With the ‘golden era’ of a music industry whose reins were held solely by the CEOs and presidents of major record labels finally coming to an end, The Murder Capital have utilised this cultural shift to create their own space – and they’re determined to make the most of it. Established as a self-published indie band in 2017, they’ve not only created a space for themselves but also strive to use their presence as a unifying force for the fellow creatives they meet along the way. Their comfortingly abrasive lyrical content provides both a sanctuary for those who can relate and perhaps an insightful education for those on a different path.
Hot on the heels of releasing their third studio album Blindness, bassist Gabriel Blake spoke on their collaborative creative process, the importance of political transparency and what The Murder Capital would advise for young creatives of today. “Not to sound corny, but writing and creating music is as innate to us as breathing. It’s how we process things, so music is something we’re always cultivating”, he said when asked about the impact of the band’s members living across the continent on their dynamic. “Noel Gallagher maybe said it best, you’ve just got to be there to receive it? I mean, not claiming we’ve written songs to as wide an acclaim as Oasis”.
“It’s the same process of the song just falling from the sky – mine and the lads’ writing is so deeply personal that the intention of the song is never for world acclaim”, he claimed, referring to the band’s singer James McGovern. “It’s very much a labour of love, never forced to meet deadlines. There’s days we’d be in [the studio] for eight hours, and we’d come out with as much as we went in with. In the first couple months of coming together as a band, we did kind of come to that sort of crossroads where maybe things weren’t flowing as easily as anticipated.”
When asked about how the band handled this creative block, Blake cited a Francesca Woodman documentary, describing her as “an amazing photographer who really struggled with her mental health. There’s a section where her parents are being interviewed, and her father – a visual artist – was asked about the impact of his grief on his artistic output. He said that on the days that he can’t produce anything – mind stuck in that muddy bog of grief – he still shows up. Instead of painting or drawing, he just sharpens his pencils. From then on, that’s always been our ethos – as long as we go in there, put ourselves in the position and ‘sharpen our pencils’, we’re allowing the opportunity for things to ignite.”
For students, this hits perhaps too close to home. While university aims to nurture one’s creative practice, the spotlight can often be too centred on the final outcome of a project rather than the process, and it becomes important to remember that no world-changing idea has ever sprung from force. “It’s good to have your freak-outs”, Blake admitted, “but we’ve learnt to go with the majority and just trust in each other – like, we’re still fucking moving forward – we’ve got a deadline!”
When pressed further on deadlines, Blake stated “I do think they’re healthy. I don’t know what it’s like to have label pressures. That must be tough, but we’re lucky to have our own space in the scene where deadlines are more so for creative structure than anything else. We’re free creatively, though it takes a lot more work from ourselves and management to operate on a major-label level. It’s good though, because between albums, we can reassess the team with who will best work in our interest with the intentions of our output, making genuine personal connections with all sorts of creatives, ensuring the art that we make is as structurally sound as it can possibly be.”
“As I grow older and mature as an artist, I realise that I don’t mature as a person. It’s sort of that revelation that if no human is perfect, that also means no art is perfect either. To me, artists shouldn’t be looking at their art as anything other than an artistic expression, free creative output – otherwise, I don’t think you’ll get much done. We definitely struggled with that in the past; with Blindness we started off with this system of if one person has doubt or dislike for a song we’d scrap it, and John from our management had to sit us down and be like ‘man, like, this fucking sucks. We’re all down on ourselves sometimes, but don’t be down on the music because it’s a beautiful fucking thing.’ Getting yourself into a really, really horrible and depressive mental state over a part of a song is ridiculous, but it’s real. Your art is who you are.” Speaking to not only a musician so passionate about their art, but a human being who is so self-aware and comes across as warm, open and ever-evolving, is nothing less than refreshing.
Speaking on The Murder Capital’s involvement in the stunning album art for Blindness, Blake stated that “all of our creative direction has been done under the vision of an amazing artist, Viktor H. He designed the typography for Rosalía’s MOTOMAMI, which I was a huge fan of musically, but I was even more enthralled in the world he’d created around it. The packaging, the direction, the whole world-building idea. Engaging with that record felt like being a part of something bigger. We met with a few different designers, all of whoms pitches were all so impressive with big visual backgrounds, videos, etc. But then Viktor produced us those drawings, literally just pencil drawn on a white background, yet he was able to map out the entire process from concept to final outcome – it blew our fucking minds. A lot of the themes on the record are actually really brought down to childhood and our teenage years growing up in Ireland – there’s a level of vulnerability, and I think Viktor clocked that.”
Moving onto transparency in the music industry, Blake said “it’s so important to us. We did a video in front of our mural for Palestine in Dublin – and that was a question, like, what is the duty of the artist to stand up for political things like this? We aren’t all allowed the luxury of a peaceful existence. Those who are victims of hate in any form – be it racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia or gender-based discrimination – shouldn’t have to stick up for themselves. A lot of these people just want to fucking, like, go to work and go home to their family – I don’t think that everybody who comes under persecution or discrimination should have a moral obligation to fight. It’s just not fair.”
“It’s equally as hard for me to say that everybody who ever writes a song should have the duty to make a political statement; I do understand why people look to artists to be a voice because, again, a lot of them do have media influence so there’s that urge to know where they stand on every single issue. Me, personally, as an artist I feel a responsibility around using my voice because it’s innate to me, so it feels right. For us, especially with what’s going on in Palestine, it just felt so difficult for so long to figure out what the right thing to do was, and it’s not in the sense of how it would be viewed, but in a sense of something that would be a meaningful statement.”
“After a while, I realised that the right thing to do is something. It doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be something. What matters most is the action that’s going on a personal level – we’ve been talking about Palestine [amongst ourselves] pretty much every day – it’s not just a check-box commitment. It’s real life; these communities being massacred are our peers that just so happened to be born on another part of the planet, and it’s important we view them as such, otherwise, we’re just losing our humanity.”
Finishing with a piece of advice for young creatives, Blake insisted “do what’s right for you. It’s hard to put a spotlight on yourself, being a musician in the public eye. It takes courage, and within all of the doubt, there has to be a strong core of self-belief. The internet will try to take you down, so above anything else – look after yourself. Engage in things that are courageous, engage in conversations that feel appropriate to engage in, but first off, make sure you’re ready to do that. If an artist calls out in support of Palestine, against racism, against anti-immigration, for trans rights – they’re doing it at the sacrifice of themselves”.
