The Murder Capital: Cork-led band back with killer second album 

I Have Fears was a pummelling cry of pain, recorded in the aftermath of the suicide in February 2018 of their friend, the poet and musician Paul Curran. Three years later, with their second album imminent, the five-piece want to look outwards rather than inward – to celebrate rather than grieve.

“We’re so unbelievably proud of that first record. We expressed what need to be expressed. I have no regrets,” says McGovern, who grew up in Sunday’s Well in Cork city. “But grief has you looking to the past, especially when it’s suicide. You wonder what could have been different. What could have been done differently? The new album is all about looking to the future.”

The new LP is called Gigi’s Recovery and, among other things, it is about moving on from trauma. The character of 'Gigi' is a metaphor for resilience and healing. In the case of the Murder Capital, 'recovery' meant cleaning up their act and cutting down on a lifestyle of excess into which they had slipped on the road.

"On a personal level as well, things were pretty tumultuous and chaotic at times,” reflects McGovern. “I needed to change the way I treated my body. And just pull back.” 

You can hear that ringing in of the changes on songs such as 'Existence', an understated ballad where Sigur Ros-style droning effects orbit McGovern, who repeats over and over the line “existence fading”. And on 'Crying', a synth-driven number that finally opens out into sweeping, angsty guitars. After the interiority of I Have Fears, Gigi’s Recovery is about wide open spaces and endless possibilities.

The Murder Capital are crossing fingers their audience is ready for those often radical adjustments in tone and texture. I Have Fears was one of those huge successes that seemed to arrive out of nowhere. Reeling from Curran’s death, the Murder Capital played their first gig just a few weeks later, on February 23, 2018, at Mike the Pies in Listowel, Co Kerry. They were a band forged in the white heat of loss and shock.

They were also, from the outset, the complete package. Fuelled by piledriving guitars and McGovern’s raw, sinister voice the five-piece made an immediate impact. They were, for their troubles, likened to everyone from Joy Division to the late Cork songwriter Cathal Coughlan (McGovern says he isn’t hugely familiar with Coughlan’s repertoire but is looking forward to exploring it one day).

The reviews were ecstatic. “A debut of rare potency,” said Q. “A great band who play it like they mean it,” agreed the Guardian. Unfortunately, success presented its own problems. As McGovern says, the touring took a toll. And then it was time to start work on a follow-up.

The problem was that the band wasn’t sure what to do next, explains the singer, who graduated from Presentation College secondary school and briefly attended UCC before going on to study at the BIMM “school of rock” in Dublin (which is how he got to know Paul Curran, who fronted the band Burnt Out).

The Murder Capital had poured all of themselves into their debut album. And when you’ve given everything, what’s left? That feeling of being adrift – of being engulfed in the calm that followed the storm – is one of the themes of Gigi’s Recovery.

With I Have Fears, the Murder Capital were processing in real time their shock and grief. Second time around, the process of weaving songs from the ether became the story of the record itself, which was produced by St Vincent collaborator John Congleton.

“I spent so much time waiting about grief for my friend Paul. Processing the loss – those things were so incredibly painful. But also powerful to express and write about. Coming into this album I felt almost at a loss – where was I to go with it?,” says McGovern.

Compared with bereavement other emotions seemed trivial and indulgent. “Everything else I would write about felt a bit silly. What am I trying to express here? What I didn’t understand what that all I needed to do was to 'feel' what was going on around me. That’s how the record came about. And then, towards the end, it became even more autobiographical, as it always does. That’s what I find when I allow the writing to lead me. In the end, it seems to reflect life."

Curran’s death has created all sorts of unexpected ripples. In addition to inspiring I Have Fears, it was also the subject matter addressed on For Those I Love, a collection of techno-infused poems by Curran's old bandmate and fellow Shelbourne FC supporter, David Balfe.

“He’s an incredible artist. He’s dedicated as anyone is to anything,” says McGovern. “His dedication is inspiring to me. I was talking to a poet recently And he says, ‘sometimes I worry about Balfie..the intensity of the performance…what he puts into it’. And I can relate to that. There’s another place Balfie is going to. At shows, he really cuts himself open. You see him afterwards: his voice is gone. He keeps his tours brief. There’s no way he could do it any other way. That’s the severity of Balfie’s art. It was the same with Burnt Out [in which Balfe and Curran were bandmates). He’s one of the few people in Ireland who can do that … He’s etching it onto the stone.”

There were a few hiccups on the way to Gigi’s Recovery. After writing sessions in Wexford and London, they shared some of their material with their label. The consensus was that it was “too depressing”. But instead of throwing a strop, the Murder Capital pushed onwards. Feedback, positive or negative, is just part of the process, feels McGovern.

“I didn’t feel like any sort of any difficult 'sophomore' record,” he says. “There was this evolution in the sound we were trying to reach. We have put the bar in a place we can’t really see in the beginning. It took us a while to get going in a sense. We started off by changing the tone, and the textures of our sounds. Bringing in more different pedals, synths things like that. It was a good few months into the two-year writing period that we started cracking out tunes.”

The isolation of Wexford gave them room to think and to breathe. But eventually, they needed something else. “By the time we finished in the countryside in Ireland, which was the first year and a half, we were jaded. From being so isolated and just writing for so long: we were wrecked. We sent it off to management. We thought we were somewhere close. They were like: this is heading in a really good direction but… I think the email was like, ‘you’ve set a new standard for depression…’."

The Murder Capital were surprised. Where their team heard 'depression' they heard songs that were uplifting – full of optimism. “What I realised now is that we projected everything in our lives into this music. We had nothing else,” says McGovern. ”Where they heard depressive we heard optimistic. We heard everything in it. They got us to do a few extra push-ups. We went to London for six months: the energy of being in that city again brought a lot of impetus and pulse back into the record. And it really needed it.”

 Those 'push-ups' paid off. The Murder Capital have begun the year by springing back into action with a record that reproduces the intensity of their first LP while introducing a potent new ingredient: hope. It’s a switch-up about which they are excited, and which is sure to impress their considerable fanbase too. They’ve killed it all over again.

• Gigi’s Recovery is released Friday, January 20. The Murder Capital play Vicar Street, Dublin, February 26