We sat down with Chris Breheny aka Moncrieff in the cosy Library Bar in The Central Hotel Dublin. With the fire glowing, warming the room with its radiance Breheny discussed all – from how he creates his tunes to the events that have brought about his new EP ‘The Early Hurts’.
“Does anyone actually make it to 12 pubs though really?” Breheny inquired as we sat down with our coffee. The very Irish, 12 pubs of Christmas is a boggling conundrum as we wonder does everyone just give up after a few pubs and settle in one just to avoid the hassle of downing one pint and rushing off to another pub. “ I have squinty eyes in the morning” he announces as we take a few pictures “I can’t really see in the morning”. He proceeds to ask me about the blog “Is this your baby”. As I explain the origins of Indie Buddie, I realise I appear to be the interviewee rather than interviewer. His fascination on how bands, artists and media outlets begin becomes apparent as he describes how the Moncrieff moniker was born.
“I had moved to London, 5 years ago with no musical experience really. I was in a band for like a year with my mates before that. It was a Waterford band and we just played covers in our parents sitting rooms, but I became super obsessed with it.I was like I want to go to London. I had no idea what I was doing.I was speaking to one friend who had experience with music in London and he said go to the open mics. I ended up going to one in Shoreditch. It was crazy mobbed I think the BBC were down there filming that evening and all the best people had turned out and I thought oh Jesus Christ! All throughout the night I thought I’m not cut out for this shit.”
After being skipped past on the list Breheny gathers himself to give it a go and asks can he go onstage.
“I was going to sing a cover and ended up singing a song I had written before, about my brother and sister who had passed away.At least that would be real because I was nowhere near the skills of these people but at least it’s from the heart. A guy came up to me after. A guy called William Scott Moncrieff and he was this punter dude.This early 30’s, banker guy, nothing to do with music. He bought me a beer and we ended up having a chat. A lot of our stories had parallels – he’d lost a brother when he was young and he grew up in London and didn’t really have anyone and he just got it. Its hard to describe. Its like something the universe gives you that little thing and you can’t describe why. But you’re very sure that’s what you have to do.It’s so obvious. We left it at that he gave me some money for my taxi home because there was no buses at that time, but I left and the feeling I had after that was sweet lets go, and that was 5 years ago and I liked his name Moncrieff. “
He laughed in astonishment at the fact that there is someone out there that made such an important impact on his life and has no idea as Breheny never met the guy again. With such powerful and soulful vocals you would be forgiven for assuming Breheny always sounded so amazing. However he assures me this was not the case.
“I wouldn’t even dare show you videos of me singing before I moved to London. Jesus Christ !” he laughs. “ I wasn’t great, I mean I could do a bit. Me and my brother used to sing in the little school choir. A little church, country choir when we were like 8 and then I went to secondary school and you have to cut out the singing because singing is social suicide. Come on, in Waterford you don’t sing down there, if you want to do music the only opportunity is to do musicals or be in the school choir and those where both social suicide and all you want to do is fit in. So I stopped singing until I found a Ray Charles CD and I had never heard somebody sing like that. So I mimicked that, really badly, for a long time and I guess that’s where it came from”
Moving to London was the push that Breheny needed
“ I needed to learn so much In such a short space of time and… it was outside my comfort zone. I feel like I love Ireland so much but life would have been too comfortable for me. I would have had all my friends in Dublin, my girlfriend back home, sports and everything and all these distractions. If you really want to get real with what you want to do and achieve you have to get real with the amount of work that you need to put in. I didn’t even know where to start. Let alone what I needed to do. Dublin wouldn’t have worked, I needed to go somewhere that forced me to have nothing to do but music.”
Life in school for Breheny was a mixed bag. The image of a young man trying to find a medium between the things he loved and surviving school life was a task.
“ I never sang properly again until I was 18. It’s crazy I used to get bullied because I played hurling, like waterford minor. I wasn’t ever amazing I was always the lad who was fourth sub, third sub but always really trying hard to really get on the team, ” he laughs. “Just because I loved it but everyone on the team knew that I did some musicals and someone would see your face in the back of the paper somewhere and you would get the piss ripped out of you. Musicals were great growing up because obviously there was more girls than boys doing them and it would be constant flirting for like three weeks”
Breheny’s style of music is self described on his social media as “neo-noir soul”. His sound combines a mix of both classic gritty blues and modern urban pop influences. He is constantly developing and changing his sound with each track he releases delving deep into his repertoire of emotive melodies and gripping soundscapes.
