IF you gave Andy Cairns a pound for every time that he’s heard “Therapy? should have been the biggest band in the world” over the years, he’d be a rich man by now.
The frontman of the Larne-formed rockers, however, is a lot more pragmatic than you might give him credit for.
“I think I am very realistic,” he says of the ‘shoulda-woulda-couldas’.
“Whenever I look in the mirror, with all the best will in the world, I don’t look like Mike Patton; I’m a bloke from Ballyclare in Co. Antrim,” he says, laughing heartily.
“I don’t think it was ever written in the stars for me to be the next Bono or the next Phil Lynott, but y’know, I can live with that. I think I would rather live with that than be deluded, and be sitting here talking to you, half a bottle of gin down at half-past ten in the morning, saying ‘I could’ve had it all!’”
It’s half-ten in the morning, but Cairns is drinking coffee, not gin, on a sunny London morning.
He and his bandmates Michael McKeegan and Neil Cooper are readying themselves to catch the Eurostar to the continent to begin Therapy?’s latest tour to promote Disquiet, their 14th album. And while the bearded rocker may joke, there was a time — specifically the period following their world-beating fourth album Troublegum in 1994 — when they could have become global superstars.
Instead of making “Troublegum Part 2” as he calls it, to cement their stake, the follow-up album Infernal Love was an entirely different proposition.
“We’d done Troublegum — melodic, punk-influenced music from Ulster — and everyone was expecting Troublegum 2, but to be honest, Ash were doing that really well; they were writing great lyrics, and they were younger than us,” the Cambridge resident explains, laughing.
“So there was no point in us trying to do a Troublegum 2 when there’s a bunch of kids from Ulster that were doing it absolutely brilliantly. We’re very restless creatively anyway — so we’d already gone on to different kinds of music.”
He acknowledges that Infernal Love led to a significant reduction of their fanbase.
“For a while, I must admit towards the end of the nineties/early noughties, I did think ‘What have I done?’ a couple of times,” he confesses.
“We’d won a lot of mainstream rock fans — and even mainstream fans who wouldn’t like rock music — after Troublegum and the Mercury Music Prize nomination. We’d sold nearly two million records, and people were going ‘This is great!’. Then the next one was like, cellos, gothic poetry and stick-on moustaches, and overnight, that was it. I’d say half to three-quarters of our fanbase went ‘F*** this!’.
But we’d been an underground band for three years before Troublegum, so we thought ‘Well, y’know, no water off our backs. Yes, we’ll be downsizing the venues we’re playing and we won’t sell as many records, but that’s not what it’s about.’ At the time we were just following our instincts.”
That sense of derring-do and intuition has continued throughout Therapy?’s career.
Their last two albums, 2009’s Crooked Timber and 2012’s A Brief Crack of Light were what might have been deemed equally ‘experimental’, the latter in particular plundering more electronic depths.
Disquiet, however, sees them return to their glorious rock anthem roots in what they have described as a ‘sequel of-sorts’ to their most revered album.
“To be honest, I think we’d done two albums in a row that were more experimental, and we’d been touring quite a lot,” he says.
“In the meantime, I got bored at home and I’d done a couple of acoustic tours — which was just me and an acoustic guitar in small, tiny venues about three feet away from audience members.
It got me really back to the power of songs. If people remember it and it’s melodic, it can have a real impact on some people. Then we toured Troublegum last year — we did seven brief shows for its 20th anniversary — and we just saw how much those songs meant to people.”
In light of the acoustic solo tour and the Troublegum anniversary gigs, Cairns began jotting down ideas at home.
“I would go into my kitchen — because there was good acoustics there — and I’d set up and record a new idea on my phone,” he explains.
“Then I’d send it to Michael and Neil, and say ‘Listen lads, I’ve got this idea, it’s maybe a bit more melodic than usual — what do you think?’.
Over the course of about eight months, I got 20 ideas that I sent them and they came back to me and said ‘yeah’. Then we all got together and bashed out arrangements. It was kind of done old school, just sitting with a guitar and a voice in a kitchen. And I think that bled through to the album.”
He’s not wrong. Songs like Good News is No News, Idiot Cousin and Tides are simplistic in design, but packed with melody and surging, anthemic choruses. Cairns’ decision to return to listening to punk again, after a period immersed in dub and electronica, also paid clear dividends.
