Dublin four-piece The Riptide Movement are back with their eagerly anticipated new single ‘Fall a Little More in Love’ which was co-produced in Attica Studios with Tommy McLoughlin (Villagers, SOAK).Hailing from Lucan, The Riptide Movement’s music has taken them all over the world from Main Stage at Electric Picnic to Glastonbury and Benicàssim. Their extensive recent ‘Something Special’ tour included a blistering headline performance at Dublin’s Olympia Theatre. From busking on their native Grafton street to playing with the BBC Orchestra, Neil Young and The Rolling Stones, music has taken the band from Lucan to India, America, Russia, Australia and everywhere in between.
I caught up with frontman Malachy Tuohy to talk about the new single, the changes in music promotion due to covid-19 and how the bands sound is growing as well as what they have planned for the coming months and next year.
I spoke with Tuohy and John Dalton last year before their fantastic show at The Olympia Theatre Dublin when the usual format for Indie Buddie was a video interview. However this time due to Covid-19 it is by phone. We began comparing the changes from video to phone interviews for me and that a lot of Tuohy’s interviews are by phone now and this has made promotion a bit easier for him.
“Do you prefer the video interviews? From our own perspective, some of it’s kind of better in some ways for the interviews, because some of the radio ones we would be driving around a lot. I remember last year when we were doing ‘Something Special’ and the fun going around doing all the radio interviews, but you could be driving from say Wexford, Waterford or up to Kilkenny and you’re trying to beat the clock the whole time to get to each interview.So it’s a bit more relaxed. If you’re doing them over the phone it’s more relaxed not to be racing from one part of the country to the other. It’s definitely got some positives anyway. In saying that it would be nice to have a mix, maybe.”
With six critically-acclaimed studio records to their name – most notably The RTÉ Choice Music Prize nominated, Gold selling, Number 1 Album “Getting Through” – The Riptide Movement are renowned for their energetic live shows and soaring, guitar driven anthems. But live shows are something artists can not do at the moment. However the band have put up live streams on their socials as a way of reaching out to their fans and maintaining that buzz.
“Yeah, definitely. It’s a great way of connecting with people, I think, particularly during the lockdown anyway when people were stuck inside their house and you weren’t really allowed out. That was a great outlet for people, to be able to go on the couch, nine times out of ten during that lockdown, a band or an artist, that you like would be going live that evening. I know some of the sound quality would be better than others but if you had a good Facebook Live stream or YouTube stream that had good sound quality it was great, it was the next best thing to being at a gig. Obviously not near as good as going to a gig but, I think to still have that interaction is great”
“We did a couple of the facebook live streams from the house. And one thing I noticed was a lot of people that would be watching us were kind of talking amongst themselves on the stream. So it was a community kind of, a bit of a vibe going on as well, which I thought was interesting. It’s definitely a positive, but it’s not a replacement for live gigs. It will be nice to keep an element of that when things do eventually get back to some kind of normal”
The new single ‘Fall a Little More in Love’ is out now. It is a feel good anthem brimming with earworm melodies heartfelt instrumentation and good vibes and the fans are really enjoying this surprise release
“Yeah, it’s been really positive. It went out on Friday, all the feedback on our social media has been really positive. With radio, as well, we started getting some radio play with it already. It’s been really positive. We’re really happy with it.I think it’s time to release it now because we were holding back releasing the song. We were going to release it next year but we felt now was the right time to put it out. Just with everything that’s happening, and just that it’s a light hearted kind of love song as well, it’s not too serious or too dark so it’s the right kind of energy to put out in these times anyway.”
When I saw the band perform last year in the Olympia Theatre they played ‘Fall a Little More in Love’ as it was a part of the vinyl version on the album. I wondered had they planned to release it as a single.
“Yeah that’s right. Actually it was just on the vinyl because we never released ‘Fall A Little More In Love’ digitally, so it was only on the vinyl. We only sold them at that gig because they were a limited edition.What we are doing now is we are selling signed copies with Golden Disc for record store day this Friday and there’s a special on them as well so anyone that buys it online gets a signed copy, and it includes the new single ‘Fall A Little More In Love’ so kind of worked out well holding that song back.”
It feels like this track blends plenty of the lovable elements in their previous albums – the ‘Ghost’ album was quite keys or synth based then ‘Something Special’ was indie based with sharp guitar elements and ‘Getting Through’ was an anthemic-oriented album. ‘Fall a Little More in Love’ seems to take the best aspects of those albums and expand on this. This was a natural result of the bands progression and not intentional.
“ I think it’s just something that came organically. I think when you’re producing it, you’re just going to come up with all different ideas and stuff but it wouldn’t be a conscious thing where we go. Okay, what’s the best elements of the band and maybe put them together but actually that’s a really good way of looking at it maybe that’s something that we might try and think about when we’re writing newer songs ; what’s actually the best elements of the band and try and put all that into one song. I never actually thought about it like that before. You’re after planting a seed in my own brain now, that’s a really good idea. Yeah, that’s after hitting me for six there, good stuff.”
Tuohy misses the touring which comes with promoting new material. However he has found the break revitalising as The Riptide Movement have been touring for over 10 years, so time to do normal things is refreshing.
