Let the colour drain from your face as you listen to the latest extraction from Dental Records ‘Alone In Monochrome’, out today. This coincides with the band’s upcoming Ireland and UK tour from December ‘21 to Spring of 2022.
The Zen Arcade are a garage rock band from Ireland that play original and prawn cocktail flavoured songs, composed of three ex-members of The Strypes. Their debut single ‘Don’t Say A Word’ was the flagship release on their own label Dental Records and gained a number 1 spot on the iTunes Singles Chart the day of release and entered the National Singles Chart at No.12. Extensive radio support across Ireland, UK, USA and European radio stations followed.
After a year that saw the band produce and release their own Livestream show, which was broadcast simultaneously across 8 venues in the UK, release two number one singles, appear on the Today Show, announce their own headline Irish tour and make appearances at Left Of The Dial Festival in Rotterdam and London Calling in Amsterdam, all whilst sticking to their monthly zine and podcast release schedule, The Zen Arcade is doing it all.
They decided to end 2021 with the third release from Dental Records, ‘Alone In Monochrome’. This newest single explores the realms of reverb and the depths of despair on this paean to pigments and lack thereof.
What’s your story as an artist?
We’re a garage rock band from Cavan, Ireland that play original AND prawn cocktail flavoured songs. Three of us (Me {Pete}, Ev, and Ross) were in The Strypes prior to forming this band. And it was becaue of our time in the Strypes that we found ourselves forming this band. We signed a record deal with Universal when we were 16 and had been under contract our entire career, which was fantastic, dont get me wrong. But we found ourselves wanting to try the independent music route for all the freedom and headaches that it offers after developing a sadistic obsession with Stiff Records. So when The Strypes finished up we immediately started writing and demoing for this new band feeling refreshed by the lack of pressure and total obscurity. When we felt ready we got two other friends involved and we became the outfit you see before you now. HAving come up with all the songs we decided to come up with a label to release it all and established Dental Records too. We established more things as well but we’ll get to that in a later question.
What inspired this last release?
‘Alone In Monochrome’ was inspired by my obsession with The Jesus And Mary Chain, they’re masters of doom laden plaintiveness and have written songs about people being miserable and lonely in practically every environment. Inclement weather, (Happy When It Rains) the spring (April Skies) and in the AM (Deep One Perfect Morning) but they’d foolishly overlooked a land devoid of colour in their ‘places that people can be miserable’ spectrum and so I swooped in and cried all the way to the bank.
What are some sources of inspiration for your storytelling?
I’m a big fan of narrative songs like ‘Up The Junction’ and ‘Labelled With Love’ which are Squeeze songs. (ALL the narrative songs I like are squeeze songs. They’re the best at it.) Chris Difford was able to construct these incredibly potent and poignant stories in a simple rhyming scheme that Glen Tilbrook was then able to weave into a song that couldn’t help being a hit. And it’s something I’ve tried to do in a lot of the songs I write or at least I like the songs to have a specificity to them that precludes leaving it up to the listeners imagination. I like songs to wear what they’re about on their sleeve and I’d rather not leave it up to each individual person to decipher it themselves (shows how much faith I have in our listeners). Lyrical ambiguity to me, makes it harder to tell a concise story and I think its a braver move to tell the audience what a song is about than to let them decide for themselves. I also prefer to ‘look out’ than to ‘look in’ with regards to the perspectives in the songs. I dont care what I think or feel so why should someone else, instead I like to write character studies or first person narratives that aren’t myself. Something that people like Ray Davies and Damon Albarn, who also happen to be people who set the precedent and directly descended from Squeeze’s (them again??) approach to characters and stories.
I always find time to rhyme (see) and wordplay has a lot of place in the songs I come up with. Often when trying to find something that rhymes with a line a word will suggest an avenue for the song to take. So the ‘near rhymes’ hyperlink on the rhymezone website would be another source of inspiration.
Any funny anecdotes from the time you were recording or writing this?
Well we enjoy the habit of getting our producers young kids and their friends involved on all the recordings we do. On this one in particular they gave us a hand with the handclaps. They’re the reason all the singles have gone to No. 1!
What’s your favourite place or environment to write?
I don’t really have one, my creativity is bound only by my own inadequacies, not anything geographical!
What’s a record that shaped your creativity?
Graham Coxon’s album ‘Love Travels At Illegal Speeds’ is a masterclass in consistency and simplicity. It’s one of the greatest chugging guitar albums of all time. I often listen to that album and Any Troubles first album, theres absolutely no fat on them at all. It’s all efficient and essential. No vitruoisic complications, just streamlined parts that serve the song and that to me is true creativity and something I like to remind myself of as much as possible.
Who is an artist or band you look up to today?
There’s a few bands knocking around that I think are worth looking up to. Sports Team and Ty Segall are very tall so theres a few.
Thee Oh See’s and Naked Giants are putting out great music too.
Any future projects?
Not really, but we have -concurrent- projects! Alongside writing, producing and releasing our own music, we also have our own own fanzine ‘Cro Mag Non’, that releases a new issue on the first Tuesday of every month and a podcast called ‘Higher Fidelity’ that uploads a new episode on the third Tuesday of every month. It WAS a music discussion podcast but has since become a construction site skip full of tawdry pop culture debates and old demos that we point and laugh at. There are some segments we do that try to salvage our credibly like ‘Guilty Hatreds’ (bands you feel bad about NOT liking), ‘Sonic Seconds’ (2-3 seconds from a track that make it brilliant) and ‘Never Mind The Fuzzbox’ (basically the ‘Intro’s round from Never Mind The Buzzcocks but instead you sing through a fuzz pedal while everyone else tries to figure it out)
What is your view on genres and music styles since you mix a lot of them in your music?
I think they’re handy ways of describing styles but when it comes to describing a band I think thats where the genre debate falls flat.
We play a lot of different genres, from power pop to fuzzy psych to cow punk and back again but I’m never going to say ‘We’re a power pop/psych/cow punk band’. The more forward slashes in your bio, the less likely I am to listen to you. We, and I think a lot of other bands too, look for a really broad term that isnt too specific. Thats why we use ‘garage rock’. It’s a handy umbrella term for everything we do, much in the same way loads of bands use ‘indie’.
What does music and art mean to you?
It means I have something to do!
How would you describe your act in one word?
Pedantic.
This latest release tees them up nicely for their headline Irish tour in December and imminent headline UK tour in 2022.
2021
Friday December 3rd – Sandinos, Londonderry
Friday December 10th – Winthrop Avenue, Cork
Saturday December 11th – Dolans, Limerick
Wednesday December 15th – The Roisin Dubh, Galway
Friday December 17th – The Spirit Store, Dundalk
Saturday December 18th – The Grand Social, Dublin
2022
Thursday April 7th – Lending Room, Leeds
Friday April 8th – The Attic, Glasgow
Saturday April 9th – Gullivers, Manchester
Sunday April 10th – The Cookie, Leicester
Tuesday April 12th – Rough Trade, Bristol
Thursday April 14th – Shacklewell Arms, London
Friday April 15th – Bodega, Nottingham
Sunday April 17th – Stockton Calling, Stockton
