THE ANSWER – Renegades, Cigarettes, And “Posh Tarts”

March 12, 2015, 9 years ago

Aaron Small

feature hard rock the answer

THE ANSWER – Renegades, Cigarettes, And “Posh Tarts”

Irish rockers The Answer opted to take a working vacation in Spain for the recording of their fifth album, Raise A Little Hell. “Yeah, with most of our records we try and get away,” reveals guitarist Paul Mahon. “We got to El Paso, Texas on Revival, and we got to Los Angeles, California on Everyday Demons. But on this one, the producer, Will Maya, has his own residential studio just outside Madrid and he was able to accommodate us; that was part of the decision to go there. But it’s definitely one of the perks, getting to go somewhere like Spain, when the weather’s about to go south in Ireland.”


Los Rosales is the name of Maya’s studio, situated amongst the Madrid Mountains inside a 200-year old stone house, and all local amenities are within walking distance. “There’s nothing lacking in terms of equipment or gear,” says Paul. “It’s not the biggest live room in the world, but once you get the drums out of the way, that’s not a factor. It kind of pushes you in other directions to find ambience, which can be neat. It was good to have it on 24-hour lockout, so we can record anytime of the night or day, whenever we pleased – or whenever the creative spark took hold. Especially when it gets to guitar solo time, that’s always a good thing because I’d say half the stuff, I tend to have pre-composed before I go in there. Then some of it comes together on the spot, or over the course of a couple of days. If I got a good idea, I can get in there straight away before I forget it. We were there for just over four weeks. It was a nice amount of time. When you have too much time, you never quite know when it’s finished. We’re certainly guys that you have to put a deadline on to really make us work, and we tend to thrive under that pressure.”

 

The pre-historic cartoon artwork that adorns the cover of Raise A Little Hell was created by Sebastian Jerke. “Our record label, Napalm, works with him quite a lot. The past few covers… New Horizon was Storm Thorgerson (Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd), and Revival… both those covers were going down more a photographic, slightly arty representation. So we wanted to do something a little bit different this time, and the label put us in touch with Sebastian. We gave him some tracks and the album title, and that’s what he came up with. He wanted to represent each member of the band as a type of avatar I guess. It’s nice and colourful; it’s a bit more fun than our usual covers. I’m wearing the t-shirt at the moment and it looks good on that too.”


BraveWords being a Canadian website, the first thing that came to mind when it was announced that The Answer would be calling their new album Raise A Little Hell, was the iconic song of the same name, released in 1978 by Trooper. “I don’t know that track actually,” admits Paul. “When we started doing the demos for the album, it was an idea that Michael (Waters, bassist) brought in, we collaborated on it, and it got into the final pecking order to be put on the album. Our initial thought was, Raise A Little Hell, it must have been done before a few times; it sounded a bit too obvious. Those were the first feelings, but once we did the track, it seemed to take on a life of its own. Mid-way through the recording sessions, we thought Raise A Little Hell (as an album title) was a little bit tongue in cheek; every rock ‘n roll band that’s been around for a while and has gone on extensive tours… there’s a little bit of hell to be raised.”


There’s one other shared title, that being “Whiplash”, originally coined by Metallica on their 1983 album, Kill ‘Em All. “That’s a lyric and idea that (drummer) James Heatley brought in and we worked on. I’m a massive Metallica fan from a young age, so that was one of the things I picked up on. My first thought was, you can’t call it ‘Whiplash’; that’s Metallica. But he stood quite strongly behind it, and the track stood up; it works.”

 

“Cigarettes & Regret” is arguably the strongest song on the new album. In addition to featuring great music and heartfelt lyrics, it’s very versatile as it’s easy to imagine The Quireboys – or any number of American Country Music artists – singing it. This tune breaks genre boundaries. “We did a little bit of co-writing on the last record with Toby Jepson; that was the first time we’d done that. Jaren Johnston and Neil Mason from Cadillac Three are good friends of ours; lo and behold Jaren had a song idea for us, ‘Cigarettes & Regret’. The demo that he sent us was quite different from what you hear. We changed it a bit to make it more like The Answer; it was tricky to get the guitar parts just right on that. It was something (producer) Will and myself would come back to everyday for about two weeks until we finally got it. I think it’s a bit more straight ahead in a radio friendly manner than we have been for a while. I’m proud of that one, it came out really nice.”


Members of the media received a press release promoting Raise A Little Hell that featured a quote from The Answer stating, “We’ve gone back to our earlier blues and roots style with harder rockin’ grooves.” Does that mean, looking back at 2013 and the New Horizon album, it doesn’t sit as well with you now as when it was recorded two years ago? “Yeah, there’s a little bit of truth in saying… when we got to that record, it was the first time we had to stand back and take a look at the band, and how we approach the creative process. Up until that point, you do your first record; you have your whole life to write that one. Then the second one, you have six months to do it. With Revival (in 2011), we were in a really good place creatively, in the market and with the media; we were free to do what we wanted on that record. It really wasn’t as successful as we had hoped. We ended up changing record labels and management; it led to looking at things a bit closer. We got Toby in and he made us go in a more direct manner with the songwriting. He made it very three guys in a room; on some songs that’s great, some songs need a little bit of magic in the studio to make them come alive. I think that record missed a little bit of that. There was certainly a heaviness and a rawness to it that I really like, but as a complete body of work, there’s not enough colours in there for me. With this record (Raise A Little Hell), we wanted to keep that very direct songwriting; people will be 100% sure it’s The Answer when they hear it. But we also wanted to express ourselves… so it’s taken the bluesy roots from Rise, and the heavier grooves we experimented with on New Horizon. Putting that all in the pot together, Raise A Little Hell came out.”


