The last thing - no, the very last thing - the world of popular music needs is yet another whiny, wobbly-headed Irish singer songwriter spouting well-intentioned but ultimately bland and downright boring ballads to soundtrack the next interminable iteration of that none-more-evil sub-genre, the Hugh Grant RomCom. But before we get side-tracked into a lengthy rumination on how formerly great sitcom writers are slowly suffocating British Cinema, let’s turn our attention instead to what makes a truly great songwriter. Think of Dylan’s epic and poetic turn of phrase, Shane McGowan’s booze-drenched jaunty bitterness, the pitch-black murder ballads of Nick Cave, Conor Oberst’s befringed emo, and, from now on, think of Aaron McMullan.
Released on Newcastle-based label, Ex Libris Records, Yonder! Calliope?, McMullan’s debut album proper, should, if there’s any justice, see him catapulted into the limelight. Packed with wistful ballads, foot-tappingly infectious upbeat pop and at least one near-classic country-gospel fever-dream (the stunning album closer, Don’t Think I’ll Sleep Tonight), Yonder! Calliope? easily marks McMullan out as a different beast altogether from his earnest countrymen being both lyrically sharper and deeper. “The album’s definitely skewed towards the melancholy,” McMullan agrees, down the line from his home in Ballymoney, Northern Ireland, “but the punkier side comes out in the live setting. The songs obviously sound different - it’s only me on guitar with Ryan H Fleming on banjo - but they sound a lot more aggressive. I enjoy it because there’s a punk rock attitude to it - I’ve tried to avoid the acoustic folk scene because it’s terribly safe and bland.”
I first encountered Aaron McMullan after stumbling onto his brilliantly deranged and rambling pop culture screeds on internet magazine Blogcritics and was immediately blown away by how he effortlessly channelled the raw spirit of William Burroughs, James Joyce and the gonzoid tendencies of Hunter Thompson. Regardless of whether he was ostensibly casting a critical eye over the likes of Eli Roth’s Hostel or the many travails of Pete Doherty, the real story was often in McMullan’s skewed take on the subject or the real-life tangents that wove in and out of each piece like an ongoing soap opera filled with lust, alcoholism and religious imagery. It wasn’t long until he turned that eye for the eccentric contained in the everyday to music, leading to an increasingly accessible set of internet-only bedroom demos, the highlights of which, now fleshed out, polished up and rerecorded, form the backbone of Yonder! Calliope?.
“The internet demos gave me confidence,” McMullan explains. “I never thought many people would listen to them, and probably not very many did. Obviously you think there’s something there, otherwise you wouldn’t put it out in the first place, but the net-albums helped me see that people would feasibly listen to my stuff without pressure being put on them!”
Still, at this early stage, McMullan’s new-found confidence couldn’t quite extend to the live setting. “Before we did the record I’d never really played live anywhere, I was terrified about taking the songs out to gigs,” he continues. “I could sit in my room and hide away on a corner of the internet. So, while the music was out there, I didn’t have to deal with it physically. When you’re live there’s no chance of saying ‘sorry, can I do that one again’.”
Having harnessed the power of the internet for something other than pornography, it was around this time that McMullan came into contact with Andrew Gardiner at Ex Libris. “I knew Andrew back in the day when we were both playing in punk bands in and around Ballymoney. He’d always scared me a bit, but there was something intriguing about him. Ryan H Fleming [who plays on Yonder! Calliope?] heard the net records and contacted me through Myspace. It turned out he and Andrew had God-knows how many bands going on together and Andrew was putting Ex Libris together. I just stepped into the middle of it all.”
So now that the debut album’s out of the way, how does he feel being so exposed after all this time? “I don’t think it’s sunk in yet but I can imagine hearing it on the radio now and not feeling like there’s some massive gulf between my record and whatever was played before. For a long time I got so drawn into how everything sounded to the point where I forgot about the songs themselves. So it’s weird listening to the finished album and being hit with the full force of the songs again.”
Finally, where does his inspiration come from? “Bright Eyes, The Pogues, Lonnie Donegan or The Libertines - people who are playing with traditional folk-ish ideas but doing something modern with it. But the music that inspires me wouldn’t necessarily sound like my stuff. When I listen to Bjork she’ll do something incredible and it’ll make me want to approach things - a lyric or something - in a different way.”
Yonder! Calliope? is out now on Ex Libris Records and available to buy or download from their website (exlibrisrecords.co.uk). Aaron McMullan can be found at myspace.com/aaronmcmullan.