Ways of Seeing: New album and Cork launch gig 

‘THE original idea, and I suppose every songwriter possibly goes through this, and it’s kind-of self-reflective ... the idea of finding stuff out about yourself through writing songs,” muses James O’Donnell, frontman and songwriter of Cork shoegazers Ways of Seeing, as he and your writer get to waxing lyrical about the nature of creativity.

“One of my favourite writers, Karl Ove Knausgård, his idea is often just, by writing like the stream of consciousness, stuff comes out they’d never knew was there, so for the name of the band, [I thought that was interesting.]”

Cork’s music scene is no slouch at the moment when it comes to introverted, thoughtful psych-rock and shoegaze, perhaps the logical conclusion of the groundwork done by musicians such as The Altered Hours and Dan Walsh during the city’s recessionary wilderness years. On second long-player The Inheritance of Fear, however, the balance between influence and internal wrangling is a bit more than a matter of sonics — apropos at a national time of self-reflection amid the chaos of the current world moment.

“The Inheritance of Fear is looking at our flaws and our make-up, and [realising] maybe we’re not in control of all of it, how much of it is passed down to us, how much are we stuck with, and how much can we deal with and maybe leave behind? So that was the idea behind the album title.”

“The song Cruel, Naturally, I suppose, is about stuff we inherit from our parents, or the idea that maybe some of their fears are passed on to us in some way, or some of the things that they deal with are passed on to us. And then Last Wave, probably looks further back at the time of the [Great Hunger], and even just after that. It was kind-of inspired by a poem by Doireann Ní Ghriofa. It’s called An Experiment to Engineer the Inheritance of Fear. So in that poem, it’s like a smell of life, and like that, we inherently recognise that smell of blight, just this innate ability, like, our innate fear … and the idea that maybe our colonial past, that fear, or that trauma, is still somewhere, passed down, and how it might affect affect us today, collectively and individually.”

With a better idea of the whole process and recording an album, O’Donnell and collaborators took this focus first into Monique Studios, where Christian Best oversaw recording and pre-production; while Gilla Band’s Daniel Fox took mixing duties, followed by M(h)aol’s Jamie Halpin on mastering. Keeping such company in this whole process indeed spoke to O’Donnell’s creative ambitions.

“Really nice guy,” says O’Donnell of Best, “creates a really safe environment to make music, and it’s fun as well. Always with Christian, he’s just got so much mad gear, like he’s like a crazy mad scientist, all the stuff he has in the studio. And we mixed it and did the vocals with Dan Fox, who just has a name, I suppose, for a big rock sound at this stage. I just thought his ear for that would lend itself to a bigger, kind of expansive sound, which I was going for. I had the [loud/quiet] dynamics, and I wanted it quite heavy, and I thought he might, he might be the man for that. And actually, for a while, I didn’t know if I would be working with him, but he sent a last-minute email, and he’d been my number one in Ireland to mix it.”

The whole process is still quite fresh for O’Donnell as he mulls it over, and while the usual music-journo move is to ask someone in his position how they’re feeling at present, he’s quite honest about that state of flux that he and the whole outfit still find themselves in.

“I don’t think I’m at a stage to be fully impartial, or to be able to look at it without some kind of a cloud over it, still.

“A month seems like a long time after putting it out, it’s still, there’s some kind of sense of being lost in that world of mixing and mastering, a small bit. While the reaction has been positive, you’re still kind of in that world where you’re gauging off people’s reactions, a bit.

“So I’d say it will take a good few months to listen back with fresh ears and know how exactly I feel about it. But in general, it was as close as I imagined I could get it.

“There’s always [moments of] ‘aw, should have done this, should have done that’. I prefer to just be putting out records, rather than be painstakingly going over details of it for years.”

Your writer does wish to tack back to that interface of past, present, and future, though, and it occurs to me as O’Donnell speaks about this process, that Ways of Seeing are among a number of bands in Cork and beyond that are leaning further into Ireland’s alt-rock past for their influences, rather than casting their vision further afield for a sense of something new.

Not a coincidence, in the broader scheme of post-colonial considerations.

“There really seems to be a sense of confidence, an embrace, of whatever Irishness is.

“And I heard [Dunboyne pop-country matriarch] CMAT recently mentioning that, like, all the music coming out at the moment is as a result of some kind of recent trauma, or like trauma from the past, and I’ve noticed covid probably spilling into it as well, but there just seems to be this newfound interest in what makes us Irish.

“And it’s going back to, like, stuff like the Pogues and Dubliners, obviously, with the Mary Wallopers, and just, there’s loads of bands who embrace that. It feels like it’s very much Ireland’s time at the moment.

“We’re not a sound cut between America and England. It feels like its own wave, just seems to be a melting pot at the moment, especially Cork. So many good bands coming out, it’s cool to be part of it in some small way.”

All these roads, of course, lead to the Kino on Friday night, where the band’s hometown launch gig for the album is set to take place.

“Feeling excited, a small bit nervous, too. I suppose we want to get a good crowd there as well, so you have that in the back of your mind there.

“Feeling really excited about the idea of playing the whole new album through, live, for the first time, is really exciting. We’re buzzing for it, just in rehearsals at the moment, and we’re really looking forward to that, and to see the reaction to the songs, as well, live, is something we haven’t experienced, as a whole body of work.”

• Ways of Seeing play the Kino tomorrow, Friday, November 14. Doors 8pm, tickets available at eventbrite.com.
• Ways of Seeing’s second album The Inheritance of Fear is available now on 12” vinyl, CD, and digitally via waysofseeing.bandcamp.com.