For the hardcore fans, there’s a really cool mediabook limited edition 2 CD set of Raise A Little Hell available. Disc one features the 12 songs that comprise the album, as well as six extra tracks: three bonus numbers and three acoustic tunes. Why didn’t the three bonus numbers: “Feel Like I’m On My Way”, “Flying”, and “I Will Follow On”, make the main cut? “They’re definitely in the same vein. The main sessions for the record were in Spain; 11 of the songs that are on the album; and ‘Flying’ are from that session. Then we did another session at my studio at home (in Ireland) and ended up doing ‘Raise A Little Hell’, ‘I Will Follow On’, ‘Feel Like I’m On My Way’ and some of the acoustic tracks. Personally I would have put ‘Flying’ on there; it’s a really good song and could have worked within the context of the album. Then ‘Raise A Little Hell’ just came out better than we were expecting, so it kind of jumped up there and pushed another song off. Over the years, I wouldn’t say we’ve built a studio in my house, but we kind of need one and it’s at the point now where we can make a pretty decent album if we didn’t want to escape the bad weather. There’ll be more bonus tracks coming for the singles and stuff from that second session.”


Disc two from the mediabook is an 11-track live CD, recorded on the New Horizon Tour in 2014. “It’s the best of that tour. It’s from the second run, which we called The Road Less Traveled. We recorded every show. So once the Raise A Little Hell album sessions had finished, I had to go through 25 to 30 shows and find the best versions; that’s what made it on there. I think fans will enjoy that too.” Speaking of live albums, Paul shares his favourites. “The one that kicked it off for me was, If You Want Blood (by AC/DC, released in 1978). I heard that when I was nine years old; especially the track ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’. My brother played me that and I loved it! That sent me on the road I’m still on now. Also of course, I love Live And Dangerous (by Thin Lizzy, released in 1978). At the moment, I’ve been listening to Frampton Comes Alive! (by Peter Frampton, released in 1976) a lot; I really enjoy that too. In folklore I’m not sure how live, Live And Dangerous was? But it’s still a fantastic album.” Everybody takes live albums with a grain of salt. Whether it’s KISS or Whitesnake, there’s always skepticism surrounding the use of backing tracks being played during the concert, and studio overdubs after the show. “Yeah, I can still remember as a kid, I thought live was live. I remember a friend of mine dispelling the myth on Live And Dangerous, it was like telling me Santa Claus didn’t exist. But I’ve got over it since. Being in the same position myself, I understand that.”

 

Another song from Raise A Little Hell that’s really interesting lyrically is “Aristocrat”. “It’s very kind of throwaway… it was a riff we were working on that had a bit of a Zeppelin feel to it. Cormac (Neeson, vocalist) was struggling to come up with something initially. He just came out singing ‘Aristocratic Lady’ and fired it all out on the spot. I think he was almost joking, thinking we wouldn’t like it. Afterwards he listened back and was like, ‘I’m going to try and write these lyrics properly now.’ We were like, ‘Hold on, that’s the song, that’s it. It’s hooky, it’s a bit of fun; people are going to enjoy that. I don’t want to read into it too much, but certain excursions on the road haven’t ended up so well. I think Will Maya probably put it best when he said, ‘this song is about a posh tart.’ That’s actually about right.”     


When it comes to touring, The Answer is playing The UK and Ireland in March, Europe in April and May; does that mean North America in June and July? “Yeah, we’re just finalizing dates at the moment. We’re looking at a run from June 22nd to July 17th with some support slots, some of our own shows, and some festivals; it’s been long overdue getting back in North America. We’re very much looking forward to it.”


A lyric video for “Long Live The Renegades” can be seen on YouTube; will The Answer film a proper, traditional video, or are videos a thing of the past? “We’re just working on one right now, in the final editing stage for ‘Red’. It’ll hopefully tie-in with the album cover as well; not as closely as ‘Long Live The Renegades’ but we’ll keep the monster theme in there somewhere. You’re right, it has become increasingly hard to make a decent video these days with budget reductions and constraints, but we’re still going to make one.”


Given the fact that The Answer is an established band and signed to Napalm Records, it was surprising to see them utilize Pledge Music as a tool for pre-orders of Raise A Little Hell. “We were lucky that we could combine it with Napalm; they were happy to let us do that. Record labels now loathe having a tour budget, the tour support’s gone; it’s very hard to get extra marketing budgets. After doing the last record, in some of those areas we felt we were lacking, so the Pledge campaign seemed to be a good way of getting some extra funds that wouldn’t interfere with what Napalm wanted to do. At the same time, it would be self-perpetuating and we would put those funds back into the campaign to hopefully sell more records. Already, it’s enabled us to do this North American tour that’s coming up. We’re going to be able to do some TV advertising, get some Billboard advertising, things like that which we haven’t been able to do since back in the day of Everyday Demons when we were out with AC/DC. It levels the playing field if you’re not on a major label; it gives you more avenues to promote the band.” Pledge offered some really unique exclusives to bidders including: handwritten lyric sheets, getting your name in the liner notes, personalised drum skins and birthday messages. “Yes, and I had to part with one of my guitars as well; it took a bit of talking to get me to do that. But you’ve got to do these things, and someone’s a proud owner of the guitar I used to play slide on the Everyday Demons stuff.”

 

 



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