"I'm bitter, I'm twisted, James Joyce is fucking my sister!" It's the opening lines from "Potato Junkie" off Therapy?'s Pleasure Death EP, and I can't think of a better way to introduce the brilliance of these Irish punkers. Sometime around 1993, that little gem of a song got stuck in my head and I've been in love since.

Not quite the pomposity of heavy metal nor the trendy fashion that is punk today, Therapy?'s music might best be described as clever, visceral, and adamantly fuck-all in attitude and approach. Inspired by the likes of Big Black, Hüsker Dü and the like (and who the hell isn't, really?), this band has had more than its share of ups and downs over the past ten years. Their start lies in the meeting of ex-drummer Fyfe Ewing and singer/guitarist Andy Cairns at a concert in the late '80s. Bassist Michael McKeegan was soon brought in (they'd been borrowing his bass guitar for demos, so it was only a matter of time really). Building their chops and songbook, their first gig in the summer of '89 would still be some months away, but soon after that there would be no turning back. The band recorded and released several demos, tapes and 7" singles on their label, christened Multifuckingnational, and it wasn't too long before Wiija Records caught on to them and released two EPs, Baby Teeth and Pleasure Death.

Then in '92 A&M picked the band up, and shortly thereafter released their first full-length, Nurse, which went Top 30 in the UK. '93 saw Troublegum, a perfect combination of punk attitude and an impeccable sense of pop melody. It would storm the charts and end up selling over 500,000 copies. And with guitars firing off like a Gatling gun over the opening lines, "My girlfriend says that I need help / my boyfriend says I'd be better off dead / I'm gonna get drunk, come 'round and fuck you up / 'cause you can't change my life / but you can hide the knives," how could it be anything but brilliance!

Down, but not out, they mustered the strength that got them going in the first place and set about to record what be Suicide Pact - You First, their latest release out on Ark 21 Records (Miles Copeland's well respected label). Stepping back to the attitude and sounds they first began with, Suicide Pact is dark, loud, creepy, irreverently brilliant--simply, it's Therapy? back on top of their game. The album clearly shows a band making music and trying to satisfy no one but themselves; a group who couldn't care less really if anyone is paying attention. Well, we definitely have been!

I had the pleasure of speaking by phone with Andy recently, and although 5,000 miles separated us, you couldn't disguise his happiness at where the band are currently at and how good things are looking for them down the road. However, said happiness couldn't prevent the line from breaking up, so it took two days to pull the interview off. As well, by the time you read this, the band will have made their first appearance at SXSW in Austin, Texas which, by all eyewitness accounts, was nothing short of fucking amazing, and which is, of course, why we all love them so dearly. The band should be back in the States for a proper tour later this summer, and I suggest you don't miss out. Thanks to Versa and Ark 21 for setting up the interview and for supporting a band on their own terms, and thanks to Andy (an amazingly nice person) and the rest of Therapy? for ten years of fuck-all great music!

Andy Cairnes: Ha ha ha! That's a slogan on one of our t-shirts and it's just something we've stuck by over the years. Kinda funny...

The new album's great! How are you feeling about it?

Andy: Yeah...we're really happy with the album. We went back to the drawing board with the band. We kind of disappeared up our own backsides a little bit about 1995, 1996. We had a lineup change and we changed record companies, so when we changed labels last year we thought it was a good time as any to get back to a rock 'n' roll, garage-y kinda sound--a lot more live and a lot more raw. Put the energy back into the band, really.

Well, it's definitely there!

Andy: Yeah!

The period between the release of Semi-Detached and the Recording of Suicide Pact seemed to be a rather bleak period for Therapy? What happened with the collapse of A&M and how did you find yourself on Ark 21?

Andy: What happened basically is that we had a four album deal with A&M, and Semi-Detached was the fourth album. Then Seagram bought Polygram and they decided to close down A&M in England, so there was no one there to offer us an option or anything. And maybe that was a good thing because I think we'd run our course through that whole alt-corporate-crossover-rock kinda thing. It wasn't getting us anywhere and we weren't enjoying ourselves.

Then in January 1999, we were about to start going around and approaching other labels when Graham, the drummer, broke his arm. That was just such a really dark period for us. We didn't have a drummer and we didn't have a record deal. Myself and Michael had financed the previous six months of touring ourselves. That cost us a lot of money...money we'd made on Troublegum and Infernal Love. It was just beginning to get very, very tiring. Everything seemed to be going wrong and there didn't seem to be any kind of light or respite in any of it. Everything seemed to be failing. We lost members of the crew who'd been with us for seven years; they'd gone to work for other bands. We weren't really getting along or getting on at all.

