City and Colour is getting some pretty hefty promotion around Dublin, for his show in the Olympia this Wednesday. Dallas Green will take to the stage following the release of his fourth solo album under this moniker.
Once upon a time he was the melodic voice behind the much heavier outfit that was Alexisonfire, who self-described themselves as “the sound of two Catholic high-school girls in mid-knife fight”. Now he sings about The Grand Optimist and The Girl.
‘The Hurry And The Harm’ is Green’s first release since Alexisonfire officially called time on their career and completed their final world tour. The record finds him playing with a completely new band, and marks the first time in his career that a photo of him has appeared on an album cover.
“The progression is natural in my eyes, the more City and Colour became focused in my life musically, the more it became what I imagined it to be. The first record is the way it is, mostly because I only had a few days to record it, and there was no grand vision or idea. If I could have looked at what it was going to become, I probably would have made that first record more of a full band record anyway. When I write songs I always hear a possible drum line, or a harmony and I guess that kind of comes with the territory.”
Although the name is taken from Dallas Green’s own name, the city being Dallas and the colour being Green, and the band is a completely new one from that of the previous record, for some, what City and Colour defines isn’t always clear.
“City and Colour is whatever I want it to be, it’s the same as Bob Dylan; Bob Dylan is Bob Dylan, but sometimes he has a band that plays on his record, sometimes he writes songs and sometimes he has a band. I just happened to call it something else because the idea of somebody walking around with a t-shirt that said Dallas Green on it made me sick to my stomach.”
That said, this is the first record on which Dallas has put his face on the cover, on the album’s front. Well, half his face anyway. And as a man who writes such personal lyrics, he holds nothing back, and makes no apologies about putting himself out there in his lyrics.
“I guess I’ve always wanted it to be more about the songs… There is no need for more focus to be put on the artist… I try to write my songs in a relatable enough way that people can put themselves in the situation and hopefully take what they need from it. They don’t need to be worried about what I ate for breakfast…”
The chorus of album track Commentators (“I don’t wanna be revolutionary. No, I’m just looking for the sweetest melody”) seems as good a phrase as any to sum up ‘The Hurry and The Harm’, and indeed the point at which Dallas Green finds himself – a man comfortable and confident in the work he has produced and putting the necessary pieces in place to follow his own path. The phrase came as a reaction to magazine articles celebrating ‘The Most Revolutionary Act for a Decade’.
“I looked at it and thought, Fuck, I don’t want to be revolutionary… and it fitted with the melody I had been working on. I think people get caught up in that whole issue of ‘no-one’s done it before’ – “look we’ve added electronic beats to screamo music”. But they never ask the question ‘is it good?’- they just do it. So that line sums it up. I don’t want to be revolutionary. I am just looking for a sweet melody. That sums up what I’m looking for in a song. And I don’t care if someone thinks all the songs sound the same. That’s great. They sound like me.”