Between Push-Ups and Poetry: Gigi's Recovery with The Murder Capital

By Alexia Mihaila

With an interview, we delve deep into the enigmatic world of the art post-punk Irish band The Murder Capital (TMC) with their vocalist, James McGovern, and guitarist Damien Tuit. From discussing their haunting post-punk sound to unravelling the secrets behind their latest album, "Gigi’s Recovery”, the conversation touches on mosh pit fears, pre-show rituals, and the quirky inspirations that drive their songwriting. Join the journey as the band opens up about their influences, the creation of their record label, and the unexpected stories behind tracks like "Ethel" which almost didn't make it to the final tracklist.

RARE: How is the tour going so far, you’ve toured the US, Europe and now the UK? I’ve been meaning to see you for the longest time.

JAMES: It’s been great honestly. It’s always exciting to play in London cause we spent a bit of time living here as well. Feels like a home-town show in some regard. Are you going to be in the mosh pits or the balcony?

RARE: Here’s the thing, I like music that incites mosh pits but I’m terrified of them.

JAMES: I hear ours are very welcoming.

RARE: Do you guys have any pre-show rituals?

JAMES: The huddle before we go on is probably the most consistent and I think we go through our own individual rituals. You start to see people pick-up little habits.

DAMIEN: I’ve been doing twelve push-ups. I’ve seen great results too! Twelve is all you need.

JAMES: He’s getting stronger and catering to his OCD at the same time.

DAMIEN: Any other hobbies, I also like to get a little food in before the show. We like to eat. 
JAMES: We’re so institutionalised by the tour right now that we think eating is a hobby.

RARE: Speaking of your music now, how do you go about writing songs?

JAMES: What we try to bring forward all the time is being as open to each other as possible. Leave all your, sort of…

DAMIEN: preconceptions

JAMES: …preconceptions at the door.

DAMIEN: We finish each other’s sentences. We had an interesting moment recently with a demo sample where James’s lyrics ended up matching the phonetic sounds of what the sample sounded like. But they came intdependently, he hadn’t heard the sample.

RARE: And in terms of lyrics, where do you draw your inspirations from?

JAMES: From anything. 

DAMIEN: From everything. (James responds chuckling back with “From Nothing” making a play of words in reference to their song For Everything)

JAMES: My technique is trying to just be able to surprise myself when I’m writing. I don’t want to find a lyrical voice, that just naturally happens. Once you start writing you’ll start to see you have more tendencies of roads more travelled. 

RARE: What are some of TMC’s references?

JAMES: The Strokes, The Cure, Bob Dylan, Joy Division, Radiohead, Van Morisson, Kendrick Lamar.
DAMIEN: Alex G, Nick Cave.

RARE: You started your own record label, Human Seasons, why did you decide to self-publish?

JAMES: We decided from the beginning with our manager company to retain as much power and control over the destiny of our masters and our recordings. 

DAMIEN: It can be a bureaucratic nightmare. Once you start making it you get to the end of the road of what was nice about it all. Then you get to play the music live and it gets good again.

RARE: Your two records are incredible, but speaking of your latest one, ‘Gigi’s Recovery’. What is it about?

JAMES: I remember when it came out, I watched like one or two of these YouTube reviewers dissecting it and being so sure what it is about. This one guy was so sure Gigi was my ex-girlfriend, and that this other guy would just go on about how depressing it is. It’s a self-reflective record. It’s about not pondering your desires anymore and instead being left in a serum of change.

JAMES: They are just characters really that represent deeply personal things. We put a character on it and now everyone thinks it is about them. I just always thought Ethel was a beautiful name but with Gigi, it was by circumstance. Gigi was just like this sign to a car recovery place called Gigi’s Recovery. Then we just conceptualised that into a number one record.

JAMES: It always starts with a joke for us. It started with a song and gave the whole record its tone.

RARE: And speaking of songs that made it onto the record, I heard Ethel was not even supposed to be on the final tracklist?

DAMIEN: We gave up on it for ages then I showed some demos to my girlfriend Veronica and she loved it. That’s a good metric cause she doesn’t think about music in the same way, she doesn’t over analyse it.

JAMES: We brought it back. It’s our favourite tune to play live.

RARE: Throughout your records I can see elements of water either in the form of waves or crying, what are some of the themes you have in your music?

JAMES: All the themes are just from the subconscious and then in turn a lot of my youth was spent by the ocean, on the ocean, in the ocean. I see a lot of that always returning.

RARE: I got some lyrics if you could break them down. From For Everything: I am a weightless diver, terrified and free.

JAMES: I came up with it when  I was on a boat trip to Oslo. There was a chrome statue of a diver in the port. I think it’s something about being suspended in motion, being outside of gravity’s reach.

RARE: In Green & Blue why did you pick those specific colours?

JAMES: That was about my friend who took his own life and it was a bit of reflecting on how I wish I had more time to bring him back to basics. When life has become too complex, to correlate the green and blue is just to bring it back to the land and sky, the simple things that we exist within.

RARE: Your new single Heart in The Hole sounds different to everything else you put out. How did you decide to go in that sonic direction?

JAMES: There are a lot of songs that we wrote in that period that could’ve been the single, but this one just stood out. It was one of those moments where as we started playing together it unrevealed itself very quickly. It felt very free and exciting. You just make the decision on where you go based on an emotional reaction not on a logical thought.