Wilt Biography...

Immersed in the cultural melting pot that is Ireland's capital, we find one fully-fuelled Cormac Battle, Wilt frontman and chief songwriter, who's positively brimming with vitality for his new band. "I feel more liberated than i have done in ages," glows a contented cormac. "The whole recording process for the new tracks was so spontaneous... we just holed ourselves up in a small recording studio in the centre of Dublin and let instinct do the work."

Cormac is joined by bassist Mick Murphy and Darragh Butler on drums, the trio united in their common cause to bring a hefty dose of passion into pop music.

Unhindered by burdensome mega-budgets and pontificating producers, the resulting songs speak volumes for the band who have no doubt what the business of making music means to them. "Music should be less about pretensions and more about substance," insists Cormac. "All the pomp and ceremony can seem attractive, but it's completely superfluous when it comes to weighing up how strong the songs are. All too often you can end up with a t-shirt, badge, a cd - and a major disappointment!"

The boy who ran away to reading festival at the obviously not-so-tender age of 15, is today still consumed with the same vision as he was then. "I told my parents I was going camping," confesses Cormac, "it was a great line-up that year... my bloody valentine, loop and spacemen 3, who were the very reason I picked up a guitar in the first place. they had such a great attitude, something I think that's missing in all this current showbiz sham."

Cormac's straight-talking strategy naturally spills over into his lyric writing, which results in the songs like new single 'it's all over now' - the tale of two friends who are faced with a possible pregnancy and the overwhelming relief of a false alarm - coupled with 'working for the man', about "one of life's necessary evils", as Cormac describes it.

'Bastinado' (which translates as 'torture', incidentally) is Wilt's forthcoming album, scheduled for release early next year. For the band who worked so intensely in the studio that they had to install desk fans to cool down the amps, this is a fittingly confident debut for Wilt, both in it's uncompromising lyrical statements and it's fully fledged melodies. Themes of vulnerability and rejection rub shoulders with rays of hope like 'no worries' and the familiar perils of hedonism in 'open arms'. 'Peroxatine' takes its title from an anti-depressant drug, with a powerful melody that's exactly what the doctor ordered. "It's about struggling against that physical and mental condition of being human," says Cormac. "Most people feel like they have to suffer alone, and don't find it an easy subject to talk about. I suppose i just wanted to say that nobody's alone in having these feelings."

Keen not to tie themselves up with a constricting monicker, Cormac, Darragh and Mick opted for Wilt as a name that's free from connotations and links with any genre. "We wanted something that transcends any pre-conceived ideas about how we should sound as a band," says Battle. "Being part of Wilt is such a liberating experience for us, and in turn we wanted people to be free to judge the music with an open mind." And offers don't come much better than that.

The pile of decent men and women chewed up and tossed aside by the music industry grows larger and larger with every passing year, but a hardy few dust themselves off and, against any better judgement, throw themselves back into the fray with a fresh abandon.

Cormac Battle is one such fella. Cormac formed his first band, Kerbdog, when he was just 19. Six or so years later, the man had put Cormac and his friends through the proverbial wringer and, despite a fiercely loyal following within the press and the kids alike and two albums behind them, Kerbdog came to their sticky end.

This is the point where most rock'n'roll family trees are finally felled. But Battle has picked himself back up, reunited himself with Kerbdog drummer Darragh Butler and old friend mick murphy on bass ("We're all Irish, in case you hadn't guessed," grins Cormac), and decided to give rock'n'roll one last stab with Wilt.

"Darragh and i obviously suffer from selective amnesia," chuckles Cormac, grimly, "Because most of the time, being in a band is fucking appalling! but somehow, we can only remember the good bits, so we're gonna give it another try. We wrote a few songs, played a few gigs, then mushrom gave us forty or fifty pence to go record somethings. It's working out great so far."

With such grim experiences behind them, you might think that Wilt's debut album, Bastinado, due this summer 2000 on Mushroom records, would be a bitter, angry slog of a record. And if you only read the lyric sheet, you'd be. Right! but, musically, the album is a dayglo blast of sweet, sweet melodies thrown in a sonic cement-mixer until they're good'n'crunchy, a pop record that kick serious ass, not unlike other great, second-career bands Sugar and Foo Fighters.

Cormac's not gonna apologise for the bleak lyrics, though. "The lyrics are just about horrible things. i can't help it really, i find it hard to write convincingly about funny stuff and a good night out down the pub with the lads. There's a lot of songs about anti-anxiety drugs, which i ended up on. I've been a bucket of fucking anxiety the last few years."

Indeed, the position of professional fly in the ointment comes easily to cormac. "This supposed economic boom makes me wanna puke. It's kind of a micro version of the 80s london yuppie culture, everyone going around on mobiles, wanting BMWs. It's all on credit, people don't really wanna give a shit about each other anymore, and I think that's affected the music scene pretty heavily. These days, music is just a backdrop for consumerism.

"People buy records by whatever so-called 'rock' band is popular right now, because they're too busy buying a pair of prada shoes or dinner down at quo vadis to really care about music, to search out for the good shit," he sighs. "In times of economic success, art suffers. things become more homogenised. People want to grow up too quickly, get a big it job. Maybe we' re jealous, i don't know. But artists don't thrive during periods when there 's lots of money about - that's a fact."

Yes, Cormac Battle is an angry fella. Or maybe he's just passionate, maybe he just cares too much for these times. He's the kid who loved his music so much, he snuck off to the '89 Reading festival, aged 16, and blew his mind with loop and spacemen 3 and my bloody valentine. He's the kid who, a decade later, enjoys his own radio show in Dublin - "Its nice to be a fascist and force your musical tastes on other people," he laughs - and who, despite all he's suffered, is giving rock'n'roll another shot at making him a star. "We wanna make people give a shit about music again," he reasons, before admitting, with trademark deprecating humour, "If we don't, we'll go away very quickly, very quietly."

He's far too modest. Wilt's first single, 'it's all over now' (the sort of heart-bursting, chorus-laden blast for which radio was invented) won the band many influential friends, and Bastinado and its preceeding single, the similarly poptastic 'radio disco', are undoubtedly going to break down the metaphorical walls of rock heartache which have frustrated cormac thus far.

"Rock'n'roll keeps you away from the machinery of life," he muses, finally, "Getting out of bed early to go to work, sitting at home with your wife with nothing to say, all that suburban hell. It keeps you young, makes you hang onto your adolescence a little longer. I'm clawing at mine now."

Oh, and where does that name come from, you ask? No, not a witty reference to the smutty tom sharpe novels, but a name chosen by Cormac's butcher brother, after the wiltshire pig. "It was the only thing we all agreed on; we don't agree on much. We wanted a name that didn't particularly mean anything. I mean, any bands who tell you they chose their name for any poignant reason, well, they're lying. I ask you, what does 'Suede' mean? apart from, difficult to wash." And off he goes again.

By Stevie Chick, February 2000