Cypress Mine: Cork band of the 1980s reform for unfinished business
(Left to right) Cypress, Mine!: Ian Olney (guitar), Mark Healy (bass), Ciarán Ó Tuama (vocals) and Morty McCarthy (drums). Picture: Eddie O'Hare
Cork indie rockers Cypress, Mine! have reunited to record an album and play a couple of live gigs. The album, is the follow-up to their 1988 debut.
Cypress, Mine! formed in 1984 after guitarist Ian Olney met bass player Dennis O’Mullane (or Skoda as he was known) at a youth CND meeting in Cork. Mark Healy joined on drums and Ciarán Ó Tuama was the singer.
In 1985 the band shared a stage with U2 at the inaugural Lark by the Lee, they toured Ireland with Blue In Heaven and Cactus World News, and played gigs with The Bluebells, Echo & the Bunnymen, Aztec Camera and Microdisney. They followed with the single The song’s catchy chorus of “The heat is murderous, this summer’s got to end” ensured it cult status among Irish music fans. The band broke up in 1989.
In 2024 the lads reconvened in London to record a few songs. “We’ve probably been exchanging pieces of music with each other over the last 12 years,” explains Healy. “A lot of these little bits and pieces sat there for years. So, it was just a matter of dragging them all together, putting a bit of shape on them and finally meeting up in the same room so we could flesh it out a bit.”
This time around Healy has moved from drums to bass guitar. “I’m the new Skoda taking over Dennis’s role because Dennis was busy doing other things,” explains Healy.
“Morty McCarthy from The Sultans of Ping volunteered to take over the drums. He’s a great drummer. To be fair to Morty he was probably the catalyst to getting us into the room together, somebody had to actually grab the bull by the horns, literally. Morty’s commitment is second to none.”
was completed in a couple of recording sessions. “We did the first batch of recordings a year and a half ago,” explains Olney. “We recorded the album in London with Jessica Corcoran. Jessica produced a couple of Power of Dreams albums, she did Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, loads of people.”
Geography played a part in the stop-start nature of the album’s recording. “Our first record was done in two weeks; this is more like two years,” says Ó Tuama. “The difficulty was actually getting us all in the same room because Morty is in Stockholm. Ian is in London. I’m in Dublin and Mark’s still in Cork.”
Why have the old friends, over 35 years since they last shared a stage, decided to pick up their instruments once more? “Myself and Ian talked about this in London,” says Ó Tuama. “I asked Ian, why are we doing this? And we both came up with a similar answer, there’s another record in us. And we have to record it because we feel otherwise it’ll get left behind.”
Writing new songs and playing them together is one thing but the urge to share new recorded material and play it live is really important for the lads. “I think the process of writing the songs and playing together and recording and the friendship and having a laugh is absolutely vital for what you do in the first place,” says Olney. “But equally, I think there’s very little point if nobody else hears it.”
Ó Tuama smiles in agreement: “First of all, it’s about us, it’s an inner want. Secondly it’d be great to get other people involved and let them hear it because otherwise we wouldn’t be doing it, you know. I’d love people to hear it, because it’s sounding pretty good.”
“One of the things I’ve been thinking about is that every good band has two albums in them and maybe nothing more than that,” continues Ó Tuama. “There’s an album about cars and girls when you start off and there’s the album of mature reflection afterwards, the introspection.
"Anything between that is inconsequential in many ways. I mean, that’s what life is about, isn’t it? Now, there are lots of bands who break that rule, obviously there are exceptions, it’s not entirely true, but there’s a lot of them who put out bad albums in between times.”
As the band’s lyricist, was Ó Tuama nervous about sharing new lyrics with his old friends and singing for the first time in decades? "I was. There’s a bit of nakedness about it, absolutely” he says. “Because you wouldn't have opened your mouth for many years.
"But we’ve always taken risks. When we started off, we were taking risks by recording an album in Cork, very few, if any, did that so I suppose that kind of speaks to the type of people that we are, therefore that same kind of risk is involved here with regarding this.”
Two singles have been released from sounds like vintage Cypress, Mine!, while is a gorgeous slower tune, the lyrics are based on a poem called by Ó Tuama’s late father, the poet and UCC professor Seán Ó Tuama.
Eight other songs make up the album. Highlights include the stripped-down with its scratchy guitar, a kind-of protest song featuring Vince Donnelly (brother of late Cork music legend Finbarr Donnelly), and the introspective with its beautiful guitar work.
The album’s artwork is a beautiful early 1980s photograph of Madden’s Buildings in Blackpool taken by Ó Tuama. “Coal fires were still legal in those days, so in the early morning winter sun I spotted the two ladies chatting,” says Ó Tuama. “They give an interesting focal point to the photo yet the smoke and sunlight are what caught my eye.” Olney, modest as ever, describes the sound of the album:
“Ciaran has always been a great lyricist and the lyrics on the new songs are equally as good as anything he’s written before and obviously his voice is distinctive and that is really the sound of Cypress, Mine!,” says the guitarist.
“We’ve kept the recordings relatively simple. We haven’t overplayed stuff, or thrown the kitchen sink at it,” continues Olney” “That keeps the lineage, there’s some connection with our past that makes it similar. In the years since, we all have absorbed all kinds of different musical influences, so some of the songs sound different as well, but I think it’s recognisably Cypress, Mine!”
Olney smiles, “People that hated us in 1984 will still hate us in 2026.” Is that what we’re aiming for here? He laughs, “That’s what we’re aiming for, yeah.”
- is released on 13 February. Cypress, Mine! play Mike the Pies, Listowel on 30 January, Levis’ Corner House, Ballydehob on 31 January, and The Crane Lane, Cork on 14 February.
"I first heard Cypress, Mine! on the Dave Fanning radio show in 1987, when he started playing the single Justine a lot. Following that, I saw the band play some shows in Dublin and was really blown away by them, seeing them live and hearing the songs that would make up their album cemented my fandom.
"The songs were great and the lyrics were clever, mysterious and interesting, as was the artwork. Fast forward three years to 1990 and my band Power of Dreams had just put out our debut album. We were looking for a guitarist to join us and I asked our then sound engineer Cork man Dennis Herlihy, who sadly passed away in 2019, to enquire about Ian Olney from Cypress, Mine! Dennis put a call in and Ian came over to London. The rehearsal went so well we immediately asked Ian to join the band, which he did, and the rest, as they say, is history.
"When I was 14, I saw The Smiths in the Savoy, and it changed everything for me. However, I was way too young to get into Sir Henry’s or any of the other venues in Cork at the time. In 1985 CND arranged a benefit gig in Fitzgerald’s Park, and that’s where I saw Cypress, Mine! for the first time. They totally blew me away. Suddenly, we had a local band that I thought was as good as any British indie band I was listening to at the time. They had a great sense of dress, fantastic songs, and a unique frontman. They made me want to start my own band."
