Fast lane for Slow Motion Heroes

Cork super group’s members are enjoying a success they haven’t achieved in their other bands, says Don O’Mahony

WHEN members of Cork’s underground and punk-rock scenes formed a band, the results weren’t what was predicted. Far from an unholy alliance whose constituent parts claimed membership of El Bastardo, Revolution Of A Sun, Hope Is Noise, Rulers Of The Planet and Cyclefly, the putative super group Slow Motion Heroes explored less frenetic and discordant avenues, and more textured and symphonic pop thrills.

After years of rough and readiness, Slow Motion Heroes are experiencing how mainstream bands live. This year, the six-piece has headlined a concert in Cork’s Opera House, and over the August weekend played an early evening slot on the main stage of the Indiependence festival in Mitchelstown, warming up the rain-soaked crowd for The Frank And Walters and Feeder.

Sometimes, having your own monitor onstage can be the equivalent of the stretch limo. It’s something guitarist Dan Breen is still comprehending.

“You know, when you play in smaller bands you get used to — you tolerate — crappy PAs and sound engineers who don’t know what they’re doing. But on the big stage, we were just blown away by the fact that we all had our own monitor, there was a separate monitor. With Slow Motion Heroes, we’re getting to experience that a lot, which I know isn’t a big deal, but Jesus, for us playing a place like the Opera House, having a dressing room, it’s been like the biggest novelty ever. It’s still very new to us,” he says.

Some members of Slow Motion Heroes did not know each other when they convened for their first jamming session in a rehearsal room in a Cork City industrial estate in 2009, but they walked out of it with a song under their belts and the conviction that this was something worth pursuing.

So far, they have released three EPs, which have been both “pop” and “not pop”. Indications are that their soon-to-be-released fourth EP will be just as eccentric. What has been liberating for the members is that Slow Motion Heroes offers the chance of a second life, an opportunity to step out of the constrictions of punk bands and try new things, like the archetypal caterpillar becoming a butterfly. Breen agrees with this assessment.

“It’s only in the last six months that we’ve actually gone, ‘ah, that’s our sound. This is what we want to do.’ Let’s say Pop, for example, we don’t write songs like Pop anymore. That was when we had the idea of being a pop/Sigur Rós-type band. It’s only in the last couple of months that we’ve definitely found a direction,” he says.

Slow Motion Heroes have always done what they like, Breen says. “We have faith that if it’s good enough, then people will enjoy it. I think our experience of playing in different bands for the last ten to 15 years is you, eventually, learn.

“If you know we’re playing something that’s not good, we don’t need to sit and talk about it for ten minutes. We can go, ‘right, that’s gone. We’re not doing that.’ And that’s the way Slow Motion works.”

The band like to surprise both themselves and their audience. “Yeah, it’s completely different to the other bands we do. When you play in heavier bands, you’re kind of stuck sometimes in that genre, whereas, in Slow Motion, we go for the quiet stuff and we also do the heavy and loud. So we sing beautifully and then we scream and shout just as well.”

Slow Motion Heroes have played a couple of Murphy’s Live events, performing to audiences who would never have seen them in their other bands.

“There was a couple of people at Indiependence who came to see us, which is great, but if we didn’t play these Murphy’s Lives we wouldn’t have connected. You get used to playing to a nice crowd. Like a lot of our younger days playing in these other bands, we would have played to nobody, but it’s nice now to play to people and they seem to appreciate it, so long may it last,” Breen says.

And with that, Breen entertains the fanciful notion of Slow Motion Heroes inventing their own singing language, inspired, no doubt, by Sigur Rós’s Hopelandic.

But what would they call it? “Bleaurgh!”

* Slow Motion Heroes play the main stage of the Murphy’s Rising event on Sunday, Aug 26 at the Beamish & Crawford site, Cork.(www.littlebignightsout.com) and the Valentia Isle Festival on Friday, Sep 14.