The brilliantly mad Fight Like Apes return to the Róisín Dubh this Saturday, August 28. The Dublin based band will celebrating the launch of their album The Body Of Christ And The Legs Of Tina Turner. Lead singer May Kay and synth player and songwriter Jamie are in chipper form as they prepare to head out on the road.

Fight Like Apes have come great song titles – Katmandu (Face It, You’re Caviar, I’m Hotdogs) and Waking Up With Robocop are two examples. Do they come up with names for tunes before they’re even written?

“Sometimes someone says a ridiculous line and we say ‘we have to call a song that’,” says May Kay. “But a song’s rarely based on a title.”
Jamie came up with the name for the second Fight Like Apes album. It’s hard to imagine another group dreaming up The Body Of Christ And The Legs Of Tina Turner.

“It was just something that was floating around for a long time,” he says. “Once I threw it out there as a possibility of being the album name none of us seemed to want to call it anything else.”

Fight Like Apes’ debut, The Mystery of The Golden Medallion was released in 2008 and it quickly established them as one of Ireland’s most in-demand indie acts. The singles, Something Global and Lend Me Your Face got extensive air play and saw them wow crowds at the Oxegen and Electric Picnic festivals.

For the follow-up, Fight Like Apes relocated to London. They spent a month working with producer Andy Gill, lauded for his work with post-punk pioneers Gang of Four. The band had honed their new songs down to the sound they wanted and were ready when the record button was pressed.

“That was quite important to us, that we were going over knowing what we wanted and how it would sound, to avoid making any rash decisions,” says May Kay.

Their aim was to make The Body Of Christ and the Legs of Tina Turner a more cohesive piece than its predecessor.

“This time we were ready to record an album whereas last time it was just songs that we’d be playing for so many years,” May Kay continues. “With this we were very sure we didn’t want to mess with the songs in the studio. We wanted them to just be songs and not be production and not be fancy computers.”

Having a veteran like Andy Gill in the studio was vital for Fight Like Apes.

“We wanted to talk to Andy for the first record but he wasn’t available,” explains Jamie. “We’re big Gang of Four fans and we really like the records he’d done. When we put it out there that we were looking for a producer, we got in touch with him. He wanted to record the album live, which is exactly how we wanted to do it. And he held the whole conversation from a bathtub – so he seemed like the right man to record the album!”

Some producers seek to put their own stamp on a band’s sound. This can often lead to it coming across as their work, rather than the band they’re working for. Fortunately for Fight Like Apes, Gill works in an entirely different way.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.