Silverbacks Daniel O’Kelly has just had his first post-lockdown
Gary: I think as a group we don’t take ourselves
haircut. It’s a surreal experience, the guitarist, singer and
particularly seriously. Dan’s lyrics are very observational
songwriter left pondering over how personal taking off
and quite telling of the times around. But at the same time,
someone else’s own facemask to cut their hair is, and
we don’t feel like we’re figures that need to be telling you
just how surprised he was at his reaction to the whole
what you need to think about stuff or telling you how it
situation. It’s these little things that have made the world
needs to happen. We’re saying this is what’s happening,
just that little bit more unusual - we’ve all been using
here’s how we take it. But it’s not us shouting we think
our elbows to touch traffic lights, doing a little dance to
it’s this way so we think you have to as well. As a group
avoid being anywhere near another member of the public,
we’ve got a quite a good sense of humour and we’re not
taking social distance walks up hills for pleasure (?!) -
afraid to laugh at ourselves, we take the music and what
it’s a weird world. But what’s most intriguing is our own
we’re doing very seriously, but as people we tend not to
response to having to deal with such adaptation - and how
take things very seriously.
we look in on ourselves and our behaviour to make any sort of sense of it.
D: I think as well a lot of the time, I find if we’re writing lyrics or music like Gary said, we’re not doing it to tell
With ‘Fad’, their debut record released during lockdown
people how they should think, we’re not even putting
in July no less, Silverbacks have found this canny little
messages in their head for them to think “oh yeah, I’ve
spot for themselves, somewhere they can attempt to make
never thought of it in that way”. If they do then great,
sense of the world even before this all kicked in, while
but really it’s just a tool for us to have fun and try and
looking at themselves and how they deal with such minute
understand the way we are. I don’t think there’s anything
experiences. That natural desire for comprehension has
more high-brow than that, I don’t think we were putting
blossomed into a meticulous and captivating album - one
this album on a pedestal and saying “this is your new
that embraces the band’s own dry sardonicism but also
ideology, all hail Silverbacks”.
revealing where their priorities in seriousness lie - and how they intelligently find the balance of both.
I think that’s the thing, it’s not got this one mindset - it’s trying to achieve different things and ideas that
I feel ‘Fad’ cleverly captures the overly accepting state
all come together to make this nice cohesive record,
of modern culture while also being self-aware of its
whether it’s intentional or not?
own flaws and inadequacies. Was it important for you to find a balance of sardonicism and self-critique?
G: I think from our point of view, nothing is really limited and off the table. We’ve got no problem doing a rocker
Daniel: I think in myself anyway, I’m pretty self-critical.
like ‘Just In The Band’ and then two or three songs later
I would constantly look at things I do and then try and
putting Killian’s guitar moderation in there, we’re not
re-examine why I did it, whether it’s good or bad - like
limiting ourselves. Ideally we want everything to sound
a post-mortem, I’m known for doing them. Even after a
like a Silverbacks song.
conversation with someone, I’d text them the next day and say “sorry if i said something in a certain way”, and they’d say “what? I haven’t been thinking about this at all”.
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Words by Ross Jones, illustration by Bàrbara Alca
