Breaking Out of Belfast with A Plastic Rose and The Rupture Dogs

Belfast has been brought to its knees by a community of acts steadily rising and roaring since And So I Watch You From Afar first alerted the country to a scene then largely unrealised with their mini-festival A Little Solidarity just over two years ago.

Solidarity was a historic moment in time for Irish music that preceded the boom of bands like Lafaro, Two Door Cinema Club, General Fiasco and ASIWYFA themselves. It would never be an easy feat to match, never mind go beyond.

Over the last month Live4ever spoke with The Rupture Dogs and A Plastic Rose, two Belfast bands in their infant stages at the time of Solidarity who’ve since established themselves locally and before Christmas were involved in the winter-long You Are The Scene festival, a fifteen gig NI-wide toast to what the nation had going musically.

A Plastic Rose felt like the time had arrived to spearhead a campaign that would give the ‘momentum a kick up the arse and gel people together once more.

“It takes massive balls to do what we’ve done,” said Gerry Norman of A Plastic Rose. “I felt like after ASIWYFA went away there was a lot of pressure for them to be involved in the scene. But they can’t, they’re doing their own thing. Instead of passing the baton on they just put it on the ground and went ‘Right, away you go’. We felt like ‘Right, we’ll take it’. Glasgowbury’s a celebration of the scene for the summer. We wanted to start one in Belfast for the end of the year.”

Of course many might argue that every scene needs its leaders. Without forerunners to motivate the up and coming and unheard of and to draw interest from the wider world, a scene will choke on the fear of fruitless touring, recording and promotion.

So when indie-hopefuls Panama Kings called it a day last year just as Fighting With Wire seemed damned to post-production hell on their second album, Lafaro had caught their break traipsing around Europe with Helmet and ASIWYFA, while still as adoringly conjoined to their homeland as ever, had flown the nest with the coaxing of three Crooked Vultures and years of graft, A Plastic Rose were ready to fill in the gap.

“It was more of a void than a pressure really,” says guitarist Ian McHugh. “There was just no figureheads, nobody locally really putting the work in.”

Although dented by delays, APR’s headlining Mandela Hall performance culminated the celebration, once again consolidating a moment for NI music. But did the tireless grass-roots publicity pay off?

“I don’t think it could ever have failed,” considers Gerry Norman. “It was more of an idea and there was no real pressure for there to be twelve hundred people there, but we got more people to that gig than some chart-topping bands last year. Even before it was a success people just applauded us for trying.”

What place then did The Rupture Dogs have in all of this?

The Belfast enthusiasts of all things raw and grungy were barely out of school when the thought of Solidarity rolled around the heads of ASIWYFA. Now senior noise-makers of the North, they’ve opened for the Sopranos-soundtracking Alabama 3 and been announced by Placebo’s ex-sticksman as the ‘loudest three-piece he’s ever heard’.

Frontman Allan McGreevey shared his thoughts in the back of a tour van in Manchester, the very same van that fuelled similar jaunts to the mainland by Lafaro before them.

“You Are was a great idea and was just like Solidarity again, just getting people together” he says. “A Plastic Rose were headlining that Mandela show but for every twenty feet down the street it was like ‘A Plastic Rose – Mandela’, ‘Colly Strings – Mandela, plus support’, it was just showing that this isn’t just ours, this is every band in Northern Ireland. It’d be very easy to just put your name at the top and be like ‘This is class’ but they didn’t.”

With the dust settled on the festivities though, Gerry observed and was keen to point out, that while his band’s name was the smallest on the Solidarity poster, it was the biggest on this one, a comparison rooted in honest progress, not ego. “So if whoever was at the bottom of our poster is to headline in two years time it’d be incredible” he adds optimistically.

Whether the efforts of A Plastic Rose will have the long term baton-passing impact they hope for is unclear but the immediate aftermath has reaped the benefits of the seeds sewn by You Are. Just last month Belfast’s famous Limelight complex held the all-day showcase New Blood for bands no older than two years, an event intended to unearth the next wave.

The fact that The Rupture Dogs only just exceed that age limit underscores the progress they’ve made from the ground up in that amount of time. In reality, Allan along with brother Gareth on drums and new bassman John McHugh would’ve been more worried about missing out had they not been rollicking their way through their first legitimate UK tour. It’s just a coincidence New Blood is rocking across the water the very moment I’m speaking to the band.

Over a week of all night drives, inverted sleep schedules, roadside gas cookers and half-empty bars they’ve gigged with one good band. Luckily for them they’re touted as the biggest, supposedly Biffy Clyro-supported, band in Spain.

“The promoter took out an advert in a Spanish newspaper and forty Spaniards came over just for the gigs and they were going nuts for us which was brilliant,” Allan said of the tour highlight.

Eating up hundreds of dark motorway miles every night only to have a handful hear the songs that pack out venues back home is always going to be frustrating, but it has to be done.

“The first time you come over, even if you play to nobody people appreciate the effort of coming over,” says Allan, looking at things positively. “I’d prefer to play to one person that I didn’t know who really enjoyed it than the same people every week, which I think is where a lot of bands in Belfast get stuck,” continues Allan McGreevey.

