You’re a young Dublin band trying to make it, like all the rest, but you have one thing over most of them - you’re bloody good. You’ve released a few singles and an EP which have been received well by critics and have made a dent (not a spectacular one, but a dent nonetheless) on the Irish music scene. Your songs are receiving airplay on major radio stations and have been playlisted on Dublin’s TXFM, you’ve been invited to Montrose to appear on 2FM and The Saturday Night Show, and you’ve played a host of festivals including Electric Picnic. That reads like a C.V. most young bands would kill for - especially an unsigned one without a manager - but that’s exactly what indie quartet The Statics have managed to achieve by themselves over the last few years.

 

Of course, it hasn’t all been plain sailing. They lost their original bassist Thomas Nugent to the virus known as 'musical differences' just prior to their television début on The Saturday Night Show earlier this year, a fact that their fans only learned about when the tuned in to watch them perform their latest single Hidden Pigeon only to be left thinking 'Who the fuck is your man?' It was a baptism of fire, to say the least, for new boy Dave Hilliard.

Fast-forward several months and The Statics are about to play an invite only gig of entirely new material in The Odessa Club. This is either a brave or a foolhardy decision by the band, one that risks alienating the fans they’ve previously snake charmed with songs such as Down, Holiday, Alone and Had It Too, or enticing them further with material that may make their début album. After all, there must be a reason they only want a select group of people to hear them.

So why take the risk? “For a lot of those shows we've been playing the same material or slowly adding a song here and there”, lead guitarist Daragh O’Connell tells us, “but Liam [Gardner - vox/guitar] has been writing away and he's got a mountain of songs inside his head. Rather than add one or two new songs, we decided to showcase all the new stuff together. It sounds a little different to what’s come before, it fits well together as a body of songs.”

It quickly becomes apparent where the musical differences that led previous bassist Nugent to depart may lie. Opening tracks such as I Know That You Know, Home Sweet Home and Simple As Lies indicate that The Statics have morphed away from the sunshine harmonies of their previous releases into a sterner, angrier group that’s closer to latter day Arctic Monkeys and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club than The Coral and The La’s. This is not necessarily a bad thing; the change of pace specifically suits drummer Jaqueline Campion, making the most of her aggressive style and snare work. It also maximises the potential effect of lead singer Liam Gardner’s guitar work. His guitar solos are darker, frantic and less melodic than his counterpart O’Connell’s but suit the soundscapes of the new material perfectly.

...they’ve refused to play it safe and pushed themselves in new directions creatively when it would have been safer and easier to continue down the sonic path they were on

“Songs like Holiday and Hidden Pigeon have been heading in that direction,” says O'Connell of the new heavier sound. “I think it’s just a natural progression. We're progressing as a band and we want people to come with us. We're delighted that [the crowd] was so positive. Writing and playing new music is what keeps us going and like any musician or band that we listen to, while we can love their back catalogue we're also excited for new material.”

Though there was definitely some palpable trepidation in The Odessa to begin with, The Statics eventually brought the room with them thanks to Light Shattered Light - a successful melding of the old and new sound - and potential singles Goodbye, Fake Sorrow and Babe // Superstar. They seem vigorous and fully-formed in comparison to some of the earlier material in the set that seems like a steppingstone in the band's transition from pop to rock rather than portraying a fully realized metamorphosis of sound.

However, The Statics’ can be quite proud; they’ve refused to play it safe and pushed themselves in new directions creatively when it would have been safer and easier to continue down the sonic path they were on. They now have two albums worth of material coming from vastly different directions. The question is, do they meld the two worlds together or separate them completely? Whatever they decide, we don’t envy them their decision.