Mixing emotions and humour through music recorded remotely.
Americana UK recently reviewed a superb new album, “The Age Of Self Help”, from duo Rezo, who consists of Dublin based Colm O’Connell and Malaga based Rory McCaid. It’s a really strong collection of what might be called indie folk, but that really doesn’t do justice to the wide range of musical styles within the album. With the help of ace producer Marcus Paquin, who really helped the sound to this collection, this is a really strong and impressive release. Americana UK’s Paul Russell caught up with Colm and Rory from their collective homes, to find out more about the band and this new album. As always, this sort of interview allows us to hear a fascinating insight into the making of a great album and realise just how important and life affirming making is to so many musicians.
How did the name of the band come about?
Colm O’Connell (CO): It’s not really what it means that seems to be important – but how you pronounce it! It’s been mangled by everyone, we say Rezo, others are saying ‘Aretzo’, or ‘Rizo’, there’s all sorts. We say in our blurb that it is from the Spanish ‘I pray’, and I guess we’re saying it in an anglicised way just as you see it – I guess there are lots of latent Spanish speakers out there! Where it came from, we used to play in bands ages ago – but Rory’s been living in Spain for years and when Covid hit we kind of rekindled, making music remotely, and we put together a song called ‘Rezo‘, it was about the pandemic, it was a scary time. It’s a song saying we’ll hopefully come out of this mess eventually and we called the song ‘Rezo’. The work stuck.
Rory McDaid (RM): We were struggling for names, and we thought Rezo, that would be easy!
How did you first meet musically?
RM: We met in secondary school.
CO: We met in the early nineties in our late teens – which quickly became a musical friendship and played in various bands, but mainly in The Mitchiners, which became a college band, we released an album and a couple of singles to not much success. But we remained in contact as friends, but the musical relationship has always been a constant, on and off.
The current lineup is a duo, how long have you been recording as ‘Rezo’?
RM: Since 2020, we were at a big party in Barcelona, we came back and everyone was in lockdown, so we decided to work together
How long have you been making the sort of sound that ‘Rezo’ has now?
RM: The whole genre thing we struggle with, we’re not sure, we don’t like being put in a pigeonhole. We both like such a variety of music styles and when you’re doing it yourselves you have the freedom to explore different styles. We think, if the song goes in a certain direction go with it. We don’t think this is going to be a 3 minute pop song or this is going to be an electronic folk thing. It’s organic, the song tells you, it brings you to where it should go.
CO: We came from a tradition of playing in rock bands, heavy-ish stuff , but we’ve had the ability to be a bit more thoughtful about the music we play now- as there’s only two of us , our sensibilities are a bit more refined – don’t mean to sound pompous – it’s a bit more considered. We’ve found this great sense of freedom in there only being two of us – in the past everything was by committee – now it’s been hugely liberating. We’ve been more agile – the music can be what it is – the genre isn’t important. Working as a smaller unit has unshackled us.
As a duo hundreds of miles apart, we’re aware of artists working post-Covid remotely, so for you guys, what are the challenges of working so far apart from each other?
RM: There’s pros and cons, the pros are that if I send something to Colm and he lives with it for a while and then sends something back. That’s good and productive. On the other hand, there’s a lot of times we’ve said we could get this mix or song done if we had an hour or two together in a studio with a guitar. Both of us can now be more expressive though, exploring avenues together.
CO: It’s funny, working remotely we’re realising a surprising benefit and discipline, you have to pin your colours to the mast. We’ve spent a lot of time noodling around, you go for a drink and the ideas go away but working remotely, you’re forced to work more purposefully. Weirdly the distance has been a liberation, but sometimes a frustration. On this album, we were working with a producer in Canada, Marcus Paquin, and this formed a three-way working relationship, which was challenging. You miss the human contact being in a room with someone, but post-Covid, we can at least occasionally meet up.
You mentioned you worked with a new producer on this new album, I was really impressed with the work Marcus Paquin has given the songs. Can you give us some background on working with Marcus?
