When and why did you decide to up and move sticks to Berlin?

Well, I first visited here in 2003 after wanting to come for quite a while..and I really liked the feeling..like a european NYC only with a more 70′s eastern european feel..it is a very chilled out yet creative and open city.

David Bowie, Iggy Pop, U2 and other artists have found Berlin a great muse and inspiration musically over the years. Has the city had a similarcreative impact on you?

I am not sure yet as creating seems to be a very natural part of my life regardless of where I am located. For me, it is more of a daily ease. There is notso much pressure rent and bills wise so it is easier to exist as an artist if I base myself here and touring around Europe in our van is more accessible too from here.

How does it compare to Dublin?

Well, goldfish in a bowl or a dolphon in the sea. I try not to compare the two cities. It becomes quite personal really. I am connected to Dublin in a very deep way because I grew up there and I have a love-hate relationship with the place.I miss my friends but I find the drunken puking atmosphere at the weekends so ugly and the recent nouveau-riche mentality quite discusting where money seems to be king and people need to get out of their faces to find any pleasure or even just to keep up the momentum of their stressful lives. It cheapens the legacy of poetry, literature and song for which Ireland has been so famous. From talking to people on my travels, Ireland seems to be gaining a new reputation that has little to do with the creativity or the beauty of it’s past heritage. So when I am in Ireland, I try to seek out the creatives, and imaginaries..the people who make the underground and have stuck out the high rents and tried to find a way to exist that doesn’t revolve around alcohol and forgetting ..(not that I am against a good partying..far from it). There is a lot of great art and music happening in Ireland at the moment too. Berlin for me is more about vastness, variety and anonimity. In Dublin, I can take a walk in to town any given day and be sure to meet four or five people that I know quite well, which has a certain charm. In Berlin, I wander around for hours on my bike and find new places every time. I don’t
meet people that I know and I find this quite liberating.

We’ve missed you. Why has it taken so long for the follow-up to your debut album Staros?

Well, it is a long story. The short of it is, I was fucked around and left broke. I was always writing and gigging wherever I was invited..but I had no
money to record I ended up going to college in the last few years to study sound-engineering as a way to free yself form the disabliity of being gagged by lack of access to technology. It was such a great thing to do. It opened up the vessels of creativity so I could find new ways of writing and I am very excited about working in a home studio-like situation but at the same time, I really wanted to record only to the best sounding quality and to do this, it is very costly. In the end, I found someone to guarantor a bank loan and I recorded ‘Really Really Do’ and the bones of two future albums with this money.

Really Really Do is a wonderfully lush and textured record. There is a bigger, fuller sound on it to that of your debut. Did you have an idea in your head before you started recording of how you wanted this record to sound?

Thanks. I had a very strong idea of the sound that I wanted for the songs on RRD but also, I had so many other songs that didn’t fit in to this genre. So in the end, we recorded a lot of them and found that there is also a loud raucous indie guitar album there and also a mellow spaced out piano and acousitic one. Hopefully these will be released sometime in the not too distant future.

Tell me about the Husbands? When and how did this marriage come about?

There are only 3 husbands for the moment and quite a few fiaces and friends. Ivan Birthistle on keys, has been playing with me for 7 years now. We were in a band called Reno V and then KDEK and we gigged around a bit and recorded demos. We broke up partly due to my incessant touring of my solo
stuff so I asked him to join my band at the time. He is really inventive, sweet, original yet reliable and we have played together since. Peter Cheevers on bass and vox, I found in a dingy bar in Dublin. He was onstage playing in a band(of whom he is still a member..The Burning Effegies)and I just had an almost hallucinatory experience where I saw him in this swirling black and white 1960′s-like graphic tunnel. His bass was like a big rifle and he looked like some kind of detective inspector in search of adventure. I thought I just have to have this quirky weirdo by my side..so asked him and he agreed. I wanted them to feel that I was as commited to them as they were to me over the years..playing for little or nothing and always such great collaborators
so Peter thought of the marriage idea..and it felt only right and proper. Fabien, who is now the chief husband came over from France to work on
‘Really Really do’ and it was fireworks straight away. We have been inseperable ever since.

Is it true you used to collect the tapes of bleeps from the heart machines in the hospital your auntie worked in and record yourself singing over them?

Yes.

You have a very distinct voice and your sound is totally unique. You have very much have your own sound and I was wondering if it bothers you when people compare you to Bjork all the time and constantly describe your music as ‘dreamy’?

Ha ha. Well it happens much less these days. People need a niche to put you in sometimes. That’s ok. I know we don’t sound too alike. I saw an interview on MTV where Stina Nordenstam was asked the same question and she seemed quite annoyed..but it is a natural human conditition to want to categorise everything and organise it so we can understand it. Bjork is creative and interesting..I’m not getting comparisons to Shania Twayne or Sheryl Crowe so I am not doing too bad really.

What can we expect from the live show on this tour? Will you have the hubbies in toe or will it be a more low-key gig?

Just me and the chief husband…and a baby inside too(maybe a future drummer). We find it a challenge to make a big sound out of two and it is fun too. We have beats, toys, organs, piano, dinky little sounds, loud guitars, 2 voices singing songs. The other Husbands will be locked up at home tied to a warm glow with me singing lullabies to them endlessly on a loop so don’t worry about them.