Stars in their eyes
Armed with an album that looks set to steamroll its way into the charts and hearts of the world, Edwin McFee meets up with NI’s latest success story The Japanese Popstars to talk about mainstream acceptance, signing to a major label, why Lisa Hannigan isn’t as bad a dancer as you’d imagine, and the joys of working with The Cure’s Robert Smith.
Edwin McFee, 13 Jun 2011
They say that all good things come to those who wait, and for Derry/Belfast-based dance supremos The Japanese Popstars, that phrase couldn’t be more apt. Currently in the middle of a whirlwind of promo for their long-awaited second album Controlling Your Allegiance, it’s fair to say that Gareth Donoghue, Decky McLaughlin and Gary Curran are feeling more than a little relieved to get their opus out there and into the hands of the music-buying public.
“‘At fucking last!’ is the phrase that comes to mind when I think about the release of the second album,” laughs Gareth Donoghue over a pint in Belfast’s Stiff Kitten bar. “We’ve sat on it for the best part of a year. It was the same with our first album too, funnily enough. Maybe that’s part and parcel of the whole machine that is the music industry though. It’s our first time working with major labels, so it’s a learning curve for all of us. Virgin/EMI have reasons for doing what they’re doing I suppose. We just can’t wait to get it out there. It’s been sitting on computers for a long time and we’ve been writing a lot of new stuff since it’s been shelved, so we just want to get the so-called dreaded second album out and then start onto the third.”
A record that sees The Japanese Popstars take a huge, Godzilla-sized leap forward in terms of their sound, Controlling Your Allegiance bristles with ambition and showcases a band who are hellbent on taking things to the next level.
“We want commercial success but we want it on our terms,” asserts the musician. “It would be easy to continue making music to a formula that has given you a modest degree of success, but we want to progress our sound. I dunno about cracking the mainstream, but I think there are tracks on there that have and will get radio play and a little bit of commercial success will always be good for us. If it happens the way it did for The Chemical Brothers – where the mainstream found them and not the other way around – we’ll be very happy.”
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