“ I don’t think I came up with the sound. I feel like we are the generation who grew up and have listened to Spotify and stuff. So you are exposed to so many different genres. I could show you the last 10 songs I listened to and they are all completely different genres. My stuff is just an amalgamation of everything of what I am influenced by. My voice is soulful and I won’t be able to get away from that but everything else I just take it as it comes. Whatever I think is a good song.”
As well as working as a recording artist in his own right, Breheny has also worked with some of the world’s biggest artists, perhaps most notably as a backing vocalist for Adele .
“ yes that was a very mad couple of days.I came up super randomly from a friend of mine, he’s a drummer and he played with a lot of bigger pop acts. I was on a ferry back from Fishguard to Rosslare and he sent me a text and I was on one bar of signal just leaving the port in the middle of Wales and I sent a message back saying yeah and I just got the two ticks.It was mad though such a cool experience.I learned a lot about how the whole production was set up, how many people were involved and all the preparation that goes into it.It was such an eye opening experience. She was amazing.Her voice was incredible. “
The new EP ‘The Early Hurts’ is a summary of all the most significant people, places and events that happened to Breheny from moving to London until the age of 22.
“ I wanted to frame that part of my development. It’s a collection of stories.”
Its an emotional EP and a very powerful expression of Breheny as an artist.
“Haha! I’m an emotional guy. I think the best songs are when you hit a vibe, you connect with something, the lyrics then come really quickly. A lot of the time with my songs I’ll probably spend two days writing the song, but if you put a camera in there or a stopwatch on the moments of inspiration they would probably add up to like two hours max over like 20 hours because other times you are just out of it and you are not connected to whatever is going to come through you.Lyrics, they come in shoots. I will be fumbling around for ages and then in an instant I will have a verse and then I will be back to hitting against a wall with absolutely no hope for another hour and then something will happen. You have to just stick in there.”
A stand out track on the EP is ‘Villains’. It has a bluesy sultry tone with a Rag’n’Bone Man vibe and apparently is the flagship track of a bunch of songs like this. He also gives us a sneaky insight into one particular track ‘Serial Killer’
“ I had come out of a really weird relationship with this girl.She was just a bit mad, There is a song called Serial Killer that I wrote about her and then I bought in to this idea of you can do whatever the fuck you want in relationships and getting into bad habits and not caring in a bad way and thinking that was cool. Villains is cool I really like the vibe of it.I really want to do a video of it. There is going to be more songs down the line with that vibe.”
A very cheery and charming chap Breheny laughs and banters his way through our interview with an honest and joyful approach. I couldn’t help but notice the contrast between his intense performances and his fun-filled attitude outside of his performances – especially his performance of Selena Gomez’s ‘Lose You To Love Me’ on RTE2FM.
“Yeah it’s so funny I can’t help it. It is what it is. I remember looking back at it and I knew the recording was good and I didn’t think it was bad but I had a feeling that people were going to see these ridiculous faces that I pull and be like oh what’s this lad up to. I’ve been trying to carve what I do on a stage or when I do a live song and it just feels forced so whatever, it is what it is.It has to be sincere”
On the topic of advice for other artists Breheny feels pressure to leave some words of wisdom.
“ Oh I should prepare for this. I would say… don’t ever define yourself as your vision of the past.You should make an active choice to define yourself by your vision of yourself in the future and literally do that as in say I see myself doing this .. whatever future me is going to do… so what does present me have to do to get there. We all do this about the past. You can actively choose to go forward and that will define who you are.Life is so short you should go do what you want to do.If you do it enough and enjoy it, it never feels like wasted time.You will eventually become good at it and when you are good at it someone will pay you for it.Have faith in yourself and don’t care what other people think.It’s easier said than done but you have to be true to yourself.”
Moncrieff has a show in The Academy, Dublin: Thursday 16th April, 2020. He has been in the studio in Brighton finishing off six tracks for next year.
“ These tracks are where I’m at now. Its going to be very different. I’m thinking ah no,, people in Ireland are just starting to really enjoy the EP and I’m just going to give them this.” He winces “ we will see, but I’m really looking forward to it” ….. so are we.
Stream ‘The Early Hurts’ below
Author : Danu
