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Declan O’Rourke plays Glór


DECLAN O’Rourke is playing at Glór  on Saturday, May 21.
The singer, who made his name with hits such as ‘No brakes’ and ‘Galileo’ has returned to the scene with his third album, Mag Pai Zai.
He is now an independent artist, and says that he needed more control over his own output. “Maybe I knew what I wanted too much. I’ve learned from experience that there are certain things that are very valuable about having a record company. But I felt it was time to start owning my own music. I don’t own my first record (Since Kyabram, 2005) and had very little control over that and the second record (Big Bad Beautiful World, 2008) in how they get into the shops, how they’re packaged, presented and so on.”
He says he is happier with Mag Pai Zai, than the others. “If it weren’t my own record I’d say it blows the other two albums out of the water. The second album was a huge learning curve. I listened to it recently, almost by accident, and I kinda liked it.  But I feel as if I wandered off the path with it. Whatever the reasons, I found it difficult getting up on stage, with just a guitar, and holding onto an audiences’ attention. I went for more of a band-orientated sound on the second album, more robust music. I was having fun, for sure, but the songs definitely weren’t built as solidly as they were on the first album, and as they are on the new one.”
The songs on the new album came in a flourish following a sustained bout of writer’s block. While he had generally written a song a month for ten years, Declan went through an 18-month spell where he didn’t write anything. Over analysis was to blame, he says. “It got to the point where I was censoring myself, or editing my ideas too quickly. I was too ready to say that this song wasn’t going to work or that song sounded too much like something else. It got so bad that I ended up in a place where I wasn’t writing anything at all.”
A burst of creativity followed, once the logjam was freed. “I wrote more songs in 2009 than I ever did in any other year. Practically all of the songs on Mag Pai Zai came from that burst of songwriting.”
He says how he looked at songwriting changed greatly. “Probably up to the second record and the aftermath of it, I felt I knew what I was doing. I had a system for songwriting and was pretty sure I knew the process. But when that stopped, I felt I had to tear up the rulebook. Perhaps I was scrutinising it too much, so I had to unlearn, throw away what I thought I knew, and admit to myself that I didn’t know how to do it. I just had to allow ideas through and see where they took me.”
The new album was mixed at New York’s Platinum Sound Recording Studios, and features contributions from violinist Steve Wickham and internationally renowned arranger Fiachra Trench.
He says he got a lot of help on the new record. “Because of the way the music industry is going, and the way the world is right now money-wise there seems to be this surplus of good will around. Because we were funding the record ourselves, everybody that worked on it cut us really good deals, added something and became a part of it because they wanted to be a part of it. That made it so much easier to work with them, and I was much more appreciative of the creativity they were giving of themselves. When I listen to the album I hear that, probably because of those memories. I hope that even a hint of that goodness, that mood, is captured.”

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