The Lost Brothers, Oisin Leech and Mark McCausland, formed in 2007. They released their fourth album New Songs Of Dawn And Dust last month. We spoke to Oisin to find out more about good reviews, old friends, and being over-prepared…
NEW SONGS OF DAWN AND DUST IS YOUR FOURTH ALBUM AND HAS BEEN GETTING SO MANY BRILLIANT REVIEWS. WERE YOU EXPECTING THAT?
There is something about this album, we have had so many good reviews, which is great. We’re not sure why there’s more traction than the last one, but we’re obviously very pleased that there is.
IT WAS RECORDED IN LIVERPOOL, WHEREAS YOUR LAST FEW HAVE BEEN IN THE US. WHY WAS THAT?
We wanted to work with Bill Ryder-Jones, who was formerly in The Coral. He produced the whole album, and he worked with his old bandmate from The Coral, Nick Power. Nick wrote us a song, called Hotel Loneliness. He also sat at the back of the studio and kept an eye on things, and played little bits and pieces. It was a fascinating process.
HOW DID YOU KNOW THEM?
We were all up in Liverpool years ago. Mark was in a band called The Basement there, and they were on the same label as The Coral, and I was in a band called The 747s, who were also based in Liverpool, so they’re friends from back then. Nick has always been a big supporter of ours, and loved So Long John Fante, our third album.
DID YOU ALWAYS WANT BILL TO PRODUCE AN ALBUM OF YOURS?
He did a Christmas single with us about five years ago, called St Christopher, and we always said that if he was up for making a full album with us, he could do it. We made the first three and saw them as a trilogy, with a theme running through that connected them. And then we left it for three years, chipped away at the songs we’d been writing, and did a lot of travelling between Russia, Europe and the States, touring and playing the whole time, and we would hone our ideas more and more. When we had 30 ideas, we called Bill.
WHAT HAPPENED THEN?
He was on tour with Arctic Monkeys at the time, so he asked us to wait until that was finished, so of course we did, and we recorded the album in March and April this year. We let Bill select 15 songs from the pile of 30, and we see it as the start of another trilogy. Nick had a role in picking the songs too.
DID YOU AGREE WITH THE SELECTION?
Yes, we loved the 15 they picked. We went to Liverpool and got a hotel room and played through the 15 songs, talked about the record and what we wanted to do, chatted about the whole thing and got a clear idea of it. A few songs that we loved didn’t make the record, and there was a little bit of extra recording we did too.
THE RECORD HAS A REALLY RELAXED FEEL
That’s true. We were really prepared for this one, because time was really important, so we had prepared more than ever. We did the bulk of recording in the first three days, and we worked from 10am until 10pm every day, sometimes later. And in the evenings we’d be rolling around the control room in the studio because we were so happy with what we’d done in the day. And we really made a good-time record. I think maybe that’s why people have been so positive about this album, because we’ve really captured something special.