Troublegum

Product Information

There was Good Vibrations, the record label as well. I started going up to the Good Vibrations shop in Victoria Street in Belfast every Saturday afternoon and spending my money on punk records. And they got quite a lot of local stuff. And what was good about punk was it was a fully inclusive, so any sectarianism, any religious or political debate, didn't really matter. When I was too young to go to gigs, I could go to youth club gigs, where local punk bands would put on the gig themselves. So that was what I liked about it. And that's how I got to know other musicians. And I got to know friends of mine from the other side of the political divide that, had it not been for punk, I would never have met.”

The album’s release and initial impact presaged another year of intense touring, including appearances at UK metal mecca Donington, and Irish alternative festival Sunstroke. While it all represented a moment for the band’s music, it placed huge pressure on the people behind it. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sourcesin this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. If someone said, ‘I don’t like the record, it’s crap’ – fair enough. But if someone said, ‘I don’t like the record because this Irish guy has got a s**t beard – that’s a bit more hard to take’.” When Therapy? came along, I was at probably the lowest point of my life. I only say this here so that you can understand why I have such strong feelings about the album that others may not share. It was a six month period that I muddled my way through not exclusively because of this album, but with the help of this album being a majority shareholder nonetheless. Every emotion I was feeling in my life at that time was mirrored in Andy Cairns music, lyrics and vocals on this album. However, Troublegum doesn’t remind me of that time at all, nor does it make me maudlin or upset because of it. Certainly it is still the best tonic to put on when I get down, or get angry. It does still draw out any anger I have in me when that is needed. What it does do is make me smile, because this is one of my magic talismans; an album I can put on at any time and draw from it the good feelings or power or inspiration or whatever it is I need, just from listening to it. I’ve put Disquiet at number three because it’s the most fun I’ve had making a record since Troublegum. When we did Troublegum there was a really good feeling in the studio and everyone was getting on really well, and it was the same with this album. Plus, we’d written a bunch of songs that we knew were really good. We did the record with a friend of ours, Tom Dalgety, who’s worked with Royal Blood and Ghost. We’ve been friends with him for years and he’s never pushed himself on us or asked to produce one of our albums, he’s just always said ‘I’m around if you want.’ So it was great to finally work with him and the atmosphere in the studio was brilliant.Listen, Jerusalem is a city in the Middle East. The Jerusalem you’re talking about, this majestic utopia – it’s another one of your myths,” he says. Album singles like the Fugazi-inspired ‘Die Laughing’ and ‘Nowhere’, a buzzsaw broadside at rural inertia that featured a police siren-like wail in its chorus, bothered singles charts the world over. “Thin Lizzy meets Husker Du,” says Cairns of the latter song. Having people criticise you at that time, was something we were only getting used to,” Cairns explains.

Do you listen to all these influences anyway or do you specifically listen to them to push yourselves?The Irish are very good building myths. But the thing about the English is that they start building myths around things that don’t exist,” Cairns says. The Therapy? main man couldn’t resist looking at some of the recent comments on social media about the record. “What I'm proud of, more than anything else, is the amount of people saying that it either inspired them to form a band, play an instrument, or saying things like 'this got me through a really hard time'. We were given our first gigs by a DIY not-for-profit punk organisation called War Zone in Belfast. You would do your own posters, they would photocopy them in their office, and then you'd go around town and pin them up on telegraph poles. I was doing the poster in Fyfe’s bedroom, using a Letraset. which was a sheet of transfers that looked like typeset. We started doing it on an A4 piece of paper, and realised we’d started far too far to the left. Fyfe went, ‘That looks really odd, there’s a big gap.’