Columbia Mills are set to release their new album ‘Heart Of A Nation’ on the 14th of October . I spoke to Fiachra Treacy, frontman of Columbia Mills about making the album during the pandemic, the benefits of producing the album themselves and the moving inspiration behind some of the fantastic tracks.
‘Heart of A Nation’ is absolutely glorious. Columbia Mills pack so much emotion and passion into one album. The songs deal with the impact society has on our lives and gives an overview of our bleak socio-political landscape; immigration, addiction, and the eradication of self-confidence against a backdrop of lush instrumentation and crisp production.
“I think like everybody else over the pandemic, I personally had a lot of time to think about what was going on, specifically in the world. I think that’s what sparked a lot of the revolutions and the protests that came to the fore during the pandemic around the world. Because everybody’s life was put on hold, we got a lot more time to reflect on what was happening and I think that’s where it came from. I always write from a subconscious point of view. So we had all the music done, we wanted to make it a dancey album, as you pointed out, because we wanted people to have something to dance to after sitting around for so long, but in terms of the lyrics, I sit with the music and I just see what came out and that’s what came out. That was obviously what was troubling me when I was writing the songs and I think once I figure out what the song is about, then I can really run with it and start using less of the subconscious to finish the song but usually, the things that are bothering me will come to the fore.”
“For this album, because we couldn’t rehearse and we couldn’t get together in a room we decided we’d write the music first. Usually we do it the other way around and we put all the music together first, and the lads gave me the liberty to move bits of the song around. So if I wanted to put a chorus here, just put a bridge there I could do that with the vocals. But it was quite challenging. I’ve never really done it like that before, maybe the odd song on the other albums we’ve done it like that. But to do the whole album like this, it was quite challenging. I ended up writing the lyrics maybe four or five times for each song and changing them and putting them back together again, but it was great fun. It was a great challenge and I think it’s made for a really good album.”
The band cleverly layer and craft the songs to create a consuming listening experience. We discussed how the excess time the pandemic provided gave the band an opportunity to create an album so rich and evocative.
“Yeah, yeah we had a lot of time and I think that really helped us. The fact that we could live with each part and myself, Uisneagh [Treacy] and Ste [Ward] would send each other parts like we’d write a synth part pattern or a guitar part or a drum loop and we’d be sending them to each other all the time. There’s an awful lot of stuff that we didn’t use. The parts that we left in, we feel they really worked and we spent a lot of time thinking about them and we were able to mull over it. Then we put the vocals on and then we took a few more bits out, stuff that was clashing with the vocal. So yeah, it was a great, great way of working. We’ll probably do it again.”
‘Nevada’ is such a gem and one of my favourites on the album. The track travels at an intense pace with looped drums creating a pulsing rush of adrenaline as the song ventures between dreamy euphoric tones and intense almost sinister undertones.
“We had the baseline and the drum loop and then there was a synth line that kind of an arpeggiated synth line which actually starts the whole song. Then while I was writing the lyrics, I came up with the chorus part to go to a major chord so the song opens up and you can feel a bit of hope rather than being so dark the whole time because it starts in a minor chord. So when it goes to the major cord it gives people a bit more hope. You don’t want to be too miserable and the lyrics came from when I was in Mexico with my wife who is from Guadalajara in Mexico. That’s an area where a lot of people come through. There’s a train that goes through the centre of Mexico and it carries people from Honduras and from more southern America up through and they’re trying to get to the United States and they stop in Guadalajara and they stop and they’ll ask for money or they look for food and stuff like that. So we’d meet a lot of these people and we met a man who was travelling from Honduras and he wanted to get to Nevada that was what he kept saying. I’m going to Nevada. I don’t speak Spanish but he was talking to my wife but I kept hearing him saying Nevada. She told me that he had a son, a daughter and a wife that were left in Honduras and he was going to work in Nevada to make some money and hopefully that they could join him or he’d go back with money. So that’s what the song is about. It’s me fantasising that they do eventually get together again and that he gets to see his son again. So it’s quite emotional. That’s where this inspiration came from.”
