The Dublin quartet didn’t plan to follow up last year’s 350,000-selling In A Perfect World so promptly. In fact, they didn’t plan at all. Sparked by an experiment that inspired them to shake up their sound, the band started recording and couldn’t stop. Just eight weeks later, Coming Up For Air was complete.
“It happened so quickly. A lot of the songs were done live in the studio, on the spot.”, says singer Steve Garrigan.
Kodaline were still on tour in support of their debut – which went Top 3 in Britain, spent nine weeks at No.1 in their native Ireland and made inroads in Europe and the States – when they received an invitation to spend a week in L.A. with producer Jacknife Lee.
“We didn’t regard it as an album session,” insists guitarist Mark Prendergast. “We thought we’d have some fun and see what happened. Jacknife is Irish and his track record is unbelievable. We weren’t about to turn that down.”
What Kodaline didn’t expect was to leave L.A. with an entirely new approach to making music, an affection for synths and their second album’s epic first single, Honest, already written.
Back in Britain, as soon as festival season finished, an inspired Kodaline set to work on the album they were itching to make. Electronics played a key part, adding depth, new dimensions and a harder edge to the band’s trademark soaring choruses and widescreen sound.
There were sessions in Surrey, Dublin and Longford (“A place in the Irish countryside where there’s nothing to do but make music”) with Jim Eliot (Ellie Goulding) and In A Perfect World producer Steve Harris. There was a second week in L.A. with Jacknife Lee (Snow Patrol, R.E.M., Taylor Swift).
Coming Up For Air may be a sonic step on, but at its core remains Kodaline’s ability to connect instantly with an audience, to share the emotions in their songs and to pull the listener in to their world. It’s a smart, sharp, sophisticated album, by a band only just discovering what they’re capable of.
Tickets for the concert on the 20th of Februar are available SongKick.com and at the pre-sale stores for 440 CZK (+fee).