Ark 21 were kind of the ones that told us they'd do whatever we wanted. We told them we were going to record cheaply and quickly, and we told them that we weren't going to try and make a commercial record. They said, "Yeah, fine." The most important thing is that Ark 21 were one of a very few labels who were going to give us an American release. We thought that it was very important to get a chance to come over and play in America again. We didn't play in America with Semi-Detached, and we only did a handful of shows with Infernal Love.

Now you're scheduled to play SXSW this year, correct?

Andy: Yeah! We're really excited about that! We've never been and it's just one of those things that's quite legendary and talked about. I've talked to bands that have played SXSW and I've talked to friends over there and they say that it's just fantastic!

Do you have any other confirmed U.S. dates?

Andy: I think we're doing a New York show two days after SXSW...I'm not entirely sure about that. All day we've been on the phone trying to organize a handful of gigs over there. The plan is to come over and do SXSW, New York, and maybe another three or four gigs, and then we're hopefully going to come at the end of the summer and stay there for two or three months and play everywhere we can.

There's quite a few Therapy? fan sites in the States and we've done a number of interviews for people there. A lot of our favorite music is from America anyway. We love playing there, we enjoy ourselves and we always have a great time. We've played around Europe for so long and for so many years...it's always kind of nice to break out and do something different. There's a completely different attitude in America.

Ark 21 seems to be a bit of a strange place for Therapy? alongside the likes of Belinda Carlisle and Paul Carrack...

Andy: Yeah...I suppose for us that's true, but they offered us a worldwide deal. And they didn't seem to have any other rock acts on the label which means that we'll get priority, as opposed to if we'd sign with another label that had ten rock bands on their roster. Depending on the sales of your last album you go further down the priority list.

So it seems okay. We talked to quite a few people, but I dunno... It was like being back to scratch again. We just wanted to get a record out worldwide and a label that was easy to get on with and regain our artistic control. And we've managed all of that. As long as the record gets out and people can get it then it's cool regardless.

It's my understanding that you financed Suicide Pact yourselves before you'd even confirmed a record deal with anyone.

Andy: The album was recorded and self-financed. So we basically sold it to Ark 21. We didn't actually sign the deal until after the first tune was finished. So when we were in the studio our whole mindset was that we were going to release it on our own label and get distribution worldwide. At the last minute Ark 21 stepped in...

Was it your plan to release it on Multifuckingnational, then?

Andy: Yeah, it would have been on Multifuckingnational! We'd exhume it and bring it back from the dead!

Andy: The most important thing for us was to write an energetic record. The stuff we were listening to at the time was stuff like Fun House by The Stooges, early Black Flag, stuff like that. We thought that we'd rehearse the songs inside out and then go in and get them done as rock 'n' roll as we could. After all the depression we went through at the start of last year, the most important thing for us was to have fun while we were making this record. "Hate Kill Destroy" was a track that was very, very lifeless when we were playing it. We just couldn't get into it, then one night we ended up getting drunk playing it naked...that seemed to work. "God Kicks" was a big power ballad initially and it really sounded awful. Head, the producer, said he wasn't getting it at all. We'd just finished reading an article on The Blair Witch Project taking the States by storm, so we decided to go out and record it in the woods. It actually worked out okay...just Martin and I out in the woods with a DAT recorder.

Have you seen The Blair Witch Project?

Andy: Yeah, we got a chance to see it. Quite enjoyed it. I didn't actually feel any great sense of dread while I was watching it, but afterwards the film stayed with me. I found myself thinking about it quite a bit, whereas with most films I usually don't--they just kind of leave my brain when I come out of the cinema door unless they're really, really powerful. But that one did.

So what's the story behind the recording of "Whilst I Pursue My Way Unharmed?"

Andy: We finished recording the album and Head was mixing it and he would do little bits and pieces of boring stuff that we weren't into. So we were bored and had another two weeks booked in the studio. So there's this really soulless shopping mall in Milton Keynes, which is a really soulless new town in England, and we decided to record six hundred and sixty-six seconds of the ambience of people passing by, their children, those working in the stores. And we put that in the background on the headphones while we did a jam. We were listening to an awful lot of Mogwai and Slint; a lot of that post-rock stuff. We didn't think it was really fitting with the rest of the album, but we wanted to put it on somewhere because we had ra eal blast doing it.

Listening to the vocals on the album, it sounds like you've been spending a fair amount of time under the influence of Captain Beefheart.

Andy: I wanted to have some more of my voice this time around, and I was listening to a lot of vocalists like Iggy Pop and Captain Beefheart. I really enjoy Beefheart, he's got a great sense of play in his voice.

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