There couldn’t be a more fitting month in the calendar than October, for the release of David Turpin’s Sophomore album Haunted! Buzzing with spectres and demons, yet also encompassing the warm fuzz that Halloween brings, it is a magical journey down the rabbit hole of the brother Alice never had. While his debut album The Sweet Used-To-Be earned him one of the most critically acclaimed Irish albums of 2008, it denied him the success and recognition he neatly deserved. Back again in full form with Haunted! I caught up with him over tea to discuss magical elks, lynching and The Wizard of Oz.
So when did you start recording Haunted!
In 2008. I started recording soon after the first record was released, but there was a long gap between when I had finished recording the first that, and when it finally came out. I didn’t really consider what it was going to ultimately sound like, it was something to occupy my mind.
It has a more upbeat sound than The Sweet Used To Be, was that intentional?
I wanted to make a record with a bit of jollity in it. There wasn’t very much that was jolly in the first record. I wanted to make a record about death that was bursting with life.
So, is death the main theme of the album?
Well, it’s about ghosts and goblins and transubstantiation, which is why I called it Haunted! The exclamation point is important. It’s hard to explain verbally how it’s supposed to be said. It’s not an accusation – it’s more a gasp of surprise.
Your first single is The Bone-Dance yes?
Yes, it’s my big R&B song. I think bones are really cool. When I first started the record I was very conscious about doing it on my own and I wanted to write a song about undertaking things alone. The prevailing idea is that if one is alone, one lacks support – but one always has a skeleton to hold one’s body up. What more support can a person ask for? The second single will be Dorothy Gale.
I take it that’s Oz’s Dorothy?
Yes. I guess it’s supposed to be about Dorothy Gale looking at the yellow brick road stretching in front of her and saying, “okay, off I go”
Your lyrics tend to contain a lot of imagery, especially animal imagery. Is that something you deliberately achieve?
I like the idea of becoming an animal. My favourite song on the record is The Red Elk. It’s about a magical elk that comes alive somewhere….in a forest? And maybe I make a pact with him to become an Elk myself – but then I realise that I’m not actually in a forest after all, I’m in a glass cage. I don’t know for sure. Him being red as well, he could also be the Devil…
Are these images and stories the first things you come up with, when you sit down to write a song?
I think of places, and stories, and characters. If the imagery on the new album is striking, I think it’s because a lot of it is very violent. It jangles in the brain. Cowards Bend The Knee is about being forced to kneel, Melmoth has the devil cutting out a tongue, and Puddinghead – even though it’s only a minute and a half long – has a lynching and a torture on the rack.
Yet it sounds so happy?
Yes, I don’t know what that song is all about really. I don’t sing on it, Carla Amelia does the vocal. The first person I actually asked to sing on it refused because of the lyrics.
So when you have your stories and imagery, what’s the next step in the writing process?
I trained in piano for a long time, so that’s how I think about music. I think a lot of musicians of my generation write songs on guitar, and they work through cords. I tend to see a song in terms of strings of notes. Maybe that’s not unusual at all, I wouldn’t know.
Are you planning on touring with the album?
I’d like to. I did lots of shows with the previous record, and lots of great supports, but I didn’t do an actual national tour.
David Turpin’s fantastic new album, Haunted! is out now. Catch him live on November 7th, upstairs in Whelan’s
