Interview: Music City
A Conversation With Conor Lumsden
Conor Lumsden knows a thing or two about power pop, but his relationship with the genre is complicated.
He’s the long-time drummer/singer/songwriter for Dublin’s The Number Ones, a one-time hired gun for Paul Collins (The Nerves, The Beat), and he did a stint as The Speedways guitarist, among many other musical accomplishments. These days, he fronts the band Music City which released its stunning debut album in February.
“I think power pop is some of the best music ever made…and some of the worst music ever made. My old boss Paul Collins put it this way, ‘There is nothing worse than a bad power pop song,’” Lumsden told me for the interview below.
“I was trying to stretch out on Welcome to Music City without ‘doing a thing,’ and I hope there’s enough variety in the songs to warrant people coming back to them and not getting bored.”
Mission accomplished.
Tracks like opener “It’s Alright,” “When The Day Comes By,” “Pretty Feelings,” and “The Conversation” easily demonstrate Lumsden’s power pop pedigree. In other moments—including the infectious “Do I?,” one of the first Music City songs he wrote—Lumsden veers into more roots-y singer/songwriter territory, without sacrificing the hooks and melodies that provide the sturdy foundation of his core sound.
“I think the over-refreshed, sad-Catholic mode of a Paul Westerberg or Shane MacGowan is my natural inclination, compared to, say, the more optimistic side of things in a song like ‘Pretty Feelings,’” Lumsden said. “In ‘Do I?’ I was leaning on the influence of those heroes mentioned above, as well as Kris Kristofferson, Tom T. Hall, and Roger Miller, who is a big one for me.”
I caught up with Lumsden by email to discuss the long road to releasing Welcome To Music City, his evolution as a songwriter, fatherhood, future touring plans, and when excellent handclaps turn out to be uncredited ass claps.
Conor Lumsden Interview
I’m loving your new album. Can you tell me a little about how Welcome to Music City came together?
Conor Lumsden: Thank you for loving it! Thank you to anyone who has taken the time to listen.
Welcome to Music City came together over a loooooong time. The live recordings were done really quickly, I was determined to get the tracking down as fast as possible in order to catch that sweet spot where the band are just about to get comfortable playing the songs (that’s usually around the third take, class!)
I didn’t really have the benefit of having all the players at hand to rehearse much or jam it out, so I had to do it like a punk Steely Dan and call in the troops from far and wide to do a solo here or a backing vocal there. After the live tracking was done, I obsessed over the small stuff that most people don’t actively notice, but that overall makes the album sound like it does.
I studied a lot of audio engineering to try to get my head around how certain sounds are recorded, and I had the help of some very talented people to put it into action.
“It’s Alright” is one hell of an album opener. What was the inspiration?
Conor Lumsden: I wanted to open the album as if you were being rudely awoken from a dream. A “stepdad’s alarm clock” is where you wake from drinking too much and the alcohol wears off before the sugar and you wake in a panic because reality is sitting on your chest like a demon. I wanted it to be about that and trying your best to be ignorant and keep going as you were going. Musically, I wanted it to feel like going downhill in a shopping trolley, which is how much of my life has felt.
I kind of love that the credits for that song include “handclaps.” Why is that an important part of your recordings?
Conor Lumsden: You have to give credit where credit is due. The right handclap can completely lift a song. It’s usually a great reviver when you’ve been laboring over a particular instrument or vocal take—you set up the mics, go in with whoever is in the studio, and get to move around a bit more and get the blood pumping.
It’s great because it’s pretty low-stakes compared to other parts of a recording, but if someone claps offbeat you have to go back to the start, so it’s this amazing feeling of making the song sound better while also trying to remember the pattern and not laughing or melting into a trance and fucking it up. Way better to have three people doing that and having a laugh than using a sample or something.
(I just remembered that “It’s Alright” is actually not handclaps but is in fact ass claps, but the contributors didn’t want the credit.)
“Little Favour” is a really beautiful song. I love the orchestration and vocal harmonies. Is that the arrangement you envisioned when you first wrote the song?
Conor Lumsden: The idea with that song was not to go for maximum impact and instead have something that isn’t trying to grab your attention. Whatever was the opposite of what power pop is.
I wrote the song after being a film extra on this Jimi Hendrix biopic that had André 3000 in it. There was this career extra really putting his all into his—I guess you can call it a performance—he was just walking by a window, but he was really doing the rounds with the crew members trying to get a speaking role.
The arrangement was brought to life by two very important friends in my life, the siblings Ailbhe and Fiachra. It’s the first time they’ve actually played on a song together, and I love that. Fiachra did some keyboards and Ailbhe did the string arrangement. I used to play in bands with both of them separately, so having them play on this meant a lot to me. The elaborate arrangement aggrandising this quite pathetic ambition of a film extra wanting to get a speaking line was the contrast that either makes the song sadder or funnier, depending on how you look at it. Is this guy a hero or a fool?
It made me think a lot about how it is to pursue any kind of grand dream you have in life and how you often feel simultaneously like a complete hack and a misunderstood genius who hasn’t been given enough of a chance.
“Pretty Feelings” (along with “Do I?”) is one of the first tracks you released under the Music City band name. It sounds really great in the context of the new album. How do you think you’ve evolved as a songwriter since it was first released in 2018?
Conor Lumsden: I think my songwriting is better in that I understand music more and can get to where I want the song to go with less turmoil—but the rare moments of inspiration are what matter more than how effectively you can elaborate on them. Songwriters with a capital “S” would argue with that, but I feel like you can always tell the difference.
