Signal regained: Veteran Cork band Boa Morte on their ongoing musical adventure
Boa Morte have released Signal:Lost and play Coughlans in Cork this week.
Some may perceive the quartet to be existing in an apparent state of reticence to engage with the world, which is far from the case, but in an unexpected way the world has stumbled upon them. It’s a pleasant surprise to find that a track from their 2019 album Before There Was Air, “Stones/Stone by Stone”, has amassed over 49,000 listens on Spotify. It’s an impressive number for a small independent band from Cork to rack up.
Guitarist Bill Twomey offers an explanation. “When that was released that album, that was the kind of the single on it and for some reason Spotify put it on one of their editorial playlists. And if you get on those Spotify playlists, like there’s probably forty or fifty of them, it got on this folk playlist with Bon Iver, and it just got tens of thousands of listens in a relatively short period of time.”
Vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Cormac Gahan believes that it might have had something to do with their appearance that year at Sounds From A Safe Harbour and the festival’s connection with Bon Iver. Nothing they have done since has caught hold in the same way.
“We’re totally sort of unsure of what’s going on in terms of how to publicise a record for sale,” shrugs Gahan. “How many of those listens correspond to somebody who has actually bought the album. And how do you reach the people who will buy an album? All these questions!”
“And then you fear that if you’re chasing Spotify listens,” worries Twomey, “it’s just such an ugly entity that are you kind of cheapening your art a little bit by even looking at it and going after it?
“It’s the eternal question about how to get your stuff heard. And unfortunately, Spotify does seem to be a bit of a necessary evil.”
Although they can boast of being played on air by the late great BBC Radio 1 alternative music DJ John Peel, they are equally bemused by the radio landscape.
“These guys get swamped, obviously, you know. A hundred albums a week or more, maybe. So, you just wonder sometimes how they even pick up on it,” wonders Twomey.
“John Creedon played a song off the new album that wasn’t even one of the two singles that’s been released. We know from other people in bands that he’s kind of difficult to get at. He does listen to stuff, but he’ll only play it if he likes it. So, it’s nice to get it put out on national radio.”
That track was “April 22” the off-kilter mood-setting opener to their new album, Signal:Lost.
“It’s not a very conventional piece of music really,” notes Twomey, “but it’s the piece John Creedon, for some reason, picked to play. And he said some nice things about it as well, which is good.”
The subject of conventional music-making is one the band have become preoccupied with of late. Or rather, the idea of getting away from such an approach. Initially inspired by 1990’s alt country bands and slowcore outfits like Palace Brothers and Spain respectively, Boa Morte began their departure from that template on Before There Was Air. That record, which began an association with London indie Gare du Nord, saw them take more time to explore certain moments within songs, while the tracks themselves began to blur into each other as if they were coming from some foggy longwave radio station heard in a dream.
At the same time, they have become incredibly prolific. 2023’s The Total Space, which saw them delve more into ambience, would have followed sooner were it not for the interruption of covid. The swift arrival of Signal:Lost heralds something of a double whammy as they managed to record two albums worth of material.
“And it’s all good quality,” says Gahan, “so it left us with a conundrum.”
A double album was mooted, but they decided instead to put out an album’s worth while they finish the companion record, which they hope to have completed in January.
And while the previous two albums have seen them experiment more, they entered the recording sessions for these two albums having very consciously decided to abandon the more traditional song-centred approach for something that would challenge them a bit more.
“We’re just trying to extend our musical boundaries a bit little further,” Twomey explains. “So, there’s more kind of instrumental stuff on these two albums than there has been previously. It’s just trying to make it more interesting for ourselves, and by extension everybody else, as well. People that listen to us.”
Adds Gahan: “You find after playing in a band together for twenty-five years or whatever it is you end up playing things in the same way all the time and that becomes a bit repetitive. We’re trying to break away from that.”
Similarly, Boa Morte’s gigs have evolved to reflect the recorded developments.
Says Twomey: “We’re using a lot more synthesiser in the gigs and we’ve got a laptop that we’re driving synths from as well as some samples and then Cormac and me play synths as well. Yeah, there’s a good bit of synthy stuff going on there. Long outros and this kind of stuff that we would never have touched 10 years ago.”
- Signal:Lost is out now on Gare du Nord Records
- boamorte.bandcamp.com
- Boa Morte play Coughlan’s on Thursday, October 29.