Ian from A Plastic Rose feels the same way about needing to build a fan-base away from the safe haven to better yourself as a band: “You’re not going to keep playing Northern Ireland and eventually end up in the Waterfront Hall. That has to come with some other territories, the UK and whatever else we get the chance to go out towards.”

“If we just played Belfast three times a year then people would start to hate us,” says Gerry Norman. “We don’t want to be one of those bands that just plays Belfast all the time, we know how to work that city so the album launch at the Limelight (March 31st) will possibly be the last gig of the year there with maybe one more at the end of the year.”

Seasoned with Reading and Leeds appearances and recognised as the first unsigned act to make the Radio One playlist, it’s far from APR’s first time in the UK mainland, but it’s obvious they’ve had less rough ventures when I speak to them, again in Manchester, a week into the tour.
Van trouble is nothing new for any band scraping together a DIY tour, but A Plastic Rose truly believe they’re plagued. “The heartbreak with the van is just constant,” laments Ian. Gerry reinforces the brutal truth: “It’s the whole cliché that if that van doesn’t get fixed we’re going home tomorrow, we don’t have the money to fix it.”

On a lighter note, fate it would seem never took a shine to the catchy post-hardcore of A Plastic Rose either, having been robbed of a potential Glasgow crowd by the Old Firm of all things.

“We toured during the World Cup so football’s done us very few favours!” laughs Ian. “You’re always going to be competing against something, you can’t be faded out. Tonight we’re competing against a Champions League match and a broken down van but we’re still going to play,” Gerry adds with assurance.

Ironically though, it wouldn’t be the torment of the tour-cursing van to cut things short just two days later. Instead, it would be doctor’s orders when Gerry’s ear, just a few months fresh from surgery, began to give him trouble with the only remedy being some quiet healing time away from the amps.

Back on home turf, as with any case of an acclaimed band, it’s never without a little criticism along the way. For good or bad, the society of listeners and gig-goers in Northern Ireland is never slow give their honest opinions, whether it’s a useful appraisal or a dirty swipe.

A Plastic Rose know this well. They were voted NI’s ‘least underrated’ band (that’s most overrated) of 2010 by the country’s online community and although the anti-chart is taken with every ounce of humour, is it the right attitude to observe things with?

At the very least they see it as acknowledgement. “I told my parents over Christmas dinner,” Gerry reveals. “I couldn’t believe enough people knew us.” But taking a serious turn: “One thing you have to be aware of in the music scene is if enough people like you there’s going to be a backlash.  I remember when the same thing happened with Fighting With Wire and even ASIWYFA and Two Door, it’s the best bands that come out of the scene.”

But why is this? Are people bitter about the success?

Ian begs to differ: “I think it’s more of a hipsterism. I would’ve been the same growing up. If there was a band I liked, once the first jock in my school started going on about them I’d immediately hate them.”

The Rupture Dogs have had less negativity tossed their way but Allan shares the feeling. “A lot of the time people who’re either jealous or want things handed to them argue about how well other bands are doing,” he explains. “I used to be like that, thinking ‘Why are they getting so good?’ but it’s because they were working their ass off.”

Naturally a realistic margin should be kept on any amount of praise thrown at a band but it feels like it would be an oversight to not address the source of the criticism. In another instance Gerry discusses a piece that sceptically weighs his lyrics against that of Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and the Pixies.

“If you want to compare us to someone lyrically compare us to the fucking Panama Kings or mojoFURY or even the Kings of Leon or something. Don’t compare us to the greatest musicians of all time! laughs Gerry.

But it’s not all doom and gloom in the APR camp, in fact it’s hard to imagine a better time for the both bands and for Irish music in the wider sense.
Rocksound named APR amongst their Ones to Watch for 2011 and has poured acclaim in the direction of other great acts like mojoFURY, Lafaro and Axis Of – the unsigned status of whom has kept The Rupture Dogs confident that they don’t need a label to make things happen. “Getting signed is such an old fashioned thing,” says Allan, “No one wants a label to throw them loads of money to end up in debt.”

Looking ahead he assures me the next recordings they nail down after the tour will shape up into ‘their baby’. With an overflowing back catalogue they want to put everything into it and make sure it’s done right. There’s also the fleeting notion of a split release alongside fellow Northern rockers Gascan Ruckus, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Exciting times lie ahead for both bands. With tons of talent, charisma and the tunes to back up everything you’ve read here, A Plastic Rose and The Rupture Dogs are not to be ignored as they continue to break new ground inside and out of the Emerald Isle.

You’re likely to catch both this summer at Glasgowbury, the largest independent, outdoor NI festival and the defining annual celebration of the island’s music. Eagles Rock, Draperstown hosts the event once more this year on July 26th. Line-up details are expected at the end of April.

A Plastic Rose are set to release a mini-album entitled “The Promise Notes” on March 28th through local indie label DiDiMau with a launch gig at Belfast’s Limelight on the 31st. Further ahead they intend to release their full length debut that’ll include updates of previous releases “Kids Don’t Behave Like This” and “All You Know and Love Will Die”.

(Daniel Robinson)