“Punk’s in my blood,” he says, nodding. “It was the first music I fell in love with, and Troublegum was the product of me listening to The Clash, the Pistols, The Damned, The Undertones, Stiff Little Fingers and Rudi when I was a kid. I recently put the electronic music I listened to on the backburner and started listening to lots of new rock and punk bands.
There’s certain things that Therapy? have always done: stop-start rhythms, little hooky guitar bits and really sort of melodic chord structures. I suppose we started using those again.”
Andy Cairns (Guitar, Vocals); Michael McKeegan (Bass) andNeil Cooper (Drums)
When it came to lyrics, Cairns says that he also drew on the band’s history, to a degree.
“Whenever I’m writing lyrics, there has to be a theme,” he explains. “Troublegum was about growing up in Co. Antrim in Northern Ireland; Infernal Love was about desire; Semi-Detached was about relationships and A Brief Crack of Light was about consciousness and awareness.
With this one, I had all the vocal melodies written but I didn’t really know where to start with the lyrics — but I thought ‘The guy who wrote Troublegum — what’s he doing 20 years later?’ I put myself in his shoes, and thought ‘Am I still angry? Yeah. What’s the anger like?’
Therapy? have always been a band known for not shying away from their feelings and there’s still a definite sense of anger threaded throughout these tracks — particularly on the aforementioned Good News is No News (“Everything’s a f***in’ drama, don’t you want a little peace?”) and Vulgar Display of Powder. At almost 50, Cairns says that it’s still easy to tap into that sense of exasperation.
“I still am angry,” he admits, “but the thing that I find surprises me is that everybody my age is angry; you just have a different way of expressing it. I think a lot of the problem is that they’re angry and they feel helpless, and they feel lost and hopeless, and they take it out on other people in society because they’ve no other way of doing it.
So I feel very fortunate to have this creative outlet to be angry. I think a lot of our fans who are the same age as ourselves sort of see that in the band; they realise ‘Yeah, I might be married, I might have two kids and I might live in the suburbs, but I’m completely entitled to say that I feel p***ed off without seeming childish.”
One matter that may have sparked frustration was the delay of Disquiet’s release after their label, Blast Records, went bust last year.
A “serendipitous” sequence of events led to their former A&R man taking the band with him when he moved to new label The Amazing Record Co., and Cairns says that they’ve found a happy home there.
“To be honest, I’m glad we waited [to release it], because I think it’s all worked out for the best. I think people appreciate it and people have taken notice of it.”
He’s not wrong. Disquiet has already garnered some of the band’s best reviews in years, despite Therapy? now being deemed as part of rock’s ‘old guard’. Do they feel under pressure from the younger bands nipping at their heels?
Cairns laughs heartily. “We’ve been around so long now that I don’t think we’re competing with any peers. Maybe back in the day, in the early ’90s, we would see people as competitors, like Ash; there was friendly competition between the two of us, which was really healthy.
But I suppose we’ve been around so long that it’s cyclical; we’re actually being influenced more by young bands. If we hear a young band that we really like, we don’t call a crisis meeting and go ‘Oh god, someone’s gonna take our crown!’ Instead, it’s more like ‘That’s brilliant, have you heard the record?’ and when we rehearse, we take little elements of their music and incorporate it into our own. It keeps us on our toes, musically.”
Fourteen albums and 26 years into their career as Therapy? it doesn’t seem like there’s any sign of slowing down. They’ve been a band that has deftly defied categorisation over the years — taking in metal, punk, grunge, alt-rock and everything in between — but Therapy?, who consider themselves “just a rock band”, says Cairns, still have plenty left to say.
“I remember being at the Féile in 1992 and being interviewed by somebody backstage,” he recalls, chuckling.
“They said ‘Do you like playing festivals?’ and we said ‘Oh yeah, it’s brilliant — especially ones in Ireland’.
They said ‘D’you ever reckon you’ll be like The Rolling Stones and still be around in 20 years?’ and myself and Fyfe and Michael looked at each other, burst out laughing and said ‘Don’t be ridiculous’,” he says, guffawing at the memory. “Yet here we are.”
Disquiet is out now. Therapy? are on tour until May 9. See therapyquestionmark.co.uk/tour
