Last time around, Bell X1 played two sold out acoustic shows in Limerick before going into the studio to record the current album ‘Chop Chop’. The band returns with a full electric show Live at the Big Top this weekend, bringing Bill Blackmore on brass and Alexis Deacon’s visuals: “It feels like a new chapter,” Bell X1’s Paul Noonan told Limerick Post
BELL X1 have a long relationship with the city; sold out shows in Dolan’s Warehouse are a regular occurrence. They feel privileged and lucky to be able to bring their new live show to Limerick before embarking on an extensive US/Canada tour next month. “When we put out our first record 13 years ago, before getting any radio play we built up a following by playing whatever gigs we could get. Dolan’s was one of the first venues to have us play, people who discovered us then make the extra effort to come back when we play most years.” Paul describes the Dock Road venue as, “a great hub and bastion of care for Irish music. I know Limerick has been hit by big employers downsizing over the last decade and I know it has made a difference to ticket sales generally so we are very lucky in that circumstance.”
In a changing music industry Bell X1 have been more innovative than most in presenting their new album ‘Chop Chop’ in small venues on their Pop-Up Shops tour over the Summer. Their seated acoustic shows have given the new songs and their narratives time and space to speak to their audience and informed the recording of the new record, steering it in a new direction.
“The acoustic shows were a test of the song as communicated in a very bare bones way. Songs have to be strong to work their most naked form. I think after exercising muscles in the more electronic and computer driven way of late, we regressed into a more primitive state just using acoustic guitars and piano to write songs as opposed to the last couple of records which have had lots of paint being thrown at easels and seeing what stuck. For this one we very much shrank the palette.”
The band are equally comfortable doing the acoustic show and the full band show. “We feel comfortable doing both country and western,” he laughs. If a seated unplugged performance is all about the audience hanging on every word and being moved by the music, then Bell X1’s performance this weekend on the big stage in the Milk Market has to be all about everybody moving to the music. “We have a really great lighting designer in Alexis Deacon who has come up with a great new look for this record and we feel the new songs are really shining in this environment and we are using a brass player and there is a lot more group singing going on, it feels like a new chapter, I suppose,” says Paul.
Bell X1 have forged many hit singles over the past 14 or so years and when songs like ‘Rocky Took a Lover’, ‘Flame’ and ‘Velcro’ are given heavy rotation on radio, the songs and their stories seep into the public consciousness and become part of everyone’s soundtrack.
“What it translates to is this great singalong moment at gigs”, says Paul. Current single ‘The End is Nigh’ has become another hit for the band. “It feels similar for ‘The End is Nigh’, a song that is all about the people that you would want to spend the end of the world with. At gigs there is a galvanizing moment where the audience and the band feel that we are all in this together when they are pointing at the sky screaming ‘The End is Nigh!’”
The next single to be released from new album ‘Chop Chop’ will be ‘Careful What you Wish for’ accompanied by a video by Myles O’Reilly. Bell X1 with support from Bleeding Heart Pigeons play Live at the Big Top this Friday September 20.
