Are we intense?” asks Damien “Irv” Tuit, before he and his bandmate, James McGovern, explode into laughter. The men – two-fifths of the Irish rock outfit The Murder Capital – are sitting with me in an east London pub, and have just talked me through their origin story. “I played with ‘Pump’ [guitarist Cathal Roper] first,” McGovern, the singer of the group, recalls. “Irv came to see us at a show and was, you know, enticed by the f***ing audacity of me.” Reflecting on the creation of their breakthrough album, 2019’s raw and acclaimed debut When I Have Fears, he notes that it was recorded in a “six-week odyssey of chaos and beauty”. That is to say, yes – these guys are somewhat on the intense side.
Then again, this will hardly be news to anyone who’s au fait with The Murder Capital’s back catalogue. The Dublin-formed band – also comprising Gabriel “G” Paschal Blake on bass and Diarmuid Brennan on drums – have never really concerned themselves with frivolity. When I Have Fears was described by The Guardian as “lavishly poetic [and] intensely dour” and drew (somewhat reductive) comparisons to contemporaries such as Idles and fellow Dubliners Fontaines DC. The album was recorded in the aftermath of a friend’s suicide, as well as the death of Blake’s mother. “We were partying heavily at the time, in a new environment, and then we were stricken by a ton of personal grief,” says McGovern. “We left that studio to go carry Gabe’s mum’s coffin… and then a couple of days later Gabe came back to start recording. It was a really, really mad time.”
McGovern, 30, and Tuit, 27, are, nonetheless, in good spirits today, grabbing a breather between studio rehearsals. They’re speaking to me ahead of the release of Blindness, the band’s third album, following the enthusiastically received Gigi’s Recovery in 2023. McGovern, chic and assured in a tight turtleneck sweater, describes the ethos of the new record as being “a needle drop into a feeling”. “That really was a phrase we clung to,” adds Tuit, one of the band’s two guitarists.
Like the band’s previous work, Blindness is musically dextrous – melodic at times (on the brilliantly moody “Words Lost Meaning”), heavy and abrasive at others. It also feels affectingly present. “Death of a Giant”, one of the album’s most evocative tracks, was written in the aftermath of Shane MacGowan’s memorial service; “Love of Country” is a potent song about the illusory lure of nationalism. It is, they explain, a record about “obsession, deceit, and rejection of faith, about patriotism and its distortions… what binds all these human experiences is that there’s a blindness to so much of it. That’s where the title was spawned from.”
The album was recorded in Los Angeles, under the auspices of Grammy award-winning producer John Congleton (St Vincent, The War On Drugs). The endeavour was nearly derailed by an intra-band fracas shortly after arriving. There was, says McGovern, an “imbalance” within the band, which had built up during the writing process. “We just lost focus on the outright respect we need to have for each other,” he says. “Because there’s the five of you and then there’s the individual relationships that go on between it… it’s huge.”
When you’re five twentysomething lads in a hot new rock group, relationships are, perhaps inevitably, a work in process. After matters boiled over, though, the bandmates resolved their grievances, and things have been harmonious. “That’s maybe the hardest part of the job,” says Tuit. “I started this band with James and Pump, and they were two of my best friends at the time. You kind of don’t realise what sort of deal you’re making… it puts a lot of the weight on the relationship.”
“You don’t really know what you’re getting into with each other,” adds McGovern. “Then all of a sudden there’s this realisation that, s***, it can feel like your life depends on these people. You’re always only moments away from the ego taking over – that’s how a lot of the fights we’ve had throughout the years have come about… from a place of fear, a place of ego, a place of all the things that make human beings difficult to be with at times. It really is like a marriage.”
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Both musicians are chatty, forthcoming and erudite, whether they’re rhapsodising about the state of the music industry (“I don’t think it’s as bad as the pieces you read online would make you think”) or recalling their scrappy beginnings. After gaining some traction on the live circuit in the late 2010s with their blistering live performances, McGovern and co went to London to find representation. “We went to something like 25 meetings in five days,” he says. “It wasn’t strategised or anything like that. I just set them all up so we were f***ing pelting it around on the tube in 30-degree heat, going into Universal, meeting a bunch of managers, all that s***. They were asking us where the drummer and bass player were, and we were like, ‘They’re just at home.’ But we didn’t have any.”
The two spots had been filled previously by Morgan Wilson and Matt Wilson, both of whom departed the band before The Murder Capital’s first album. After finding representation, the remaining members turned to Blake and Brennan to step in. “We met G around Dublin, just like going to karaoke, doing drugs, having some craic basically,” they say. “And met D through Tom and Fontaines.”
There’s lots of journalists that are like, ‘Are you afraid to become a political band?’ We’re just f***ing human beings
Conversation turns, for a spell, to politics. Like many Irish bands – from Fontaines to trad outfits such as Lankum and The Mary Wallopers – The Murder Capital have been vocal in their support for Palestinians: all the proceeds from “Love Of Country” were donated to Medical Aid for Palestine. There is, says McGovern, good reason why Irish musicians in particular have thrown themselves behind the cause.
“First of all, there’s plenty of historical links,” he says. “The Black and Tans who were sent to rule over the Irish people by the British, and committed some great atrocities. Also, I suppose, we [the Irish] maybe just give less of a f*** than other artists around the world, who are more protective of their loot. Although in some ways it is a political issue, it’s not political at all to us. It’s a humanitarian issue.
“I felt awful on October 7, for those people who were murdered, but it would be difficult for anyone to look at what’s happened since that day and say there’s in any way a balanced response. And I don’t think we’re politicising ourselves by being involved in that. It’s just the right thing to do on a human level. There’s lots of journalists that are like, ‘Are you afraid to become a political band?’ We’re just f***ing human beings.”
There’s an endearing sincerity to the pair of them – that intensity, yes, but one that stops shy of pretension.
“Be nice to us in the article,” says Tuit, as I see off the end of my drink. I laugh, attempting to reassure them. They’re not having it. “That could have been an evil laugh,” he says. No, no, I insist: it was a benevolent one.
McGovern shoots me a sardonic grin. “Benevolence is the f***ing worst weapon of all.”
‘Blindness’ is out on 21 February. The band will be touring Australasia, the UK and Europe beginning on 31 March