Columbia Mills are melody wizards. There is a soothing quality to the melodies on this album that comforts the listeners from the harsh reality of the lyrics.
“Yeah, for me, the melodies have to come naturally, the vocal melodies especially and I suppose the guitars do as well. They have to come very naturally or else I find if I spend too much time working on a vocal melody or a guitar line, that they just sound, they’re not as soothing. I don’t know if there’s any techniques or anything that we use, but it’s just more of a natural occurrence. The music or the melody will come into my head a lot of the time I’d wake up and a melody would be in my head or I’d be doing something completely different. I’d be working on something else and a melody will come into my head and I think by doing that, as you said they come a bit more naturally and I think people can connect to them a bit more because they’re more human, I suppose.”
‘Momentum’ is another special moment on the album. There is so much musical goodness encased in this song. The song unfolds from pulsing bass lines, chiming keys and intricate guitar melodies into a euphoric groove-infested dance tune.
“Yeah, it came from the intro. I remember Steven sent me the intro with the drum loop and that song was totally different. I remember we had all sorts of crazy vocals on it. The structure was totally different. It was like a dance track because we do work on a lot of dancey stuff. We never release it. We just make dance tracks just for the craic. We’d finished the album and we revisited that song. It was never going to be on the album and I changed it around a little bit and created a verse and a chorus. Then we put a few guitar parts on and then I just concentrated on the vocals and when we had it finished, we’d already got the album mixed by Rob [Kirwan]. He had already finished mixing the album. So we got our engineer, producer friend Mick Heffernan and he mixed it and we really loved it. So we dropped one of the other songs and moved that one in and we’re glad we did because a lot of people say it’s their favourite. “
Sonically it’s an acid trip yet there are sweet moments on guitar between all the dizzying synths and intricate rhythms. I wondered if the band ever got carried away with all the glorious immersive layers when they were creating the song.
“We can overdo it sometimes. So we need to be very careful. There are about four synth parts in that song. Then the baseline, the guitars and the vocals and then I often tend to put a lot of effects on the vocals. I think towards the end. I’m just spouting absolute garbage and we layered it all up on top of each other. I don’t think you can make out what I’m saying. I don’t even know if I know what I’m saying. I’d love to hear them isolated again. But yeah, we can get a little bit lost but we always have to pare it back and remember that people need to listen to this stuff.”
As the album progresses, the band strip away some of the disco elements and the sound becomes more delicate. ‘Imposter Syndrome’ displays this more delicate sound perfectly. Fiachra’s echoed vocals stand out above the hypnotic key refrain and guitars creating a compelling melancholic tune for listeners to enjoy.
“With ‘Imposter Syndrome’, Ste had sent me the synth line, and I really loved it and I was determined to make a song out of it. Once he’d sent me that I started playing the acoustic guitar over it, there’s an acoustic guitar on that song. Once I had the acoustic guitar and the chords figured out, I left all the electronics to one side and just sat on my own with the acoustic guitar trying to figure out a song that I could play without any of the electronics. ‘Imposter Syndrome’ I suppose that’s what it’s about you kind of feel you’re not good enough for somebody else and if you’re not good enough to be in a certain situation. I suppose we all feel like that sometimes, well I feel like that most of the time. So I built a song about that. I can’t really remember writing the lyrics. I can remember just being happy with what had been put down. The structure of the song is quite strange as well because there’s kind of a bridge at the end. So there’s not really a chorus to the song. It just kind of plods along but I love people like Roy Orbison, he used to write songs with no choruses. He’d write songs that just went along, but it would feel like there was a chorus there because each part really mattered. So that’s kind of where I got the inspiration from.”
