Rock'n'roll is alive and kicking

Time to dust off the shades and the leather for wildcard firebrands The Murder Capital

- MARTIN ROBINSON

Rock stars are as rare today as pterodactyls and usually look as dated. Leathery, fanged. Not so James McGovern, frontman of The Murder Capital, who steps into Cafe Kick in Exmouth Market wearing bug-eye shades, long fur coat and a buzz-cut. It’s a style that says, “Look at me” but also “What are you looking at?”

Yes, in the year of Oasis’s return, we finally have some swaggering rock’n’rollers back, although McGovern says times have very much changed: “It is different. I love that video of Liam where he's making a cup of tea and saying back in the day he would have a fella over there and one over there making it for him. I mean, we're making a shitload less money than we would in the 1990s but actually — and people will laugh at this, including myself later — I think it’s a better life now.”

Guitarist Cathal Roper, also settling in for a coffee and a beer and no champagne supernovas, says drily, “We've definitely tried to convince ourselves it’s a richer life.”

The Murder Capital are about break out of 6 Music cultdom and onto big festival stages on the back of new album Blindness, a big cinematic record that feels more purposeful than anything they've done before, marrying pop hooks with their trademark intensity in a way that makes guitars exciting again. Along with Fontaines DC, Kneecap, Just Mustard and Biig Piig, they are part of an Irish scene that is reinvigorating music outside of the TikTok pop pap world. They don't all sound alike but are united in an independence of thought and uncompromising attitude. They all look cool, too.

“I think everyone’s making music and writing lyrics that are meaningful, and that’s what's connecting,” says McGovern. “I also think Irish artists are unafraid to say what they think about what they're seeing in the world. Younger people especially connect to that because it cuts through the online sphere and all the posing.”