{"id":28404,"date":"2024-11-07T05:30:53","date_gmt":"2024-11-07T10:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=28404"},"modified":"2024-10-23T09:18:29","modified_gmt":"2024-10-23T13:18:29","slug":"the-controlled-madness-of-thomas-walsh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/07\/the-controlled-madness-of-thomas-walsh\/","title":{"rendered":"The Controlled Madness of Thomas Walsh"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dublin, Ireland\u2019s Thomas Walsh makes original music that rivals the best work by two of his heroes: Electric Light Orchestra\u2019s Jeff Lynne and Andy Partridge of XTC. Echoes of the Beatles and the Kinks\u2019 Ray Davies crop up in his distinctive songs as well. And while he\u2019s nowhere as well known as those artists, on his own and with his group Pugwash, Walsh has released a string of superb albums featuring an impossibly high tunefulness quotient; ear candy melodies seem to come out of him effortlessly.<\/p>\n

Of course that\u2019s not the case; Walsh says that for him, the process of songwriting is real work. \u201cI fight every aspect,\u201d he says, only half-joking. \u201cThere’s always a better option than spending the next hour going through pain and anguish over a rhyme or a chord. And the older I get, the less I want to do of that.\u201d He describes himself as lazy, a characterization reinforced by the fact that during our Zoom interview, he\u2019s laying prone on a couch, the camera positioned directly above him.<\/p>\n

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Thomas Walsh. Photo by Anna Kovaleva<\/p><\/div>\n

Walsh rhapsodizes about all the wonderful programming on Netflix, and the distractions of social media. \u201cAnd then I\u2019m thinking, \u2018Oh, I should be writing a song!\u2019 But that\u2019s the last thing my creative body wants to do.\u201d But happily for him and his dedicated fans, the song usually wins. \u201cIt does<\/i> win in the end,\u201d he says. \u201cIt actually says, \u2018Fuck you; I\u2019m going to come out anyway!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

At that point, the music often comes like water through a fire hose. \u201cI\u2019ll find myself with the guitar, having written five or six things in 20 minutes,\u201d Walsh says. But there\u2019s a catch: \u201cSix or seven of \u2018em are going to sound like six or seven others! So I don\u2019t [finish] them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even tossing aside those unsatisfactory tunes, Walsh consistently comes up with a bounty of supremely fetching songs. As Pugwash \u2013 the name used for solo and band releases for nearly 20 years \u2013 Walsh released nearly a dozen albums. 2012\u2019s The Olympus Sound<\/i> was nominated for the Meteor Choice Awards\u2019 Irish Album of the Year.<\/p>\n

Retiring the Pugwash name last year, Walsh began releasing music under his own name with The Rest is History<\/i>. The name may have changed but the story\u2019s the same: Walsh\u2019s trademark hook-filled music continues to strike a perfect balance between melancholia, wistfulness, power pop energy and heartfelt, intelligent lyricism.<\/p>\n

On The Rest is History<\/i>, Walsh does nearly everything: writing, singing, guitar, keyboards, production. But he brings in pals to help at key points. Neil Hannon is his band mate in another project, the Duckworth Lewis Method; Walsh and Hannon co-wrote \u201cA Good Day for Me,\u201d the infectious album opener. Indie auteur Michael Penn co-wrote \u201cTake Your Time,\u201d another standout track on the new record. Other guests on The Rest is History<\/i> include pals Joe Elliott (Def Leppard) and former XTC guitarist Dave Gregory; the latter contributes a sublime string arrangement on \u201cWe Knew.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of Walsh\u2019 motive for retiring Pugwash was the impracticality of keeping a touring band together, especially when attempting to mount tours to North America. What concertgoers on his October run of West Coast dates will encounter, instead, is \u201ca very oddly-shaped man sitting on a chair playing an acoustic guitar for a couple of hours,\u201d Walsh says with a chuckle.<\/p>\n

Nagging health problems limit his ability to, say, jump around onstage, but that sort of behavior isn\u2019t what attracts listeners to Walsh and his music. His witty, engaging manner provides plenty of entertainment value; a Thomas Walsh set is filled with as much wry storytelling as music. He\u2019s happy to regale audiences with tales of hanging out with Jeff Lynne, or explaining why the Ivor Novello Award trophy (something Walsh nearly won) was a favorite gardening tool of the late George Harrison.<\/p>\n

For the tour, Walsh has put together something very special, an item that will be available only to those who attend his current U.S. dates. \u201cI\u2019m doing up 50 copies of a CD,\u201d he says. \u201cA lot of people who\u2019ve never heard of me turn up at shows, so I thought, \u2018Why don\u2019t I just put all my singles on a CD, do a funny cover and bring those?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The playfully titled Pugwash Singles Club<\/i> features 14 studio tracks plus a live cut featuring the full-band lineup from a 2015 gig in Austin, Texas. Walsh concedes that while interested parties can always go listen on Spotify, a physical CD is \u201ca nice, cool thing. And I love doing the artwork.\u201d<\/p>\n

An Irishman through and through, Walsh nonetheless demonstrates a deep and abiding love for America and its people. He sums up the differences between the two nations in his customarily droll manner, one that applies equally well to the music he makes: \u201cAmerica\u2019s so big, it\u2019s hard to control the madness,\u201d he says. \u201cIreland is mad, too, but it\u2019s very small… and a controlled madness.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dublin, Ireland\u2019s Thomas Walsh makes original music that rivals the best work by two of his heroes: Electric Light Orchestra\u2019s Jeff Lynne and Andy Partridge of XTC. Echoes of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28405,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,49,51,62],"tags":[1754,2203],"class_list":["post-28404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-new-release","category-pop","category-rawk","tag-pugwash","tag-thomas-walsh","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28406,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28404\/revisions\/28406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}