Those two songs are very heart-on-the-sleeve. They say directly what I was feeling without really tapping into anything else, which is all well and good, and for a song called “Pretty Feelings,” what more could you expect? But I’d like to think I’ve moved on a bit from that without getting into drippy song-poetry or having the lyrics get in the way of the song as a whole.
There are a few songs on the album that you can listen to on a surface level, but that have a bit more meat underneath if you really listen.
You’ve been in some of the best modern power pop bands (The Number Ones, The Speedways, et al.). What is your relationship with genre in general, and power pop in particular?
Conor Lumsden: I’m really drawn to the strength of a melody above everything else, and that leads me down a certain path musically. If power pop is rock music with pop hooks boiled down into a highly concentrated syrup, catchy melodies played by an energetic rock band with guitars up front, then as an idea that sounds good to me!
I like it a lot less when it’s done as a genre exercise. The problem with genre writing is that when the music and lyrics are preprogrammed and trite, it might as well be AI. There are people who can use clichés in places with a wink and a nod and it works, but there’s a lot of music out there where I’m not sure they get the joke and are the musical equivalent of an Austin Powers impressionist.
Lyrics don’t have to be literature. They can be silly, they can mean nothing, and still be incredible—but don’t ruin a song by slapping some meaningless stock phrases over it.
Overall, though, I don’t think people should be restricted by genre. It’s always great to stretch out. I started “It’s Alright” with the blues trope “Woke up this morning...” though I’m not sure if that qualifies as genre switching.
I love Jonathan Goes Country, or that song by The Streets, “Fit But You Know It,” it almost sounds like “Gordon is a Moron.” Steely Dan have all those jazz ambitions, and I absolutely love them. Those writers are all smart and have real feeling. I guess it comes down to if someone is a good artist or not!
I’ve had “The Conversation” on repeat lately. What came first when you wrote that one—the guitar line, or the chorus hook?
Conor Lumsden: The intro guitar part came first. I was playing around with something I learned from listening to Bob Mould play in Hüsker Dü, where you have a sort of drone thing in the chords, where some notes stay the same and the rest of it changes. It’s not as full-on as how it started, but that’s how it started.
Then I did the verses and the chorus arrived. It’s the simplest arrangement on the album: two guitars, bass, drums, and vocals. Anything I tried adding after that took something away. I tried some Rhodes, Wurlitzer, some Oberheim synth pads à la Jeff Lynne, but it just sounded right as it was.
It was also the hardest song to mix, I think for the same reason the arrangement is so simple. You have to make the right choices when you only have a few crayons in the box.
Interesting. I wouldn’t have teased out the Hüsker Dü influence (but might be one reason I’m drawn to it). In a world of endless layering and editing opportunities, is simplicity becoming a lost recording art?
Conor Lumsden: If you’re gonna steal, you have to cover your tracks! One thing I notice about reviews a lot these days is that people only really discuss how something sounds, but not really much about what’s underneath. There’s a lot on the form but not as much on the content, which is a shame. It’s fun to listen to bands and be able to pinpoint where the guitar sound came from but even more fun to notice where the influence comes from under the presentation!
Layering is one of the beautiful capabilities about recording, but yeah I think it makes it harder to make better choices about arrangement. Most of the great bands pre home recording had to work out where each instrument fits in a song by playing together and that doesn’t necessarily mean simple but it meant they knew where the guitars sit or how hard the drummer should play or how the dynamics should be in real time in real space rather than designing that sound in a studio and relying on the mix for something to sound the way it should. Those bands often sound incredible live too and they can pick up any old guitar or play on any stage and it will sound like them. Some of the really simple arrangements and recordings still sound better than the 24/48/96 and now ∞track studios had the capability to do. I think there’s only so much room on a recording, so even if things are layered, something needs to come down for something to come up. Then again a wall of sound where everything bleeds into one another is a fabulous thing.
How do you know when to resist temptation?
Conor Lumsden: I think you know you’re doing it wrong when you are adding more and more layers to cover up a bad song or performance. I like intricate recordings as much as simple ones, but once you’re serving the song, then you can do no wrong. When on a session you may want to get to use a certain instrument or piece of gear just to use it, but you’ll find out pretty soon if the song agrees with you on that!
I saw you did a short tour around the album’s release. Any future tour plans for Music City?
Conor Lumsden: We had a baby boy right before the album came out, so combined with this Moby Dick of an album, it was the two biggest things I’ll ever do happening at once.
The release was a lot of work. Even if most of the work on the music was done before, the artwork was a lot of effort, and to add to the workload we decided to do an exhibition of cover photographer Timothy O’Connell, designs by City Rocker Eddie Kenrick, sculpture by Blaine Hurdle, posters by Raissa, and all the props we made for the back cover at The Social in London, where the launch gig was. That put a lot of pressure on us.
So taking a small break from touring so that I can be close to home for a bit makes sense. My partner Raissa is incredible, and there’s a huge likelihood I’d still be obsessing over minutiae to this day if it wasn’t for her insane hard work and help in getting the album to where it ended up.
I love nothing more than playing to new people, though, and the band is shit-hot, so we’ll be back out as soon as possible. Feel free to get in touch, people!
A debut album and your son arriving at the same time is a potent combo. Congrats. Does it feel more like a milestone or a crossroads?
Conor Lumsden: It sure is! It feels like both, to be in love and to start a family is such a lucky thing to get to experience. Finishing this album exactly how I wanted makes me feel like sisyphus finally getting the boulder over the hill! And of course with both family and music you have to keep them both fed and watered or they get away from you.
My main goal now is to give them both all I can give without neglecting the other!
Liked it on first listen.