Providing a haywire, self-aware and humorously insightful take on a genre sometimes perceived as stoic and indulgent, Bicurious have held a clear identity ever since their respective early days. As presented on their first string of singles and their 2018 extended play – the suitably titled I’m So Confused – the two-piece harbour a remarkable penchant for playfully rearranging the tropes of the post-rock genre into danceable melodies and snaring hooks. But even with the group’s work fully leaning into the adolescent and mercurial energy of bands such as Cleft, Alpha Male Tea Party and Gangs era And So I Watch You From Afar, their work has always had a composed focus on highlighting societal injustices in Ireland and afar. It’s been this fervent sense of dynamism that’s allowed the group to become such a celebrated component of the European post-rock scene in such a short amount of time, with the band raking up the Spotify streams by the millions in just a few years.
With this in mind, it’s no real wonder why everyone is celebrating their debut LP. Recorded and written over the span of two years, the independently released (re)constructed is the full Bicurious experience compressed into 47 minutes of hyperactivity. A record of gulfing grooves and sugar fuelled bounce, whilst it may appear to some as a record of just energizing mania, there’s profound meaning under it’s giddy guise. In fact, the record chronicles the recent life changing events faced by the two members. Firstly, it musically depicts the bout of severe psychosis suffered by Gavin Purcell (drums), and secondly, it narrates Taran Plouzané’s (guitars) experiences in becoming a father to son Erza at the young age of 23. These experiences are articulated with musical charisma and make their debut such a human, curious and essential listen.
So with the record out now independently, we got in touch with Purcell and Plouzané to break down (re)constructed, track by track.
Related: Bicurious – (re)constructed | Album Review
Intro/Voices
Gavin: “This song was originally just going to be the sample on it’s own, but we realised that was kinda unsettling to listen to…so we decided to add music to it.”
Taran: “The music was actually the bridge section of another song I was working on at the time, but wasn’t really working as a full song. One day we just played that section by itself, and had a lightbulb moment.”
Gavin: “The sample is based on a mixture of voices I heard during the psychotic episode I had in 2018, which the album is based around, along with the birth of Tarans son Ezra. The inspiration for that sample was influenced by Girl Band’s track ‘Prolix’. I heard in an interview that the breathing on Prolix was captured during a panic attack. I then thought it would be interesting to recreate the voices that I heard in my head, because for me hearing voices was a very similar experience to having a very long panic attack.”
Taran: “And that sample actually has my son Ezra crying on it, as well as my wife Tara speaking German, but reversed. As well as some other stuff. When it comes to recording in the studio, it was the only song we hadn’t fully written before going in. I purposely left the lead guitar parts unwritten until the day I had to record them, as I thought it might be cool to let myself be inspired by the recording process, the studio, and the whole experience. And it was a great idea! It was a lot of fun, as pretty much everything else was already written, and we knew exactly what we wanted to do before we went in.”
Like We Used To
Gavin: “Even though this was my third psychotic episode I feel like I’ve changed a lot and am more mindful after that particular episode… For the better. So this song is about what we “used to” be like and what our lifestyles were like and how they have changed since that particular psychotic episode and the birth of Ezra.”
Taran: “Yeah, to me it’s really down to the mood of the song. The opening section is quite dance-y, I could imagine it being played in a nightclub or something, if our parts were played by synths and drum machines. That’s why this song reminds me of what we used to do and how we used to live; not that we spent a lot of time in nightclubs, but I’m talking about the nightlife, pubs, gigs, drinking, late nights, etc. I do a lot less of that nowadays (regardless of the pandemic) as I’ve become a dad, and any free time I have is either spent playing/writing music or hanging out with my family.”
“It was actually the first song to be written out of all of the album songs. We’ve been playing this one at shows for almost two years now, so it feels good to have it properly recorded.”
Palapalapa
Gavin: “We weren’t like Mötley Crüe or anything in terms of partying, and we’ve never thrown a TV out a window, but we used to drink more and go to after-parties when we finished playing gigs. This song reflects on those parties and the fun before the episode.”
Taran: “Once again, the mood of the song reflects what we’re trying to describe here. The ongoing happy chant throughout the song – ‘Palapalapa’ – to me symbolises the sort of singalong that takes place between a group of friends at a house party after a few drinks, or even with the pub with inebriated strangers. It’s about that camaraderie, sometimes superficial, that is brought on by alcohol, drugs and parties in general. Being in a band tends to put you in these sort of situations quite often, and I’ve had my fair share of parties that ended up in me feeling pretty shitty, anxious, or depressed. This song is about those extreme highs that can sometimes push you over the edge.”
“From a songwriting point of view, it was a lot of fun putting this one together, and recording it too. We don’t often have vocals in our songs, and we went for an ASIWYFA and Enemies type of thing with the gang vocals, mostly just to hide my own vocal flaws! Thankfully we had our producer Tom Peters and our manager Alex in the studio to thicken the part out with their angelic voices.”
“My wife and I had a conversation one day about the whole instrumental thing, and she made me realise that a lot more people might be interested in our music if they had something to sing along to during gigs. It may seem obvious now, but it’s something I hadn’t really thought about, because we were so comfortable writing instrumental music. So I pay more attention to that these days, and whenever I feel like there’s a part that we think could do with a little vocal hook or something, we’re not scared of trying stuff out.”
