Cork's answer to Bo Burnham? Rob Carlile on mixing music, humour, and mental health

The talented Fermoy man has played nearly all the instruments on his debut album, designed its cover, and created amusing videos to help promote it  

Rob Carlile, Cork musician.

“I think humour is important,” Rob Carlile declares. “I love when lyrics are a little bit provocative. That really grabs me.” 

There is more than a hint of the provocateur from the cover image of the Fermoy musician’s debut album, Mentally Illmatic, which features a cartoonish self-portrait of the artist grinning maniacally at a keyboard.

 This goes further with his description of the record as “a quirky rock album of fun songs on the theme of being mentally ill.” Perhaps we’re more familiar or, indeed, more comfortable with more sombre or more tortured portrayals of mental illness, but Carlile would never be so reductive.

“I think nothing should be entirely serious or entirely frivolous,” he ventures. "I’m trying to be honest and upfront, but not too bleak either. I think humour is very important, even if it doesn’t seem to be saying anything. But the value of a laugh when things are really tough is immeasurable.” 

The album title is an ironic nod towards landmark album Illmatic, by New York rapper Nas. “I don’t want to suggest I’m in that level, but it’s a joke on that as well. But also tells you what the subject of it is. So I’m trying to let you know that it’s going to be about mental health, but also let you know that it’s going to be funny and fun.” 

Majoring in English in UCC, Carlile took a minor in Psychology. “I guess I was kind of always interested in sort of abnormal psychology, in the kind of stuff that relates to mental health and mental illness. Just from my own life experience and from a lot of people I know. And I just wanted to learn more about it. And I always wanted to be making art of some kind. I would do a lot of writing, and I always thought psychology was important for that as well, because it’s related to the kind of art that can help people.”

 Carlile is upfront about the struggles with depression and anxiety that he engaged with from childhood.

“It was only from other people’s feedback that I learned I was a bit weird,” he shrugs. “I think it comes down to just sort of weird chemical things happening in your brain that just affects your perception. But in my mind I would have thought that I was kind of seeing that the world was hopeless and that there just wasn’t enough kindess. I would just have no faith in myself or hope for the future. And I just think now with having gotten a bit more perspective and older that it’s kind of realising it wasn’t healthy or normal. But at the time it just seemed like I was seeing the truth.”

 For Mentally Illmatic, Carlile wanted a trajectory to run through it documenting both the struggles with and acceptance of mental illness, while also wanting each song to stand on its own. But his main goal is just to get it to the people that would benefit from hearing it.

“Even now this kind of stuff that really has helped me a lot in dark times, just having this thing to listen to that I feel talks about something that I’m dealing with a bit in a kind of a light way. I’ve been helped a lot by this kind of thing and I just want to be able to help other people in the same way. So I wanted people that would enjoy hearing it to be able to hear it. I just wanted to get it out there,” he insists.

The cover of Mentally Illmatic, created by Rob Carlile himself. 

Carlile’s own influences encompass Talking Heads, Pixies, Weezer, as well as alternative hip-hop, artists that are both musically and lyrically distinctive. But there is also a strong mood of 1980s British indie music in Carlile’s crooning delivery.

“I used to love The Smiths as well,” he enthuses. “People say they’re depressing, but when you’re a teenager and you’re going through heavy things it makes you feel like somebody knows what you’re going through.”

 His lyrical approach, DIY attitude and humorous YouTube videos also call to mind American comedian Bo Burnham.

“I’m a big fan,” he exclaims. “I think he has similar aims, using music and humour to normalise taboo subjects and make them more palatable.”

•  Mentally Illmatic by Rob Carlile is available on all digital platforms with physical copies available soon