A change in the season
DUBLIN pop/folk group The Gandhis make a welcome return to the public eye with their second album, After Autumn. The record promises to be a more mature, earthy and ambitious effort and is set for release on Friday, March 30, coinciding with a string of shows in Ireland and the UK. Almost three years ago the band released their debut album, You Are My Friend. It was full of simple yet unbelievably catchy melodies and songs that had been honed some years previously. The band: Conor Deasy, (guitar/vocals), Aidan McKelvey, (guitar/vocals), Niall Cullen, (bass) and Barry O'Reilly (drums), who started out making music as friends, graduated from being a college band into something more serious. 'We just wanted to have an album out,' recalls Aidan, and that, they achieved. The debut record had a polished pop sound, laced with lavish harmonies and tuneful musicianship accompanied by quirky and reflective lyrical content; a sound of which some of their influences, (The Coral, The Beatles, The Beach Boys) would have approved. The first album also spawned four singles, including the song that gives name to the album title, You Are My Friend, which received a huge amount of airplay. Shaped over a long weekend in a remote village in Co Clare during the biting winter chill of 2010/2011, the new album After Autumn leaps ahead of its predecessor by virtue of its subtle and natural change of musical direction. Where the first record deals primarily in electric instrumentation, this album includes a lot of acoustic sounds and has a more stripped-back feel. To make a comparison to another musical outfit, The Band springs to mind. After Autumn is a more folk-orientated album with exquisite harmonies and, like The Band, all members of The Gandhis take lead vocals on particular tracks. The first single, Hunting, was released in November and is a perfect slice of pop-song craft that sets the vibe of the record very nicely. The Gandhis will play the RoisÃÂn Dubh, Galway on May 27. â€â€ Darragh O'Dea