The Wormholes: After delays and tragedy, Irish band release album 27 years later
The Wormholes.
Parijuana, the second album by Dublin’s The Wormholes was originally shelved after it was recorded in 1996. Now 27 years later it’s finally getting a deserved release. The Ringsend three-piece comprised twins Dave (drums and vocals) and Anto Carroll (bass guitar), and childhood friend Graham Blackmore (guitar and vocals). Dave suffered a stroke, was diagnosed with cancer and died three months later on June 4, 2019. He was 49.
Chicks Dig Scars, the band’s 1994 debut, was put out on Dublin’s independent Dead Elvis Records, set up by Eamonn and Óg Crudden, Marc Carolan and Eamonn Doyle. The label released a number of highly regarded albums, some of which were produced by Carolan and recorded at the label’s own Fuse studio in the basement of a building on Dublin’s Parnell St. A CD-Rom manufacturing company pressed these albums on CD and they were sold at an affordable £5 - a game changer for the Irish indie music community.
“People thought, ‘If The Wormholes can make an album, we can make an album,' and in the 12 months immediately afterwards there was an absolute explosion of independent album releases,” says Eamonn Crudden, who also managed the band. “Dead Elvis got albums out by The Wormholes, In Motion and The Sewing Room - and then the world caught up with us and suddenly everyone was releasing albums. We kicked off this mad wave of independent releases.”
Anto remembers the fizz of interest in the band: “Once Chicks Dig Scars came out major labels started phoning.” The Wormholes were the second Dublin group, after Pet Lamb, signed by Roadrunner Records and the album was given a worldwide release.
“Roadrunner were the biggest metal label in the world at the time and they were trying to get into something different, more like the American independent music side of things,” says Crudden. “By the time we turned up in Roadrunner’s office in London the guy who had signed the band had gone and we were staring at a load of big tall guys with long hair. They didn’t know who we were and they didn’t understand us. We got some money out of them for good equipment and we got enough money to go on a couple of tours of the UK playing with bands like Cornershop, Mogwai and The Fall.”
“By the end of it, all I knew is that they were going to be dropped,” says Crudden. “So I got some money from Roadrunner to at least demo some new material. Marc Carolan recorded another album on the budget we got to record the demos. Graham, Anto and Dave turned against this fantastic album immediately after it was recorded.”
If their debut was indebted to the sounds of the American underground, not least records by Pavement and Royal Trux, now the band was taking influence from 70s Krautrock.
“We were getting more into long prog-rock passages and improvisational stuff. When we were recording Parijuana the relationship with Roadrunner started getting ridiculous and we started to doubt everything,” says Anto.
“At the time we were very headstrong about the sound we wanted, so it got put on the shelf and we had to move forward. We were younger and more impulsive. But I think we knew it would shine someday. It was only years later when we realised how good it was recorded.” Marc Carolan, who these days tours the world as Muse’s front-of-house live sound engineer, has only fond memories of his time producing The Wormholes.
“If you tried to do it, if you set out to produce them you wouldn’t do it,” he says. “We just did it. The lads were unstoppable once they got playing. I don’t want to say it was a happy accident, because it wasn’t. There was nothing accidental about it. I can remember thinking, I can do this, I don’t need some sound engineer from Windmill Lane to tell me this sounds good.”
Parijuana’s release is a fitting tribute to Dave. “Some days it’s hard,” says Anto reflecting on his brother’s passing. “But he’s in the music and he’s going to be there for as long as that lasts.”
- Parijuana Take 1 by The Wormholes is out now on AllChival Records
