you haven't got a record deal your confidence can take a knocking, I wasn't so sure about the song. A couple of random words can take the wind out of your sails. I remember when a couple of record companies came over to see us we weren't even doing 'Santa Cruz'. It's interesting how you can lose perspective of your own material.

History tells us that a lot of the time great music comes out of pain and suffering. Your first album was written while you were all living in Dublin and feeling quite depressed. Is it any different writing now that you are an established international band?

There's a song called 'The Curse of Comfort' about that on our new album. There's a scene in the movie 'Happiness' where this woman thinks to be a great writer she has to be raped. Great scene, and the line in our song is a bit of black humour, and it's 'damn those rape victim writers and their five star reviews'. That's one of the things I really believe is that you don't have to be a tortured artist to say something. Don't get me wrong, I'm just saying there are no golden rules about it. Look at Johnny Cash, I think he sang the life that he lived. Then you look at someone like Bob Dylan who created a life. It was revealed in later years, we found out he wasn't an orphan and didn't travel around with a circus family in Mexico. But people swallowed it at the time and gave it a legitimacy but of course it was nonsense. He wrote great songs and was talented, and he worked hard. So there are different ways to be inspired. It is true, the idea of pain and suffering but it is also true that it could just be an idea that comes to you, you work through it and you have a keen eye. All are valid. I find that with music, there's this thing where you have to have the credentials, you know. You're a phony, you're this, you're middle class, and I just find that musicians are soft targets.

Your music has a melancholy feel to it which can work for the listener on many levels, as an upbeat experience or when you’re alone and a bit down...

It's funny because after we recorded the first album we began to do the magazine interviews. We hadn't done them before. They would ask what we thought we sounded like … and we'd be like rabbits in headlights. Now you get more used to it, but what I mean is that a lot of the things that happen naturally, you just don't realise. Now when I listen back to the first record I can reduce it to a sound-byte or explain it. One of the words that described it and I agree … that it's a bittersweet record. I didn't realise it at the time, but the melodies are quite uplifting but the lyrics are a little bit miserable, sad. It's a nice little balance and I think it works and that's why sometimes you'll read of it as sunshine pop and others might say 'happiest sad record of the year'. Some people are more attuned to lyrics and others might listen to the melodies and feel. You take from it what you want. So yeh, you could play it at a party or sit and listen to the lyrics alone if you're down. But I wasn't aware of that. I wasn't even aware of how many Californian towns I had name checked on the album. You don't have perspective. You can't help but be more aware on the second record. That's a big battle too, to not be so self conscious, because you start to read about yourselves, you know what people think you are and aren't, and you also thought about it a little bit more. The danger then is that you won't be able to write songs the way you used to. You know because you'd be second-guessing yourself, so I think that's the biggest trap

You recorded the first album in California, how influential can a place be to your music?

I think the circumstances of the recording can effect a record but at the end of the day, great songs make great records. I always remember when U2 recorded Achtung Baby, somewhere in Germany and everyone made this big deal because you know, they were in David Bowie's territory. But they didn't have the songs ready. I mean I don't want to diss the album. I know it's great for people to make a spiel out of it but really the reality is, you have great songs, you have a great record. I do think in our case it was important because we'd fantasized about getting out of Dublin for a couple of years at that point, because we hadn't left Dublin in a while because we were trying to concentrate on the band. Obviously we'd been name checking some of these places in California, so when we got there we were like kids in a candy store. It was a real sense of occasion, and we felt we had achieved something that we had somehow pulled this ridiculous thing together. Because we had only signed two weeks before hand, so we were thinking how did we end up out here? To be honest we were a little bit euphoric.

One thing that stands out to me about ' Let’s Bottle Bohemia' is the clarity of the individual instruments. How conscious were you of that when you were recording?

Some people like different things. I personally like listening to a great record being aware of the detail and dynamic, that's what I love. That's why I love Burt Bacharach and Phil Spector because they are all about the arrangements. Other people like to just capture a scuzzy moment. They don't really care if it's just a fleeting moment, and even if it's just one trashy guitar, and I don't mind that too, but people like different things. When we make music, if we are going to play to our strengths, we are good at arranging songs and have a good sense of detail, so I think it's best for us when you can hear that little bit of glockenspiel or bit of an organ pad and bit of a clicky bass. Some other people are so narrow minded about it. You know, this is too over produced or too clean. But that's a challenge too. You can be overly anal about that and lose the atmosphere, you have to try and make the song soar and have life but not paying so much attention to detail to the detriment of the feel of the song.

You have two guitarists that also play bass … how do you decide who plays what?

Basically Dan and Padraic will swap over. Sometimes I might think there'll be a song that will suit one more than the other. Daniel is probably more of a rhythmic guitarist, he can lock into a really solid rhythm and groove whereas Padriac might do more interesting, quirky parts. In general I wouldn't do any more than two songs in a row with either of them because they both want to play guitar.

You use a lot of string arrangements on 'Bohemia', do you try to replicate that with keyboards on stage?

A lot of bands get to a level when they get some money and get bigger, where almost every second song has a backing track. I want to try to keep away from that. I remember going to see Blur and I thought it was so cool that those four guys were making that racket, and they didn't have big brass, so that can be cool in its own way too. I'm one of the people that actually loves Elvis' Vegas period. I like that big occasion. But there's something cool about not getting too into that end of it. Because what it means is that with a click track, everyone is a bit more restricted. Everyone has little clicks in their ears and you can't waver, you couldn't have an extra bar at the end of the song, it just restrains everything a bit.

Do you find some nights that when everything just clicks, that you reach a special level musically, that no matter how hard you try you can't do all the time?

Hopefully it will be like that tonight because we have never been here before. It's true. Some nights there's something in the air and it's funny because we'll talk to each other and go 'what did you do tonight?' Nobody knows but usually, and this is kind of corny, a lot of the times it's the audience. It's really in the hands of the audience. Sometimes they can be really unresponsive and you'll win them over. Other times they just let themselves go and not try to be cool. Irish audiences are like that and I think Australian audiences too, they don't pose.