Interview with ANOMALyS: ‘We wanted it to be accessible, a Trojan horse for deceptively grim lyrics’

Belfast-based rock band ANOMALyS have released their tongue-in-cheek yet deceptively dark debut single ‘This Place’ and are poised to release their self-titled debut EP on 24 November.

Formed in 2020, the band comprises Stephen Moreland (vocals, guitar,  keyboards) and Louis Orr (lead guitar), who later brought schoolmates Padraig Manning (bass) and Luka Maxwell (drums) into the fray. Moreland and Orr met studying physics at Queens University in Belfast: ‘We were in the same tutorial but we didn’t talk much,’ Moreland said. Orr jumps in: ‘It was annoying that we couldn’t meet up during COVID, we met afterwards in a bar and recognised each other from the tutorial, we got chatting and bonded over our love of music.’ The name came from Moreland’s flatmate at the time who suggested it as a fake band name for releasing a solo album he had recorded, but back then it was ‘THE ANOMALyS’.

‘This Place’ is a pop rock earworm that grabs you from the jangly intro and “ba da ba da’s”; it’s a boisterous, seemingly uplifting song until you listen more closely to the lyrics and realise it is actually about the dark underbelly of Belfast: ‘We wanted to write a story and invent a character,’ Orr said. ‘We wanted to write about Belfast looking good on the surface but talking about the problems we see, although it could be any city. The chorus isn’t subtle, it’s about drugs (laughs). The “ba da ba da’s” give the crowd something to sing along to – if we ever get a crowd! Moreland agrees: ‘I don’t touch drugs but you can walk down one street with fancy houses and bars next to another street that’s grim and dilapidated,’ he said. The line “Will you get up to dance with me…do you have any change to spare?” I saw a homeless man do that, the lyrics are actually meant to call out the people who danced with him as I feel they took advantage of the man who clearly was just looking for change and not to dance, and from how they dressed and acted, I could tell they were very wealthy and were willing to make a joke of him but not give him any money.’

‘We wanted it to be accessible, a Trojan horse for deceptively grim lyrics’

The starting point for the track was the jangly intro, according to Moreland: ‘It started with those four chords,’ he said. ‘There are six chords in total, it’s in F – it’s F, Dm7, Gm7, C7sus4, Em and B♭m. It’s influenced by Randy Newman and Stephen Foster. I grew up playing the piano and guitar, we wanted it to be accessible, a Trojan horse for deceptively grim lyrics (laughs). The lyrics are dark, like Third Eye Blind messed up things. That’s the one I was worried about. We played it on Friday night in the middle of the set and afterwards, we had to dial the other songs back, my voice was gone!’

As the track goes: “Tie up my arm, And shoot it full of joy. There’s no harm. And I don’t have a choice to proceed. I’m floating into space, it’s all I need to tolerate this.”

Their self-titled EP will comprise five tracks, including ‘This Place’, ‘Clarion Call’ and ‘Golden Plague’, all of which offer something different on the sonic spectrum, from the jangliness of ‘This Place’ all the way up to the heaviness of ‘Clarion Call’: ‘We’ve had these songs for well over a year now,’ Moreland said. ‘It’s all about the songwriting for us. Most of them are predominately written by one of us but it’s collaborative. The one you haven’t heard, ‘Heard’, the fifth one, is a soft rock ballad, it’s more fun to do that.’ Orr nods: ‘They’re all different genres, we didn’t want to be boring!’

‘Clarion Call’ erupts with a thuddy, hypnotic riff, courtesy of a simulated Mark V CH3 with a stock drive, gate and delay; it’s a proper old school rock song and if I didn’t know, I wouldn’t have guessed it was Moreland on vocals, it’s heavier, shoutier and veering into hard rock territory. As the title suggests, it’s essentially a carpe diem song: ‘It was based on the passage of time and missed opportunites,’ Moreland said. ‘At the end, it’s a bit panicky (laughs), there’s not much time left, it’s a call to action, a clarion call, you have to take it.’

As the track goes: “Give me life, give me death. Just don’t give me nothing else. For as long as I live, I’ll see no need for higher powers. Oh lord, heavens above, have mercy on my soul. I’ll forever long for better days.”

Interestingly, while physics and music co-exist for them, they don’t ever really meet: ‘Music is almost an escape from it,’ Moreland said. ‘It’s hard to stay interested in our course, it’s all flat out.’ Orr agrees: ‘We’d like to go into sound engineering if we can,’ he said. ‘I don’t like having a plan!’

