Madams Last Discovery
Picture the scene.
In a clapped out old Peugeot 106 just outside of Belfast city centre sit Flinn, Nathan, Guigsy and Fion, the four members of Madams Last Discovery. Flinn sits in the front seat, eyes glued to the battered cassette tape of Fontaines DC’s already iconic ‘Romance’ record, worn to the bone, crackling and electric. The car’s stereo pulses and booms, as the last escaping night sky disappears behind sunlight. Flinn is the natural leader, a man possessed by music whether behind or away from a microphone. His is a life led almost entirely on instinct and as the principal songwriter, frontman and lyricist of the band, he has a nose worth following, which Madams Last Discovery do religiously.
Beside him sits Nathan, the talismanic lead guitarist. In a past life, he was probably the confidant of New York’s 60’s hippy-underground elite, so relaxed he is amongst any party the band happen to find themselves at. With one leg dangled precariously over the other, he gazes into the same indigo half hour of the morning that Madams Last Discovery have looked at all Summer. This isn’t the first time they’ve been up this late, scheming and dreaming of what will come their way next.
In the back seats sit Guigsy and Fion. steadfast, dependable, but not to be misinterpreted or glazed over. As the bass player and drummer respectively, the duo forms the literal heartbeat of Madams Last Discovery, the anchor’s which keep Nathan and Flinn from steaming too far, too fast across the Atlantic. Fion is battle hardened, having played in bands for years. He knows a good thing when he sees it, and the lads know a good drummer when they hear it. It’s no surprise really, that after filling in for a single one-off show, the charismatic young man behind the kit would become a permanent and essential fixture of the band, thus completing the line-up and their gang.
Originally forming while still in school, Madams Last Discovery found their feet through tinnitus-inducing levels of sound in practice rooms across the city. It was a somewhat complex embryonic period, with Flinn switching from frontman, to drummer and back again at the flick of a switch. It was Nathan's patience in teaching him rhythm guitar which convinced him to stay rooted to centre stage, even naming themselves ‘The Flinn O’Grady Band’ for a short lived, chaotic period. Early Madams (as their fans affectionately call them) material was stamped by a nod to Brit-pop, the serotonin flooding floor filling energy of Sean Ryder shaking hands with Noel Gallagher inspired anthemic aspiration, but this search for a sound more intrinsically their own took a turn when Nathan began experimenting with new and unusual sounds.
“I bought some weird guitar pedals…it’s that Jonny Greenwood kind of textural thing, it started to change the feeling of our songwriting. It got a bit strange, but it felt right.”
The new sound was born out of curiosity and virtuosity. The exploration of new sonic territory as treaded by Talking Heads, Gilla Band and the Murder Capital before them. It was darker, moodier, even more bombastic than they had dared imagined in the halls of their school.
Flinn mentions, “We knew things were starting to change for us when the audience started cheering longer after songs. More people started getting up on shoulders, more arms reached into the air. Eventually the venues started getting bigger, our first tour started, everything began developing very quickly”.
The band’s relentless ascent continued to gather pace following headline shows across the capital, tour support for Dea Matrona’s sold-out hometown show and even an impromptu appearance at the iconic Mandela Hall. This year the band are on the Scratch my Progress talent development programme as part of the Oh Yeah Centre in Belfast.
“It’s all very free flowing,” begins Fion. “The tour solidified everything we’d been trying to do. We realised we needed to put on a show, not just play songs that we’d written. It was about creating something for people to go home and talk to their friends about, make them feel something quite deeply, not just a bunch of songs”.
Flinn continues, “There was no time to stop. What it has become now, it’s a different beast. Mandela Hall was mad, it was packed out! We are so grateful’.
With more singles recorded and riding the crest of a wave on the live circuit, the bands relentless drive, heart and grass roots following have propelled them to great heights.
