Bell X1 all fired up as they return for Galway gig

Bell X1 return to Galway this Saturday, December 3, following their success at this year’s Galway Arts Festival when they sold out the Big Top.

And they have been busy since then as front man Paul Noonan explains from Atlanta – Bell X1 are currently on a US tour.“We were here in June, so we’re hitting a few places we hadn’t been back then,” he says. “We’ve just been to Austin and we’re here now in Atlanta; we’re going to Nashville next.”

The trip across the Atlantic is due to the success of Bell X1’s past two albums, Flock and Blue Lights on the Runway. They have appeared on prime time chat shows hosted by Conan O’Brien and David Letterman. For Noonan, touring the US is the stuff of rock and roll fantasy.

“Since we started making music, it’s what we wanted to do, get out here and get on a bus. Travel coast to coast; there’s a sort of romance to it, that being in a band you sort of dream of doing. So when it finally happened we really went for it.”

Earlier this year, Bell X1 released Bloodless Coup. That album saw the band veer into more electronic territory, while still maintaining their knack for writing hooks.

“It’s a funny one,” says Paul. “It’s probably our most electro-sounding record but it was the most organically recorded. In the sense that we went and rehearsed and rehearsed, as a five-piece band, until we felt that we were ready, and then went and recorded it in a proper studio – quickly.

“Initially, when I wrote the songs I would’ve been on a laptop, using a lot of that stuff with view to maybe replacing some of it later on,” he adds. “But it just never happened! And it seemed to fit.”

Although Noonan’s voice makes it easy to pick out a new Bell X1 tune on the radio, every album sees the band tinker with their sound. Given their popularity, this is a risky manoeuvre – but they don’t seem like a band who subscribe to the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ philosophy.

“There’s always a desire for a little of the unexpected,” says Paul. “I suppose what we find that what does it for us in the studio is to take songs that are fairly traditionally written and then dress them in ways that we’d never really used before.”

For a band who like to throw something new into the mix, Bell X1 must get very tempted when they hit the road. Many musicians return from jaunts in the States with new toys.

“We had to stop that!” laughs Paul. “We’ve done a lot of that in the past and you end up dragging all sorts of s**t home. You get stung for it at the airport!

“We were in Vicksburg, Mississippi, yesterday. These places that you’d never get to unless you were passing through and often they’ll have little music shops with weird and wonderful stuff, like an old banjo that has lived.”

For the making of Bloodless Coup Bell X1 spent some time in London’s Abbey Road studios. Though they had just trod the same hallowed ground as The Beatles, they found themselves brought back to earth by inclement weather.

“It was that mad period just before Christmas last year,” recalls Paul. “We ended with thousands of others a lot worse off, like families. Sleeping on the floor at Gatwick – it’s a great leveller!”

In the past, studio trickery has made it challenging for Bell X1 to bring certain elements of their songs to a concert setting. But the way Bloodless Coup was recorded made it an easier record to bring to the stage.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.