The Poetic Violence of Nerves

Nerves at Super Sonic by Bella Berry

Nerves, the rising band from Ireland, is expressing angst, anger, and culture through hardcore noise music. Though their music can be defined as “noise” rock because of its volume as a defining characteristic, the music of Nerves is much more than that. The sound has elements of shoegaze, punk, and more unexpected genres. Though the storylines of their songs are also heavily inspired by niche experiences growing up in rural Ireland, they also tell the story of something that everyone is familiar with; heartbreak. 

Kyle Thorton, the band’s frontman and creator, helped me wrangle up Eoin Keigher (guitarist) and Ryan Mortell (bassist) outside the Supersonic club in Paris where they had just played an unforgettable show. We lost Adam Nealon, the drummer and co-founder of Nerves, for about ninety percent of the interview, but I suppose that’s what I get for conducting the interview during high-time; Post-show cigarettes.

Just gonna get into it with a deep-ish question: Which one of your songs do you think strikes an emotional nerve for you?

EOIN: For me, Act Of Contrition, I think. It tells a story that everyone that grows up in rural Ireland will understand, basically. 

KYLE: Yeah, it was basically a kid’s perspective of their first experience at an Irish funeral, which is a very weird process where you have to be in the gaff with the open casket for like three days with the family and people come in and out of the house. It’s very normal once you get to a certain age, but when you’re like twelve and you experience your first death in the family it’s like Whoa what’s going on here? Who are these people? Why do they know my name and why are they all telling me that they’re sorry? So, yeah it was just about that kind of confusion. 

KYLE: I think for me it’s that and Don’t Let Go. I think they’re kind of on a similar emotional level. It’s kind of about the point just after a breakup and it was a particularly rough one for me, I suppose, so, like, I don't want to get into the nitty gritty of it, but I say very little lyrically in the song. I think most of it just kind of comes through in the music, whereas most of the other songs tend to be a borderline novel. With this one I just decided I’d have one verse. 

Do you think there are other songs like that where the music itself is deeper than the actual lyrics?

EION: Dirty Fingers, with how chaotic it is. It’s pure chaos from start to finish. I suppose that’s what it’s set out to do. Definitely sets the tone. We usually play it early in our set so it’s like Okay, here’s all of it! Now we can get down to business. 

KYLE: If you like us after this, you’ll like us. Tonight, we played it second. We usually come out of the gate with two extremely abrasive ones and then settle into stuff that’s a bit more palatable. Either it’s more dancey or it has more dynamic range. But yeah usually the first two tunes are a big slap in the face to the audience. It’s intentional.

In the writing, do you think you express yourself more musically or lyrically?

KYLE: For me, it’s probably lyrically. I get a lot out of writing the music, but nothing is entirely off my chest until it’s on paper. That’s kind of how it is for me. I mean, Eoin and Ryan have been writing some lyrics for it as well so I’d say they’d be in a similar position.

RYAN: Yeah, if there's lyrics attached to it obviously that is you putting your mind to paper and that’s a very fair thing that you’re doing, you’re putting it out there, but the music is very important as well. Even if you’re not doing lyrics you’re putting the emotion into how it works as a whole piece and that’s an important part of what we do together

KYLE: They’ve been feeding in for the past few years and I’m quite happy with that because I’ve done most, well all, of the lyrics of the band up until that point. I like it feeling like a bit more of a communal thing when there’s a couple of different writers. Like, even though all the songs that I write are from my perspective, I like having other perspectives involved. 

What specific emotions inspire your music? 

KYLE: It’s probably grief and anxiety on top for me, which is maybe borderline cliché, but no one wants to hear a song about the happiest day of your life, you know what I mean? When you have something weighing on you, it’s always going to be something like that. Like, you’re not gonna have happiness weighing on you. Getting the lyrics out, for me anyway, releases the pressure a bit. It always either comes from personal issues or bereavement or an interlinking of the two. 

Nerves at Super sonic by Bella Berry

Are there any visual mediums that inspire your music?

EOIN: For sure, yeah. Film is a big one. 

RYAN: I come from a film background. That’s what I work in, so when I put into music I think of it in a visual sense. I think, what visuals would I attach to that? There’s films that definitely influence me, other music videos, even photojournalists who take all these pictures that give you an insight into a moment that makes you feel an emotion. Like, that’s the kind of stuff you can see in the back of your head when you write something. When you get that image when you hear it you go Okay, I think I’m on the right track.

So what are some films that inspire your music? 

