Danny O'Reilly - The Coronas

POINT ME TOWARDS THE SKY

(Photo Copyright of Dara Munnis)

Two critically acclaimed albums; Tours of Ireland, America and Japan; Appearances on the Main Stage at Oxegen. Recently crowned Meteor Award Winners, and yet still eager for more. This is how Danny O’Reilly, the lead man of Dublin group The Coronas, describes his hopes for the future.

‘World Domination” he answers to a question about what he would like to achieve most. After the aforementioned achievements already under their belt, there’s no reason why The Coronas cannot aim that high.

Coming on to the Irish music scene, roughly at the same time as The Blizzards, The Coronas took a different route to success than their Mullingar counterparts. Their debut album, Heroes or Ghosts, charted in Ireland at number 27, but went on to spend 26 weeks in the chart. But there was always an element of fear of becoming one hit wonders, with San Diego Song becoming an anthem among students and teenagers throughout Ireland.

“With San Diego Song getting so big I think we had that feeling of worry that we might just be a one hit wonder band’” says Danny.

“Thankfully Heroes or Ghosts doing so well took the pressure off but there's always that worry about releasing new material.”

O’Reilly admits to two of the tracks from The Coronas’ sophomore album, Tony Was an Ex-Con, being about the worries which surround releasing new music. The track This Is Not A Test, which O’Reilly claims is his favourite lyrically, underlines the worries about how fans will react to the new sound.

“Lyrically, my favourite song from Tony… would be This Is Not A Test. It’s about the worries of releasing new music, and wondering how people are gonna react to it.”

Tony Was an Ex-Con, released by 3ú records, went straight to Number 1 in the iTunes Irish Albums Chart, and debuted at Number 3 in the Irish Album Chart itself. The excellent response to the album was a major plus for the band, who had been working on the album, as well as touring, for two years.

“We were deighted with how Tony… did. It’s always nerve wracking releasing new music and hoping it does well, even if you’re really proud of it yourself.

“It doing so well means so much to us, the fact that people sing back the new songs as well as the old, its such a great feeling,’ says Danny.

While writing Tony… The Coronas were constantly touring throughout the country. They played at college gigs, in bars and nightclubs, at festivals and made several television appearances. They also earned themselves a record deal in Japan. From this came an Asian tour, and several trips to Tokyo, which the band recall as one of their most memorable experiences.

“It started when a Japanese PR woman was working in Ireland, with some other musicians. She happened to come to one of our gigs in Dublin, liked what she heard, sent some of our stuff to the record company (JVC) and the rest is history!”

With Tony… came a new a sound for The Coronas. The band were whisked away to the infamous Sawmills studio in Cornwall, where they worked with producer John Cornfield (who has worked with Muse, Razorlight and Supergrass).

“A lot of our new sound is down to John. We wanted the album to have the energy of our live shows, and John really brought it out in us.

“We also ended up writing a lot of our new tracks together, where as the first record was mainly all my own songs,” explains Danny.

For a young man who cites Jeff Buckley, Radiohead and Neil Young among some of his influences, he shows his soulful side throughout both albums.  The Joker, I Choose Love and Temporary Release on the first album displayed only hints of O’Reilly’s affectionate, soulful side. With tracks such as Warm and Faith in Fate edging away from the primarily quick-tempo of Tony…, O’Reilly hit notes that can only be described as emotional and powerful.

In O’Reilly’s back catalog, a lot of these types of songs feature. Having began writing songs during his teens, and being the son of Mary Black, O’Reilly was always going to be a musician. One of his songs, Three Years Too Late, tells the story of a love-sick young man reminiscing about what could have been. The track featured as a B-Side on the release of Decision Time, The Corona’s first hit.

All The Luck In The World, which features on Tony… was a song that The Coronas hadn’t even written when they left for Sawmills. 

“It really sort of came together a bit. We were all sitting around, and we came up with the last song, which we’re really happy with.”

And what about the name? Tony Was An Ex-Con?

“It’s the name of one of the songs on the album. It was never really a contender for the title of the album, and we had thrown out a load of different names and couldn’t pick one.

“The song itself actually came about when we were touring America. We had this bus driver, who at the start we thought was just a little bit strange, but as the tour developed, we actually realized he was a psychopath! It’s a funny story that Dave wrote about him and our time there with him.

“It was never a contender for the title, and we’d thrown out different names like Someone Else’s Hands and Far From Here, but we wanted to pick something that was a bit different, and we were like ‘Yeah’ when someone said Tony Was An Ex-Con! It wasn’t the obvious choice, and its nice to have a story to tell about it.”

With Tony… doing so well upon its release, The Coronas were shocked to find themselves listed for Best Irish Album at the Meteor Awards in January, along with U2, Snow Patrol and Bell X1. And then to win the award…

“It was amazing, so unexpected to be honest. We thought like everyone else did that U2 would win of course, and if not them, then Snow Patrol or Bell X1! The whole thing is a blur. We played live 5 minutes after we won and I actually can’t remember the performance because of the adrenaline.”

Their performance of Far From Here at the awards, was one of the most popular on the night, with the crowd feeling the buzz coming from the band. 

Far From Here has been described as the song which will be The Coronas’ definitive hit in various reviews. O’Reilly though doesn’t see the point of noticing reviews too much.

“I think reviews are not something we pay too much attention to, good or bad. It's nice that they said that but you have to take reviews with a pinch of salt, as long as your happy with your own stuff and you release something you're proud of, that's the main thing. To a certain extent, whether reviewers, or people in general, think is out of your hands.”

As The Coronas become bigger and more and more popular, comparisons begin to be struck. Their live sound resembles that of The Kooks, yet their manner on stage strikes a similarity with that of Snow Patrol. These are two groups who the band have been compared to, and many believe that 2010 could be the year where The Coronas hit the dizzying heights of where these bands are.

“Hopefully! We're happy the way things are going for us here but we do have ambition to play to as many people as we can.

“We just want to keep progressing and working hard, and begin writing a GREAT third album! A lot of other things are out of our hands.”

Whatever 2010 ends up like for The Coronas, there is one thing for certain; music lovers all over Ireland will know them. 

And with possible management deals and mainstream release in the UK planned, who’s to say what can’t be done?

Just point them towards the sky, and they’ll be alright from there.

RK