The Flaws | Upstair’s @ Dolan’s | October 11

FLAWS AND ALL

This Monaghan fourpiece are working hard and doing well | Achieving much more than Vagueness LEG catches up with Frontman Paul Finn

Since The Flaws self financed debut EP was released in 2005 they have been hooking fans to their polished new wave loveliness with tunes like ‘Sixteen’ and ‘Idolise’ hitting all the right notes and providing a perfect soundtrack to summer. This four piece from Co Monaghan built on their initial critical and popular success with a great performance at the Hard Working Class Heroes Festival in 2005 and they have continued to hone their live show reaching their zenith thus far with an excellent performance at the Crawdaddy Tent at this year’s Electric Picnic.

Back on the road with a busy tour schedule this autumn and some fresh tracks in the repetoire The Flaws Paul Finn tells LEG what they have been up to back home in Monaghan. “ We’re working on new songs on the moment, we don’t want to keep doing the same thing, we want to keep it fresh for the listener but it’s not like we are gonna change everything, we’re not gonna become a four piece accapella group! We don’t want to rewrite the same songs again, so we’re just going through as many songs, as many stages of songwriting as we can in a short space of time to get enough material together to get into the studio and say this is right, this is what we want.”

Lead vocalist and slow guitarist Paul, fast guitarist Shane Malone and bassist Dane McMahon met in school and have been friends since ’99 with drummer Colin joining the band after their first drummer left. Paul expands on the music making process within The Flaws, “ If somebody has an idea finished in their head the entire band will just put their part on it so we bring it together as a group. So I’d say if I came in with a chorus and you know maybe a bit of a melody line on a guitar or something I’d try to show the lads, give them the idea and say ‘youse do something with it, you don’t neccesarily have to do what I showed ya’ but it’s like a starting point. So that’s it really, everybody writes and everybody has ideas and sometimes we write together aswell.”

The Flaws are one of several Irish bands who are unsigned and take care of most of the work of making music, producing and releasing it, touring and everything else that goes with it themselves, treating it as a full time job supplemented by part time work when they are at home. So are they dishing out from the deli in their local Centra? Not quite, Paul is a part time engineer and with the help of an accountant, ‘You’ve got to have one” and “ an amazing P.R lady” the lads are quite content with where they find themselves.

Bringing a fresh twist to the well loved New Wave sound The Flaws have a lot of respect for other Irish bands who made the Electric Picnic line-up such a strong one this year, not least of all Limrockers, GiveAmanAKick, “ Well, we love GiveaManaKick, we actually camped beside them at the Electric Picnic and we did the 2Fm Tour together, ourselves GAMAK and Messiah J and the Expert, we did that tour together about a year and a half ago and we all got to know eachother over the two and half weeks and it was great, sleeping in eachothers beds and all kinds of messing, we got on really well. It was great to see them and I really respect what they do. There’s a huge following for GAMAK in Monaghan, I think they have the same mentality as the Monaghanees.”

‘Idolise’, taken from their Choice Nominated debut album ‘Achieving Vagueness,’ was issued to radio in September as a promo only single to coincide with this tour. The track was recently chosen by RTE as the music for their Euro 2008 closer with 600,000 plus viewers enjoying the specially recorded video piece. A trip to Italy is on the cards for late 2008. Having released ‘Achieving Vagueness’, and following it up with a tour there in March of this year, ‘Sixteen,’ is still receiving airplay on Italian radio and the video is also receiving plays on MTV Italy, the lads are looking forward to returning to the beautiful Milan to play some dates but not before they bring some of their new music to Dolan’s this month. Make no mistake, this will be a good one.

The Flaws play Upstairs in Dolan’s on Saturday October 11.
http://www.theflaws.com
http://www.dolanspub.com