| Feeling special with Bell X1 |
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| "'The OC' emailed us out of the blue asking if they could use the track, but the email came from a hotmail address, so we thought it was a wind up" |
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Part of me feels special for being such a big Bell X1 fan, because their profile in the UK is still very much in a period of growth, and I can’t help feeling they are going to be very big in the years to come, and I’ll be able to enjoy the smug satisfaction of knowing I discovered this year’s wonderful long player ‘Flock’ a long time before the mainstream music fan ever did. But that smugness is negated somewhat by the fact ‘Flock’ is the band’s third studio album, and I’m really not sure why it took me five years to figure out just how great they were.
“We were in a band called Juniper”, Bell X1 frontman Paul Noonan explains, answering my predictable ‘tell me your life story’ opening gambit. “A few of us had come together at school to form that band, though different personnel came and went over the seven years we were together. I was the drummer then and Damien [that’ll be Mr Rice] was the singer. So I’ve followed the Dave Grohl career path really, starting off behind the drum kit, and then taking the step to the front of the stage”.
The step to the front of the stage came after Rice quit Juniper to pursue his solo career. From the ashes of the band came Bell X1, with Noonan on vocals, Dave Geraghty on guitar, Dominic Philips on bass and Brian Crosby on keyboards (Noonan continues on drumming duty in the studio, though one Tim O’Donovan often joins them on drums at their live shows). It would probably be wrong to think of Bell X1 as simply a renamed Juniper – with Noonan and Geraghty taking on the songwriting roles, the new band quickly developed a sound all of its own, the sound that is probably at its most honed on the aforementioned ‘Flock’.
“We made the first record very quickly after Damien’s departure”, Noonan continues, “we were keen to get going quick, to start the ball rolling again, and in some ways the first album [2000’s ‘Neither Am I’] was quite naively put together. Our early recordings were quite well planned out, with me and David bringing pretty much complete songs to the studio. But we’re much more spontaneous now. On the last album we hadn’t written very much at all before we met to do the record. We would play in the studio and take it from there – so the music came first, the actual songs came later”.
And, while their earlier albums, however naively created, are still great pieces of work, that ‘spontaneity’ is definitely what makes ‘Flock’ such a great album. There’s a real communal feel to the record, like four musicians simply sat down one day and immediately started playing perfect sing along pop songs – some happy, some sad, all uplifting in one way or another – what Noonan calls “camp fire disco” – a description that definitely fits. Of course much more hard work probably went into making the album than that description suggests – but the fact that the songs feel so effortless is what makes the album so special.
“Our profile is definitely rising”, Noonan says, as I admit that I had only just really discovered his music for myself. “The support in Ireland has been great for a while, in fact it’s hard getting used to the size of venues we now frequently play there – they can be so big. But it is good to have some success elsewhere too – our recent UK tour was by far our biggest, and it is great to see so many people familiar with our music at those gigs”.
One of the reasons some of those newer audiences may be familiar with at least one of Bell X1’s tracks may or may not be the fact that producers of US teen TV show ‘The OC’ used their song ‘Eve, The Apple Of My Eye’ to soundtrack a contentious lesbian kiss scene. Does Noonan think featuring on the hit American TV show helped? “That whole thing was weird,” he says. “They emailed us out of the blue asking if they could use the track, and the email came from a hotmail address, so we thought it was a wind up. But then it turned out to be a genuine request. It was cool to get that exposure, and we played three or four songs in LA for the show’s cast which was good. Whether it really raised profile for the band, I’m not sure, but it was good to do”.
Either way, the profile of this band does seem to be rising and if you want to know why make sure you check out 'Flock' or, even better, one of the band's live shows. They may have been making great music for six years now, but it’s not too late to jump on the Bell X1 bandwagon and feel a little superiority because we were singing along before the masses.
Some Bell X1 plugging:
Bell X1's single 'Rock Took A Lover' was released on 28 Aug 2006, the album 'Flock' was released on 20 Mar 2006, both on Universal/Island.
chris@unlimitedmedia.co.uk - published aug 2006
