Veteran Cork musician Auld Blue Eyes, aka Ian O’Callaghan, is stepping out from the shadow of his hardcore past with the release of his debut solo album, Drop An Anchor. Released on August 2nd, the album marks a sharp turn from his metal and hardcore roots, venturing into screamo and post-hardcore with a dash of post-rock.
Reflecting on his two-decade-long journey in music, Ian reminisces, “Last year marked twenty years of me playing shows. I feel like a relic writing that.”
His musical odyssey began in a grindcore band called FAT ACTRESS, where he and his school friends shared the stage with heavyweights like MADBALL and EVERY TIME I DIE. After several stints in various screamo and hardcore bands, he found himself in TERRIERS, a band he fondly describes as “post-classic rock.” Despite their brief existence, he remains proud of the album they released, a testament to their unique sound.
Ian’s journey continued with a wild ride in the 11-piece negative hardcore band KAWTIKS, where he was one of three bassists.
“It was a pretty wild ride, and I jumped ship just before they got me into any kind of serious trouble,” he recalls with a chuckle. His next significant step was joining HORSE, a band that blended noise rock and hardcore. Although he was already a fan before joining, the band eventually fizzled out due to issues with finishing their album and the inevitable stagnation brought on by the pandemic.
The pandemic and a grueling work schedule kept Ian away from music for a time, until a grant from the Irish government’s Basic Income For The Arts scheme allowed him to dive back into his passion. This financial support was a “life-changing amount of money,” he notes, enabling him to not only focus on his solo work but also join the cowboy hardcore band UNCULTIVATES as their vocalist and take up bass in a new hardcore/metal band called LOW VIOLENT.
When asked about his inspirations, Ian’s approach to songwriting is refreshingly organic. “It’s kind of just a case of starting to play and seeing what comes out. It’s as much of a surprise to me as it is to anyone else.” His influences are primarily drawn from the talented musicians he has played with over the years. For instance, the chorus in Pointless Cells was a nod to K-Dog from HORSE, while the tapping bit in How’s Life was inspired by Seb from TERRIERS.
His recent listening habits also crept into the recording process. A deep dive into IRON CHIC’s 2017 album “You Can’t Stay Here” led Ian to layer gang vocals on almost every song. “I might have gone a bit overboard,” he admits, laughing.
The four-year journey to finish his first solo album as Auld Blue Eyes was fraught with obstacles.
“The main obstacle was time,” Ian explains. Between grueling work hours and band practice, there was little time left for anything else. A car accident in March, which left him stuck at home for months, finally gave him the time to finish the album. “Once the concussion and self-pity wore off, I tried to make the most of it,” he says, with characteristic resilience.
The cover art for Drop An Anchor holds a personal significance for Ian. It features a photograph of a break in the fence behind his house, a shortcut he often takes to visit his family home or meet friends at the pub. “It just seemed very obvious to me that it should be the cover,” he says, hinting at the underlying themes of escape and connection in the album.
While Ian doesn’t have any solo shows lined up under the moniker Auld Blue Eyes, he does have a string of UK dates with UNCULTIVATES in September. The band will be supporting LURE IN and BELOW THE NECK, with stops in Liverpool, Bristol, Nottingham, and Manchester. You can grab your tickets here.
17th September: Liverpool – Jacaranda Basement
18th September, Bristol – The Old England
19th September: The Engine Rooms
20th September – Nottingham – JT Soars
21st September – Manchester – Love Day Festival
Ian was willing to delve into the heart of each track on Drop An Anchor.
In his own words:
Drop An Anchor is a mix of two different things, it’s some lyrics I wrote about trying to get my shit together and build a normal life for myself outside the city and all the dangerously delicious pints therein. And then some lyrics that I wrote years later about trying to convince my girlfriend (now fiance) and her cat to move out to the countryside with me. It just made sense to blend the two things together.
The Other Way, I was really struggling to come up with anything for this one. It was the last song on the album to get any lyrics and my brain was kinda fried at that stage. My friend Seb was out at my place to record some extra vocals on a few other tracks, and he asked me to play him the rest of the album. The next day, he sent me a voice note with fully formed ideas for the first verse, pre-chorus, and chorus after just one listen. Absolute freak behaviour! But I loved the idea, it was about a summer we spent together, unemployed and hanging out in my basement playing Tekken 3, trying and failing to lift weights and playing riffs. The song is about looking back on that time and wondering if it was time wasted or not.
We Were Not Supposed to look like this was recorded back in 2021, when I first got COVID and lost my voice for a few months. I was afraid that it might never come back, and I started experimenting with other ways to do live vocals. So for most of the song, I’m singing through a TC Helicon Talkbox, a kind of crude version of autotune. I also experimented with having two different kits on the same song. All in all, I felt guilty sending this one to the mixing engineer, Christopher Hockey. I knew it would be a pain in the ass to mix. The few lyrics that are on the song are from the point of view of some dying chilli plants on my windowsill, withering and gasping for water or a better plant dad.
Pointless Cells was the song that I originally invited Seb out to sing on. I asked him if he wanted to write his own lyrics or wanted me to write something for him. He asked what it was about, and I told him that it was about a particularly annoying conversation I had with somebody about astrology. He told me he already had a verse and chorus ready to go on the subject. It was surprisingly even angrier than what I had written, so we went with that. The “FUCK” that starts the song is from one of the takes that Seb messed up. We just put it at the start to amuse ourselves, but when I took it away, it just wasn’t the same.
A Pointless Jig was completely rewritten about five times. I could never get it feeling like it was part of the rest of the album. Mostly because it didn’t feel right to be screaming over that soft synth line, but once I committed to that, then it came together. It’s about people that you know are the world’s worst bastards, trying to make themselves feel better by making sure they’re seen at every protest possible.
How’s Life was written and recorded in about two and a half hours. It will be a nightmare if I ever want to play this stuff live. Every other song I was playing for weeks or months before I got around to recording them, but with this one, it just flew out of me, so I have absolutely no idea how to play any of the riffs. The lyrics started with the chorus and built out from there. “How’s life in the wilderness, between knowledge and ignorance?” inspired by Plato’s “Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.”. I’d say Plato would hate me and the post-hardcore scene in general, so I don’t feel too bad about ripping him off.
Bad News is about this guy I used to know. He and his wife were always weaseling their way right up next to the death beds of wealthy elderly women in the hopes of making it into their will. I suppose it’s not illegal, but it’s a pathetic way to live your life. Through my job, I saw how this added grief to already grieving families. Not the highest of notes to finish an album on, but it just didn’t sit right anywhere else.