RYAN: For me I’m a huge Gaspar Noé fan. Like, that’s always my fucking go-to, which is so Film Bro, but it’s just that climax.The idea that you breakdown who you are as a conscious person into a subconscious self and then how that opens up, so I always go back to that as a reference. That loss of control is what the music is because once it gets out there you have no control over it. And the way he captures that climax… I just always go back to that, even if we’re thinking of visuals for music videos or something, at a certain point I’m like, what about a Gaspar Noé movie? 

Are there any non-film things or anything that any of you see in your head when writing?

KYLE: I think I take a lot of influence lyrically from novels. I know a lot of people are really like, I’m a lyricist and now I am into every poet under the sun, but for me it’s more novel based. Like, Samuel Beckett-y kind of stuff and, like what Ryan was saying about this breakdown of a conscious person thing. Yeah, I take a lot of influence from heavy novels like that. And for music I think it’s pretty self explanatory. 

RYAN: Actually it isn’t. No, not really. There’s a lot of techno and a lot of noise rock and shoegaze and a lot of kind of goth-y stuff as well I would say. 

KYLE: And you know what? Some fucking midwest emo as well. 

Oh yeah! Can you name a few for the midwest emo?

EION: Casavettes from Limerick in Ireland!

Where’d you get the idea to play guitar with the bow? That was really cool.

KYLE: I’m gonna be real with you, I’d straight up stolen it off The Velvet Underground because I was reading a book about them and I was feeling pretty cool about myself. I came out of a world music shop with the bow hanging out of my bag and The Velvet Underground book and my sunglasses on and I walked out and was like oh jesus, I’m such a cliche. 

RYAN: We’d done in that first bow after about three rehearsals. 

KYLE: I didn’t know what I was looking for so I just bought a bow that was completely inappropriate. Every time I would be playing a song with it we could just smell burning. One’s still in the rehearsal studio with like three strings still attached. 

It didn’t break tonight, though. You’re a professional now. 

KYLE: ‘cause I bought something I can actually use! It can add an orchestral sort of vibe to it without breaking out of the mould of a four-piece band. It just adds. Anything that can add more textures or sounds that aren’t just straight up this is a guitar and this is a bass… that’s why the paddleboards are like the size of a spaceship, you know? Like, we’re trying to basically play synths through a guitar. The bow kind of helps with that because you don’t actually have to pick the strings. 

How do you think you guys have evolved since starting the band?

EOIN: Oh my god. Yeah that’s a big question.

KYLE: The band started technically with me and Adam ten years ago when we were in secondary school. So it's gone through the evolution of like four separate bands but we never changed the name because we were being stubborn. 

ADAM: It used to be like a 1975 inspired pop band and we also liked to do a couple of heavy tunes as well because we thought it was fun to do. 

KYLE: Playing like janky Indian because in one stage during college we had this idea that we thought was really revolutionary where we would start off really pop-y and jangle-y like The Smiths or something like that and then it just got progressively heavier as it went on and we thought we were really onto something. We were not onto anything. (laughs) and after a while we just kept writing more heavy tunes and we were like oh yeah, this is what we actually want to do. 

What have you guys been listening to recently?

KYLE: I’ve been listening to a lot of Rinsing, Mezzanine by Massive Attack over and over again. And a lot of Primal Scream actually. A lot of Scream and Delica. But I 've been kind of stuck on that for a month ‘cause I’ve just been in bed all of January. I haven’t been exploring. I’ve just been sticking with that. 

EOIN: I've been listening to Crippling Alcoholism. They just released a new album called Cam Girl and it’s fuckin’ sick. 

RYAN: Madra Salach just came out with a new album. It’s called It’s a Hell of an Age. It’s incredible. Like, The Man Who Seeks Pleasure is one of the greatest songs I’ve heard. 

So good. It’s an Irish folk kinda band, but they write a lot of their own tunes as well instead of just reinterpreting some older ones, so it’s a bit of a mix of the two. The original tunes are as good as any of the fucking actual old folk songs that they reinterpret… AND they’re basically fucking children. 

ADAM: For me, it’s mostly been a lot of Psychidelic Porn Crumpets and also I just found Ninajirachi. Really cool EDM artist. So, so cool. 

Nerves are a band that are truly making something different and evolving their sound, incorporating their expansive tastes as well as their deepest emotions and experiences into their music. They are not afraid to experiment and do things that have never been done before. It is that fearlessness that causes their fans to cherish Nerves and their music.