Lyrically the band don’t shy away from real topics and they pack some punch with their hard-hitting lyrics. Our discussion ventured down the intricacies and natural flow of lyrics and Fiachra told me his lyrics flow in a stream of consciousness sometimes. I wondered if these stream-of-consciousness writing sessions need much editing in order to create the eloquent lyrical content we hear within the album.
“Yeah, I definitely do. Yeah, you’re right. I’d go off on a mad one and I’d write everything down. I’d read everything that has come out from the stream of consciousness, but then I need to figure out where the song came from, and what I’m trying to say and then I’d have to hone back some of the stuff, but sometimes I’m left with some nice stuff that I keep and I’m quite surprised. It’s like I didn’t write it, it just came from somewhere else. So yeah, sometimes, really nice stuff that I just want to keep but yeah, I definitely need to hone it in a bit and put a bit more structure on it and make it a bit more palatable, I suppose, is the word you know, so people can understand what I’m trying to say.”
‘Heart Of A Nation’ is an album brimming with solid tunes. There are many musical gems to enjoy from the emotive guitar-driven ‘House Voice’ to the moody grunge-filled ‘Feet Don’t Fail Me Now’. But Fiachra told me which of the songs on the album he is most proud of.
“Yeah, I really love this song called ‘Here With You’ and another song called ‘Fake Life’. I’d say they’re my two favourites. Just in terms of when I listened to them, they knock me down a little bit because I love the structure of ‘Here With You’. I love where it goes, and how it builds. But in terms of lyrics and what the song is about, ‘Fake Life’ is really nice. I really liked it because I didn’t see that song coming. Ste had sent me this string section and we had that for a long time and I had been trying to write a song over it for ages and we couldn’t. So I got the string section and I put it into my computer and I put a beat over it with a groove box. Then once I had the beat it was like it unlock the key to the vocal melody. Then I had the vocal melody in my head and then the lyrics all came down within like, half an hour. It came really quickly. It was a surprise to me. So I really like listening to that one.”
Columbia Mills have a tour coming up in the UK and Ireland in October. We discussed what fans can expect from this run of live shows.
“ I think we’re gonna be a little bit more dancey this time. We’ve done a couple of shows, we’ve done festivals and obviously with festivals you have to hone it in because there’s a lot of people there that never heard of us. So we were trying to grab them as well. So we kept everything upbeat. When we’re doing our own shows, obviously, we can bring in some of the more melancholy songs which I loved the most but yeah, we’ll be doing a lot more dancey stuff. We have a new drummer, Jamie Duff, he plays the drums standing up and he’s a little bit more full on in terms of making the songs dancey but we’ve left a lot of electronic beats in as well. So it’s kind of changed our sound. We’re going to play a lot of the new album and then a select few off the other two albums and we’ll see where we go with that. Yeah, it’ll be a mixture of everything.”
With ‘Heart Of A Nation’ being the band’s third album there are a lot of songs in their arsenal to play at shows and I wondered if the band found it difficult to pick songs to play live as they would all have their own favourites as well as trying to please the fans with their favourites.
“We have arguments over it a lot which is good. It’s getting better. It’s very healthy to have three albums and to have an argument over what songs we’re going to play. There’s some songs that are a given like ‘City’, ‘Close To You’, ‘Battles’, I think we always play but the rest of the songs are open to play and we also feel when we’re rehearsing you go okay, that one’s really feeling good , and we’re getting a nice buzz off it and if we’re reacting to it, we hope that other people will react to it as well and if songs aren’t working, we just throw them to the side, we’ve plenty more to pick from.”
On their third album, Columbia Mills find new and refreshing ways to express their ever-evolving sound through dancefloor bops and thrilling lyrics that express sorrow, hope and self-knowledge. The band have raised the bar with these intricately layered tunes as they take an array of shimmering synths, punctuated beats and indie rock elements to create impeccable moments of sonic musicianship that mark Columbia Mills in a league of their own.
‘Heart Of A Nation’ is set for release tomorrow October 14th. Until then stream ‘Momentum’ below
Author: Danu