“Yeah, definitely. Usually you’d have a tour or something to coincide with this or a few live dates. So this time around everything’s very much online and then, even with that, because with the new restrictions that came in again. We were hoping maybe to do a full band Facebook Live session but last week the new restrictions brought in where you can’t have any more than a certain amount in the one place and from three different households so it’s kind of hard to perform as a band and put it out online as well, so it’s kind of just trying to figure out other ways of doing it”
“What we have done has worked well. On a few videos we’ve done it remotely, where, I’d play the guitar and sing and then I send the video on to the lads and they add their individual parts to it. Then we’d mix it all together, and edit it up as a video. So that works pretty well as well. I suppose you just have to find ways of doing it remotely. I’m looking forward to when gigs do eventually come back and get back playing. We have done a lot of touring, over the last 10 years. It’s unheard of, like, even just take Saturday night like a Saturday night in August. I can’t remember. it’s probably 10 years since the last time I ever had a weekend off, anytime during the summer. I’m enjoying it at the moment. It’s nice to have these weekends back and be able to get to live a normal life I suppose”
“I’m definitely looking forward to going back gigging. I’ll probably enjoy gigging even more now, because it’s been taken away from us for a while. As I said we have toured intensely the past 10 years or so, so it is nice to get some time away from it. The one thing I’ve learned myself throughout the lockdown is just appreciating the simple things really, as opposed to, I’ve found, I’ve always been so busy so it’s just been moving on to the next project and next thing. So the last six months feels like, even though we were still releasing stuff and writing it’s just everything has slowed down a bit. I’m just enjoying the downtime, really, to be honest and definitely feeling the benefit from it”
Artists have had to learn new skills to connect with fans such as navigating through platforms such as Zoom. The Riptide Movement have been editing their own videos and putting their own content online themselves but this wasn’t too much of an ordeal for Tuohy
“Last year I would have got into a lot of the edits and we started making the bands videos last year, and then the content for online and I was learning that as I was going last year so that’s come in very useful this year, because it makes it easier and quicker to get things up online, or to do these little videos remotely with the band. But that would be more so editing in terms of Zoom and stuff like that, I’m still trying to get my head around it. I suppose it just takes some getting used to. But everyone’s in the same boat aren’t they? Everyone’s trying to catch up on how all of this works.”
I wondered if Tuohy felt pressure to write during this time or is he just allowing his creative flair to decide when a song will come to fruition.
“I have been writing and some of it has been good and some of it has been bad and that’s just the way it is. You just have to keep at it, and I always write anyway. I suppose I’m not putting too much pressure on myself. At the start I thought, I’m going to write like a couple albums here. And that wasn’t happening, and I was thinking I don’t really want to put this kind of pressure on. So, for now I’m just writing as I go, and some of its good and some of it’s bad. Then when it comes time to start on an album which probably will be next year. I’ll start putting a little bit more pressure on myself because, pressure seems to work for me a little bit, if I’ve got a deadline or a timeline that I have to get something finished by”
“So it’s nice to have a lot of ideas in the can and some songs finished, some kind of half finished, and then to approach an album with a timeline. It makes you have to finish it then because there’s a definite deadline. Sometimes you can leave a song unfinished for years, which is no good because the longer you leave the song unfinished, the harder it is to finish it because you’re always trying to make it perfect, maybe, putting too much time into it as opposed to just letting it flow naturally. You can lose the whole essence of the song or that little spark that drives the song or that it’s built around, but then, other times, it can work the other way. You might have a really cool melody or riff and you’ve written a song to that, and you listen back to it and you actually go “no there’s nothing in that song that’s really that interesting or that good” and then you can re-write it into something else.That happened with one of our biggest songs ‘Changeling’ because that was a completely different song before we went into the studio and it came out a completely different song. It wrote itself really in the studio, so it does happen. I think with songs, they find their own way onto the albums.”
“It’s just trusting the process I suppose. In a mad way even though that sounds really all over the place. It kind of works and it tends to work for us when we’re in the studio. We have the songs and the ideas and the ones that make the album are always the ones that made themselves, because you could have 15 or 20 songs when you start the pre-production on an album and you bring that down usually to around 10 or 12 songs, and you’d be surprised the ones that always find a way on to it. It’s a mad way to think about it but they always find their own way and you just have to trust that process. “
The Riptide Movement will be celebrating 15 years as a band next year and they have something special planned.
“ I’d say this will probably be our only release this year and then next year, the band is together 15 years, believe it or not, which is Mad ! but we’re going to plan something special for that to celebrate 15 years together as a band. So, we have a couple of ideas with an orchestra, and we’re going to put out something next year. Then we’re going to be working on another new album, which we will probably bring out the year after. We’ve lots of ideas in the pipeline. It would be cool to have some sort of party or a concert with other bands, maybe for us to do something like that would be cool.”
What better way to mark 15 years as a band then another phenomenal live show from The Riptide Movement. With the bands soaring, guitar driven tracks and vibrant energy it would be the perfect thing to look forward to after all this Covid craziness ends. Seen as the band are always evolving and refining their sound, if ’Fall a Little More in Love’ is anything to go by the next album is going to be another smasher. I can not wait !
Stream ’Fall a Little More in Love’ below
Author : Danu
