Start Listening To: Search Results
Search Results on sausages, sadness, and songs about emails.
Formed around longtime collaborators Fionn and Jack, Search Results emerged from Dublin’s indie scene with a healthy disregard for industry conventions, preferring Bandcamp uploads and fake names to glossy rollouts. While that approach has evolved, their spirit hasn’t. In this Q&A, they take us through their creative process with the same mix of sincerity and sarcasm that runs through their songs. Topics include: Dennis Hopper, digital fidelity, the Joy Tactics podcast, and the perils of grizzly bits in pulled pork.
For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?
Fionn: I’m Fionn, from County Sligo and the music we make in Search Results is rock music, alternative style.
Jack: I’m John Paul Condon and I’m from Thurles or somewhere normal like that. Id rather not describe the music of Search Results as it upsets me.
Go Mutant is such a vivid, unpredictable record. What were the earliest seeds of it, and how did you know what direction to take?
Fionn: Carricks and Noon’d were the earliest seeds I would say. As for a ‘direction’, I wouldn’t say there was one. The songs just collected naturally, and just so happened to stand nicely alongside one another.
Your lyrics often feel open-ended and slippery, which invites a lot of interpretation. Do you read what people think the songs are about, and does it ever surprise you?
Fionn: I haven’t read any! But if people do have interpretations I’d be more than willing to listen.
Jack: I prefer not to read people’s interpretations of my lyrics as they may upset me. But thank you so much for the kind words.
The mix of mystery and humour in your work is striking. How conscious are you about walking that line between cryptic and comedic?
Fionn: Let me put it this way, I’d rather write a song about sending somebody an email than write a song about sending somebody a letter, because I don’t send people letters, but I often send people emails.
Jack: We try to have a 60:40 cryptic to comedic ratio in all our songs. Anything less or more than this would upset me and therefore gets recorded to tape and burned.
You’ve cited Dennis Hopper, Blue Velvet and Rivers Edge as touchstones. What draws you to that kind of strangeness or ambiguity, and how does it shape your writing?
Fionn: Rivers edge is not a touchstone. That movie sucks. And as for how it shapes the writing, I don’t know, I think the character Dennis hopper plays in blue velvet is so full of ideas and was so carefully formed that you can feel Hoppers enthusiasm and how badly he wanted to play out these strange ideas in the film.
How do you approach the difference between the studio and live versions of your songs? Is it more liberating to let them evolve rather than aim for fidelity?
Fionn: It would depend on the track, but for the most part we tend to be quite energetic in the live sets, so a slow song is sometimes sped up, and a gentle song is sometimes harshened.
Jack: That’s a very interesting question. In order to get a full grasp on this concept, you will need to consult the works of Cahir O Doherty. He has the perfect balance on his studio and live stuff and we try to emulate this mastery in all aspects of the creative process.
Some tracks like I Come Out At Night or On My Planet feel stripped back and restrained, while others are more frantic. Do you intentionally balance those dynamics or let it happen naturally?
Fionn: We let them happen naturally. I think those two tracks you named are quite frantic actually.
Jack: This is entirely done on purpose. When me and Fionn write songs we Pass the Pigs to determine whether our new composition will fall under the either of the two categories “slow steady nice” or “crazy ridiculous”
What role does literature play in your songwriting? You’ve mentioned Flannery O’Connor and Vonnegut, are there other writers or texts that sneak into the process?
Fionn: I don’t think it plays a role in it. I like to read, but all the songs are pretty self indulgent.
Jack: The writings of Ronan Boland are also very influential. His piece “Elf” cuts to the core of the human condition more than anything I’ve ever read. He is a true master.
Your early days involved a bit of myth-making, no press shots, Bandcamp-only releases. How did that initial approach shape your ethos, even after you moved away from it?
Fionn: We learned that it doesn't have much to do with making music, and that taking these things less seriously is more true to us as people.
Jack: We realised that mystery is good and sometimes great but if we wanted people to hear our pop music, which we did, we would have to “play the game” a bit more and be widely accessible to the masses and the legions of fans.
What do you love right now?
Fionn: Italian sausage, Joy tactics podcast, Heavy metal by Cameron winter.
Jack: Pulled pork sandwich
What do you hate right now?
Fionn: physical media, Satan, God.
Jack: Grizzly bits in my pulled pork sandwich.
Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s still important to you?
Fionn: yoshimi battle the pink robots by the flaming lips. Still let’s my imagination run wild.
Jack: I remember in my baby years I used to listen to “Pet Sounds” and “Crazy Frog presents Crazy Hits” in tandem and experience the beautiful synchronicity betwixt the two, as it were. Real interesting way to get yourself fired up on a week night.
Now that Go Mutant is out, how do you feel about it as a document? Do you already see ways the band is changing again, or are you still living inside this album?
Fionn: not living in it anymore no. At the launch party for go mutant we only played a couple songs from that acc record. We have more fun moving onto newer stuff whenever we have it
Jack: I like that Go Mutant is a document of where we were at a year and a half ago. It’s nice to have those songs out in the world. So much has changed in our lives since the recording of that album last year, and we’re almost finished recording our next album. So the bands sound and collective mindset is constantly changing and developing. The next album sounds very little like Go Mutant, I think.
