Music exclusive: punk trio Touts talk pub rock, poetry and Paul Simon
To find out more about the meaning, message and making of their music, lead singer of Irish post-punk band Touts, Matthew Crossan, takes Roisin O’Connor under the surface of their single ‘Old Man’s Land’
Touts formed when I was about 16. We met at a football club; Derry’s such a small place so everyone knows everyone. We started off trying to do the 60s power trio thing, so our early sets consisted of 60s garage songs punctuated over indulgent solos. Eventually we moved more towards pub rock and Dr Feelgood became a big influence – they still are, albeit not such a conscious one. From there, as we learned more and played more, it was a natural enough progression to where we are now.
Our latest single, “Old Man’s Land”, came really naturally. It was recorded in the early half of 2020, during lockdown when we started working on songs for a new album, but we didn’t actually realise we were writing an album at the time. Jason really loves reggae so he finds a way to work that in there, and we had the idea of doing a sort of “Band On The Run” by Wings. “Band On The Run” is a song made up of a few parts (when the acoustic comes in) and we wanted to put that into the song while we were writing the music.
I was also inspired by Paul Simon’s “The Obvious Child”. I enjoy melancholic songs and sounds that are tinged with nostalgia. Sometimes you feel nostalgic about things that never even happened and Paul Simon is brilliant at making me feel like that. In the “The Obvious Child”, Sonny sits by his window and reflects on his past: “Sonny’s yearbook from high school/Is down from the shelf/And he idly thumbs through the pages/Some have died/Some have fled from themselves Or struggled from here to get there/Sonny wanders beyond his interior walls/Runs his hand through his thinning brown hair.”
I suppose that all of “Obvious Child” is a reflection, and that’s something explored in the character in our song – about wasted and misspent youth. You can be as general as you want about that. But in “Old Man’s Land” it’s coming from trauma as a result of the Troubles. Trauma that trickles down through generations, but hopefully it’s ambiguous too.
We all have a mutual love of The Undertones, and I love the Clash and bands likeThe Stones, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon. I go through phases of thoughts and philosophy with songwriting. I prefer songs to be ambiguous in meaning, but I like the connections you find between artists, learning how they’ve all influenced each other.
Jason and I basically sat down and wrote most of the lyrics in one go. When we had it down we played it in the car on the three-minute drive from his house to where we practice, and it ended just as we got to his front door, and we looked at each other and had a wee chuckle, we were really happy with it.
“Old Man’s Land” is actually about intergenerational trauma. There are a lot of people who’ve been robbed of their childhoods around here, our parents’ generation. Generally the music comes first and then you pick a lyric that you’ve written already that fits the song, and that forms that subject. It’s about youth and innocence that was stolen in the past. The result that has on people today can be observed in many places at many times across our land. It also draws influence from old Irish balladeers and the romanticism of their songs. It attempts to pick up the narration and story from where they left off.
I like songs that work like a Trojan horse. They sound super fun but then the lyrics are super serious. The whole song is about a pretty heavy subject and the melody and rhythm doesn’t exactly match the lyrics. I guess that’s the case with any song that’s made in a traditional “pop” format that has somewhat serious lyrics.
I also like putting easter eggs in songs, personal, silly things that only I get, whether it’s a wee guitar lick or whatever. In “Old Man’s Land”, some of the lyrics play with references to songs and poetry. So the line, “It will probably happen again”, I would say links to the Undertones song “It’s Going to Happen”, as well as “The Rainstick” by Seamus Heaney. There are a few similarities that I drew between those two works and what they mean to me.
Irish poetry inspires me a lot. There’s a poet called Paul Muldoon - I got into him through Paul Simon, who’s friends with him. A lot of poetry can feel very inaccessible, but I really like his work. And then Seamus Heaney, as I’ve mentioned. There’s a quote from his poem “The Rain Stick” that I found in a book in a studio called Analog Catalog, where he says: “What happens next is undiminished, once, twice, ten and thousand times before.” I don’t know what it is exactly about it, but it really spoke to me.
The building of the school I went to in Derry was the one where Seamus Heaney went, so my history room was the one where he looked out and wrote the poem “Blackberry Picking“ about his brother. I suppose I do feel a connection with Heaney, given that I once walked the same corridors as him, but more generally just the fact that he is from my corner of the world. There are some really great songwriters and poets from this area.
The artwork for the single is mine. It’s actually based on an earlier painting I did, based on a photo I liked the colours of, so I tried to incorporate those into the painting. However, it was sort of Jackson Pollack-like, and I think John Squire ruined my chances of using that! I then did the painting that became the album art, loosely based on the original work, and after watching a Rothko documentary.
One of the best definitions of art I’ve ever read was that it tries to convey a mood, a feeling. With this, I suppose it was a feeling of desolation mixed with an undying hopefulness. It does relate to the song. In my mind all the influences I’ve mentioned have this common thread of bleakness yet beginning to either realise a problem, or a solution to a problem looking forward.
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