‘It’s about money and frustrations – when you hit a good moment as a band, you hit a paywall‘

What they do have is a huge range of different inspirations in the band: ‘I’m a big blues man at heart, I base my playing from legends like Hendrix, Mayer, Frusciante and Knopfler,’ Orr said. ‘Jimi Hendrix, John Mayer, Mark Knopfler, they’re all big Strat players (laughs). My first electric guitar was a Telecaster because it’s so versatile. However, I’m a big John Mayer fan so had to get a Strat and fell in love with it instantly!’ Moreland jumps in: ‘Our drummer is a DJ, our bass player is a gearhead (laughs), he loves taking apart guitars! I’m a big fan of Randy Newman, Bob Dylan, Slash for guitar and Billy Joel.’

‘Golden Plague’ kicks off with a guitar solo that starts out crisp and clean, almost Spanish-sounding, before they ramp it up: ‘There’s a bit of compression and reverb, it’s very simple and elegant,’ Orr said. ‘Initially, I was messing about and played something wrong (laughs). Moreland interjects: ‘He brought the chords and that funky, syncopated rhythm, and it morphed into what it is today. I had every lyric written for it other than the title, but I say ‘golden plague’ at the end. It’s about money and frustrations – when you hit a good moment as a band, you hit a paywall. The metaphor in the bridge is about a fighter winning and losing everything. We’re fighting for the only place, there are only so many gig spots but so many great bands. ‘The Collisions’ (a new local rock band), we gave them their first set on Friday, they absolutely smashed it! Could you also shout out the Cornerstones, they were the other band who opened for us and were really good!’

As the song goes: “(Left), right, good night. Lying on the floor and eyeing up that comeback story. Win you all the glory. Listen to them berate you, now there’s a reason to hate you. What you had is gone and everything is falling down.”

If money were no object, Moreland would buy a ‘proper high-class American-made Gibson’: ‘Right now, I use the cheapest Gibson made Les Paul you can get, it’s a studio tribute, but if money was no object I’d get a top drawer one, that or a custom acoustic made in a workshop like the one my uncle Mick always played who got me into guitar playing.’ Orr goes for a guitar that is also on my dream list: ‘Prince’s Cloud Guitar, that’s it,’ he said. (The “Cloud” guitar was a custom guitar built for him by Dave Rusan for the Purple Rain movie. It became Prince’s preferred guitar for live performances from 1984 to 1993, and again from 1998 to 2000 and he had multiple copies of the Cloud guitar made. It takes its name from the suit Prince wore in the ‘Raspberry Beret’ video and the Around The World In A Day album cover, where Prince can be seen playing it.)

‘Messiah’ is one of the standout tracks on the EP and it turns out to be one of their favourites as well: ‘It’s one of our favourites to play live, we throw our guitars around,’ Orr said enthusiastically. ‘We’re going to shoot a music video for it, the whole song is about consumerism, that everything has a price.’ Moreland looks at him: ‘We dance to it more, we go a bit mad for it! I think some people assume we’re a Christian rock band (laughs), that’s just what we’ve gotten when people hear the song name; we don’t really mind, ‘cos if they do they’re in for a shock!’

They have built up a small but dedicated following around the city by winning Volume Control’s 2022 edition of ‘Clash Of The New Breeds’ and selling out the Queens Student Union Bar for their debut headline show.

‘Heard’ turns out to be one of the first pieces of music they wrote as a band and the current lyrics came about a few months ago. ‘It’s the softest song we have, but the lyrics are from a place of anger,’ Orr said. ‘Stephen wrote them about his growing frustration at conservative media, like GB News, and their shock tactics to anger people about stupid issues that don’t really matter, but people fall for it. Online, you see them complain now that they’re being oppressed and can’t say anything so the line “doesn’t it hurt not to be heard” is kinda sarcastic.’

If he could go for a pint with anyone, Moreland picks Elton John: ‘He’s my number one songwriting influence,’ he said. ‘Him or Mozart, to ask him “Did you really write all that stuff when you were that young?” (Mozart reportedly composed his first piece when he was just five.) Orr goes for Jimi Hendrix, ‘It would have to be, there was a lot of style delivered from him.’

And there’s one celebrity crush that the band can’t escape from, as Orr recounts: ‘Luka is infatuated with Ice Spice! He’s only sticking with the band on the assumption if we make it big, he’d get to meet her and eventually marry her. He always uses her music to promote our gigs, so it’s become a running joke in the band!’