Irish duo Oppenheimer brings quirky musical mix to street fest

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Friday, September 19, 2008

By Brian McElhiney (Contact)
Gazette Reporter

Shaun Robinson, left, and Rocky O'Reilly of Oppenheimer

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For the members of Irish electro-pop duo Oppenheimer, life on the road can lead to unpredictable results.

Take the song “Cate Blanchett,” off the group’s latest album, “Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It,” released in June. The song references a road trip from Nashville to New York City with punk rock band The Mosquitos.

“We were playing a game called ‘Who Am I?’ and someone kept shouting ‘Cate Blanchett’ over and over,” said Rocky O’Reilly, Oppenheimer’s guitarist, keyboard player and vocalist, during a recent phone interview from a tour stop in Boston. “It’s about meeting a couple of strange people, and hanging out, really.”

And as O’Reilly spoke, he and drummer/vocalist Shaun Robinson were being approached to play a one-off show at a tour stop in Boston.

“We just had some breakfast, and now we’re gonna hang out and maybe start a metal band for one night only,” said Oppenheimer guitarist, keyboardist and vocalist Rocky O’Reilly during a recent phone interview from a tour stop in Boston. “We were offered a gig in a bar tonight. We’ve already got a name; we just don’t have any songs yet.”

LarkFest 2008

With: The Nightwatchman (Tom Morello), Eric Hutchinson, Oppenheimer, Val Emmich, Afficionado, The Sense Offenders, Maggie Mayday, Saving Atlantis

When: 10 a.m. Saturday

Where: Lark Street, Albany

How Much: Free

More Info: 434-3861 or www.larkstreet.org, www.weqx.com.

Whether or not this particular incident becomes an Oppenheimer song in the future will remain to be seen. But events on the road have shaped the music on Oppenheimer’s latest offering in more ways than one.

Gaining attention

The band has been gaining attention in the U.S. thanks to its infectious blend of sugar-sweet indie pop, ragged punk rock guitars, swirling electronic blips and the duo’s wry sense of humor. Songs such as “Breakfast in NYC” and “Saturday Looks Bad to Me,” off the group’s self-titled 2006 debut on Bar/None Records, have been making headway on alternative stations such as WEQX-FM. The group’s latest effort has also spawned the single “Look Up.”

This airplay no doubt helped the band earn a spot performing at this year’s LarkFest at Albany’s Lark Street. The festival, put on by the Lark Street Business Improvement District, runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, and features five stages with live music and other performers throughout the day, including two main stages presented by WEQX-FM.

Oppenheimer headlines the Madison Stage, at the corner of Madison Avenue and Lark Street, while Tom Morello’s acoustic folk solo project, The Nightwatchman, headlines the Washington Stage, on the corner of Washington Avenue and Lark Street.

This year, LarkFest has expanded its grounds beyond Lark Street, from Washington Avenue up to Henry Johnson Boulevard, allowing the addition of the Townsend Park Stage. This stage will feature all local artists, along with the Hometown Stage hosted by MotherJudge at the corner of Lark and Chestnut streets.

“Because of more space, we’re offering more entertainment, more vendors and more places for people to go and see more of the city,” said Michael Weidrich, executive director of the Lark Street Business Improvement District. “The city’s done a lot of work on Townsend Park, and this allows people to see more of that.”

LarkFest will mark the first time Oppenheimer’s members have visited the Capital Region. The show is one of 10 or 11 dates on the short 12-day tour, the group’s first U.S. tour since the release of “Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It” and a preview of a larger-scale tour that begins on the West Coast in October. The group has toured the U.S. eight or nine times by O’Reilly’s count, with past dates including the 2006 South By Southwest festival in Austin and shows in New York City and Buffalo.

“We’re still coming to grips with the size of your country,” O’Reilly said.

The duo still live in Belfast, Ireland, where they met and formed Oppenheimer in 2003 through the band Torgas Valley Reds, which Robinson drummed for at the time. Since the release of Oppenheimer’s debut album in June 2006, the band’s members have actually been spending more time in the U.S. than in their home country, quitting their jobs and touring for 15 straight months.

Taking a break

The hectic touring schedule left little time for writing new music or recording. Last summer, the band finally took a break from the road, hiring an old warehouse in Belfast to work out new material and record the new album.

“Every day for three months straight, we came in at 10 in the morning, left at 10 at night; some nights we stayed all night,” O’Reilly said. “We moved drums all around the building, into elevators, the bathroom, trying to think of the most stupid thing we could possibly do and then do it.”

The sessions led to a much harder album than the group’s debut, in part because of their relentless touring. Over the course of 300 shows between the release of the debut album and the start of recording sessions for the new one, the band developed a simple duo live setup, augmented by computers.

“When we started, we debated whether we wanted to be two guys with keyboards and a big rack of computers to make things sonically huge,” O’Reilly said. “But we decided we wanted to have real drums, a real rock show. So Shaun drums and sings, I play guitar and we have a computer setup that we use whenever we record ideas, which means we still have bass that makes people’s trousers flap.”

The influence of the live show is apparent on “Take the Whole Midrange . . .” — songs such as album opener “Major Television Events,” “Stephen McCauley for President” and “Cate Blanchett,” which all possess grinding electric guitars and thumping backbeats along with electronica synth lines.

Multiple influences

Each of the group members’ influences also came into play during the album’s recording. Favorites of both band members include The Pixies, Kraftwerk, Stereolab and Super Furry Animals. Robinson’s influences lean toward jazz and experimental songwriters such as Brian Eno and Tom Waits, while O’Reilly prefers indie and punk.

“It’s a strange mixture; we come together and battle it out, and I really like that,” O’Reilly said. “Shaun is influenced as much by books and movies as music; he doesn’t listen to new music. I’m the obsessive indie kid, constantly searching for new bands and songs to keep me interested.”

Lyrically, the band is all over the map as well, drawing on Robinson’s pop culture influences. The aforementioned “Stephen McCauley for President” advocates for the BBC radio host of “Electric Mainline,” not the U.S. author.

The duo wasn’t alone while recording the album. Matt Caughtran, vocalist for one of O’Reilly’s favorite bands, Los Angeles hardcore combo The Bronx, has a few guest spots on the record. Fellow Belfast musician Angie McCrisken contributed violins and vocals to a few tracks, and Hornby, guitarist for hardcore band We are Knives, plays on “Before and After the Quake.” The two will eventually be joining Oppenheimer on the road, although they won’t be present at LarkFest.

“For some shows, when we do hour-long sets, we’ll bust out a couple of extra people, so instead of two idiots on the stage, we’ll have four people,” O’Reilly said. “It makes us look less silly.”

Reach Gazette reporter Brian McElhiney at 395-3111 or mcelhiney@dailygazette.net.