CO: It was great working with him, he brought a lot to the party and we wanted to have a sonic sound that was right for the songs commercially. We came across him after listening to The Weather Station’s album ‘Ignorance’ in 2021, a really nice record with a Fleetwood Mac vibe and really good and beautifully produced. He also co-produced The National’s “Trouble Will Find Me” and produced Arcade Fires’ ‘”he Suburbs” and we loved both those albums. Marcus is based in Montreal, so we approached him and said would you be willing to work with these Irish idiots working on this new remote album. So we sent him a new song and he said he was interested. He really didn’t want to get in the way of the music, we would send him the ingredients of the songs and he commented on what he liked and didn’t like about the material. We’d make changes, he then re-assembled the material and he was never sniffy about the sound quality condition of the material we sent him and we thought this was refreshing. He was interested in the essence and the sincerity of the music and the songwriting, the fact that the music wasn’t taking itself too seriously ,even though the subject matter of some of the songs was quite serious.
But it was quite a gamble, wasn’t it?
RM: Yes it was, it was a bit scary and there were a couple of times we thought what the **** are we doing! We felt it was important though, we’d never worked with a producer before, but we knew this was the right next step. We were actually quite choked when he agreed because we weren’t sure he’d take us on , we were choked but quite nervous but he was a really nice guy.
I was fascinated by reading the concept behind the album, looking quite cynically at the state of the world, but doing it in a light hearted way. Can you explain this a little more?
CO: There wasn’t a major concept to start with , and it wasn’t until we finished that we realised a somewhat depressive view of the world with a smile on our face was something effective, and Marcus linked into it. It’s an album about ageing and getting older and life getting harder in the process. It’s not a sprint but it’s a marathon. Personal resilience resonated with us and we celebrated this, we all cope with a lot of shit and this is worth celebrating. I had to cope with the death of my mother during the making of the album, and that inevitably, unconsciously, came out in the songs. But also we’re all amazing as humans and we wanted to celebrate the human condition generally.
You hinted at it there, and in talking with you guys before this interview, I found out that all three of you, Calm, Rory and Marcus, were having to cope with the sad death of loved ones and how the music gave you all a chance to heal in making great music. I wanted to add that listening to the album but not knowing this, that it so resonated with me and the notion that through music, mixing tragic emotional experiences with humour really came out through the various songs. I just wanted to congratulate you all for managing to do this, no easy task in itself.
CO: That’s a beautiful thing to hear ,so thank you. It’s a great reward in a way as for us, this is our third album. we released two albums that we weren’t able to portray that sense in those albums ,so it’s lovely to hear that response that people are getting it and what we wanted to communicate through our music.
What’s it like making music later in life realising how much you know about each other?
RM: For both of us it’s something we need to do, it’s an escape. The most enjoyable part is when we share the music for the first time and that’s the high, the creative process is the most enjoyable part of the process. But it’s really difficult to get noticed nowadays with the amount of music released, unless you’ve got a big record company behind you it’s difficult, it can be a bit frustrating – but the creative process is wonderful.
CO: You don’t do this for money or fame, you quickly come to realise that we have to do this, it’s in us, we’re very prolific. I think it’s a sort of disease, I do this because I really enjoy doing this. There is drudgery, the Spotify element of things, but our mutual friendship, we both have a similar North Star and we know what’s good ,which didn’t really happen in our bands previously. There are highs and lows, but the highs are amazing and enriching in loads of ways – many in unexpected ways.
What are the songs on the album you’re most proud of?
CO: ‘Requiem For A Friend’, it’s evocative and sonically comes together really well. It’s not a single as such, but it’s cool and impressive.
RM: It depends on what mood I’m in, and it’s hard to have a favourite but I do like ‘Live In The Beautiful’.
CO: It’s interesting, but when we’re asked which track most demonstrates what we wanted to achieve with the album it’s ‘Live In The Beautiful’, it has a hooky melody but a Lou Reed talky feel. It definitely represents the feel of the album.
Any thoughts on performing live?
RM: We’re really a studio band and with just the two of us, and we’d love to do that trying to get the right sonic feel that we put onto the album might be quite challenging to do live.
I also wanted to say I love the cover photography.
CO: Ah, it’s a pier here in Dublin. It’s Dun Laoghaire Pier, a bit like Brighton Pier. We did put a lot of thought into that, so thank you.
What next for you both?
CO: We’ve just heard that Mojo has given us a four star review, which is great. We’ve got ten to fifteen new songs we’re now working on, so that’s our focus now.