Deconstructed
Gavin: “This is the part of the album when stuff starts to get dark.”
Taran: “Following directly from ‘Palapalapa’, this song illustrates the downfall, the comedown after the extreme highs of the party. The way I see it is a kind of a deconstruction of everything that’s real around you, stumbling around the streets in the early hours after a heavy night out, full of anxiety, confusion and restlessness. I think this is, relating the album’s storyline to Gav’s situation, when the psychosis started. It’s when everything starts to turn pretty dark as Gav said, between the loop-y, hectic riffs in the verses and the slow, hypnotic choruses. The music just brings that out, in my opinion.”
Groundation Intervention (Interlude)
Gavin: “We played a gig with Mutefish in Whelans at around the start of the psychosis in 2018. I was convinced that the crowd were all psychologists and doctors examining me while we were playing. Each time I blinked the crowds faces would change as well. I went to my therapist a few days after the gig and explained this, and I heard a voice in my head saying “you had a groundation intervention.””
Taran: “The intro guitar loop kinda sounds like a siren, and we thought it was a good representation of the ambulance coming to bring Gav to the hospital.”
“When I first wrote the music for this, I was using piano sounds and it sounded like an Elbow song or something. I wasn’t thinking of using it for Bicurious but we just tried it one day at rehearsal and it worked weirdly well! I think it’s kind of a nice breather halfway through the album, as everything around it is pretty intense.”
We’re All Totally Fucked
Gavin: “There was a period after and even during the psychotic episode where I thought that I wouldn’t and wasn’t able to play music again and for me this song reflects on that.”
Taran: “It’s weird because for me, this tune takes a step back from the overall meaning of the album, and is a reflection on global warming (because it does seem like we’re all totally fucked!), and the pandemic. I read in Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth that global warming would eventually bring European countries a load of diseases that are only really found in much warmer climates, like places in Africa or Asia. Because it’s a lot colder here, the insects that carry those diseases wouldn’t survive here, at least not as long as it’s still cold enough. But global warming could change all that. That’s why I find that the pandemic is weirdly related to global warming, even though it’s not really the same type of disease. Anyway, weird tangent, but I just think everything is pointing towards the fact that we’re all totally fucked!”
“The song was being finished around the time when the pandemic started, and we thought it would be interesting to get people to send us voice notes of how they felt in the first few weeks of lockdown, in March 2020. The results were really interesting, and we included some into this song in the shape of samples.”
Gavin: “During the recording of the demos for this song our manager Alex shouted “We’re all totally fucked!” before we started playing. We thought this was funny so we got Alex to say it again when we were recording the album. Tom got him to say it in different accents including a Soviet Russian leader voice…which is the one I think we went with it in the end?”
Mercurial
Gavin: “The mood in this song changes a lot and my mood would change a lot around the time of the psychotic episode. I would be overly happy and hyper and then all of a sudden I would be crying. This song partly reflects on my “mercurial” nature around that time.”
Taran: “Yeah, it’s probably the mathy-est song on the album, because of all the changes. That’s why we called it Mercurial. It’s a word that was brought to my attention by our friend and ex-guitar tech Oisin, as he was referring to my son Ezra’s ever-changing mood. I was listening to a lot of Physics House Band stuff at the time of writing it, I wonder if you can hear that in the song? I find that it’s a really dark song, not the easiest to listen to. It takes a few listens to really get into it I think, as our manager Alex once said. He wasn’t mad about the song at first, but we played it at a show once, I think it was in Bristol, and he came up to us at the end, saying that he finally got it, and he loved it. I thought that was pretty cool? He texts me sometimes saying stuff like “maaaaan, mercurial is such a banger!!” hahah! I usually treat him as my good-song-meter.”
I Can Hear Them Too
Gavin: “The sample we used in “Intro (Voices)” is used again in this track. Two days after the aforementioned Mutefish gig, our friend Dan came to visit me. I was outside having a smoke with him and started hearing voices. So I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and heard him say “It’s okay, I can hear them too”… I don’t think he actually said that, I was hallucinating. So in the end we got Dan to record himself saying that line for the sample.”
Taran: “This is one of my favourite tracks on the album, because it’s a bit different, maybe a bit more relaxed, at least in parts. It’s a hard song to play live (at least at rehearsals!) because there are so many loops involved, but there’s something magical about the ending, right after the second time the “I Can Hear Them Too” sample happens. That riff, along with the full-on drums behind it just does something to me, for those 5 or 6 seconds! I also really like the synth bass at the start of the song. It’s from this pedal called an Octasynth, which I never really get to use because it’s so crazy. Glad I could place it somewhere!”
(re)constructed
Gavin: “It’s the title track and final track of the album! Thematically, I guess it’s when we start to get back on track and there is hope. The outro especially, gives me a big sense of hope.”
Taran: “It’s the light at the end of the tunnel, the happy ending to the story. Although in the grand scheme of things, the story is never ending, we’re always going to be dealing with shit in one way or another. But the roughest part is behind us, and now it’s time to recover. I love playing this song because I find it really powerful, especially at the end. The build-up before the end drop sometimes gives me chills when we play it in rehearsals; once or twice I’ve closed my eyes during it, and imagined I was playing in an arena, Foo Fighters style… You gotta dream big!”