Alive And Kitting

By Joe Kavanagh

In many aspects of life, perception can be almost as important than reality. Rod Stewart and his pals used to hang out in airports dressed as pilots in order to pick up girls, the same motivation that quite literally drives people I know to rent out high-end sports cars while staying in New York, a city where careers and lifestyles can be built on perception.

While it is in no way the main contributor to the economic malaise we currently find ourselves in, perception certainly plays its part in perpetuating it, and undoubtedly shaves a couple more percentage points off stock exchanges and housing prices each day, simply because people believe that both markets have yet to bottom out.

With the exception of the acting world, perhaps no other industry is quite so driven by perception as the music business, where millions, if not billions, are spent every year in an effort to manipulate public opinion.

Given the multitudes of artists, managers, publicists etc. competing fiercely for a marketplace that continues to shrink, careers in music can often turn on such perceptions, with the most fatal of all being the perception that you are finished.

Ironically, while history teaches us that an artist's death often marks a boon for their business, the notion that their career has died can be nothing short of fatal in a commercial sense.

In the case of David Kitt, that perception arose only three albums into his career; a career that initially saw him heralded a true innovator and one of the most exciting prospects in global music.

How paradoxical then that he should produce his best work when the flashbulbs and sycophants were little more than a faded memory from another lifetime, a state of affairs that seems to suit him just fine.

The sheer quality of his latest work, however, may yet see the circus return to town because even the most fickle in the media cannot ignore something this good.

Much like learning to talk or walk, in the Kitt household music was simply a part of growing up and an essential element of familial existence.

Known primarily now as a longtime T.D. for Irish political party, Fianna Fáil, Kitt's father Tom had once toured the country with his brothers as part of a folk act, and passed this love of music on to his children.

Of them all, David initially fell most deeply under its spell, driven further into its arms by the cruelty of classmates who persistently picked on him and called him a "mongoloid".

Their spiteful taunts engendered in him acute body dysmorphic disorder, a condition which essentially causes the victim to obsess over every seeming physical self-defect, causing a remarkable degree of psychological distress in the sufferer.

Music provided an escape from such painful worries and songwriting offered a vent for the stress that typified his early years.

By the time he started a post-graduate course in music technology in Trinity College, he had begun to record a clutch of these songs on a homemade studio in his bedroom, and passed the subsequent demo out to friends.

A short time later the demo passed over the desk at Rough Trade records, who were sufficiently impressed to sign Kitt to a multi-album deal, even going so far as to unveil him alongside another recent signing, The Strokes, as the future of the label.

The demo, in all its lo-fi splendor, appeared in 2000, as Small Moments, an emotionally engaging, warm, mini-album, characterized by an acoustic/electronic blend which saw him hailed as one of the most compelling artists on the international scene.

He consolidated his position as a precocious talent with the subsequent release of The Big Romance, the following year, an album that went on to attain double-platinum status in Ireland.

It also succeeded in creating a buzz among critics and on the underground in the UK, a market that is typically resistant to all but the biggest names in Irish music.

Tours around the world with Television, Yo La Tengo and Arab Strap followed, and he even received a personal invitation from David Bowie to perform at 2002's Meltdown Festival. Then, just as suddenly, the lights went out.

In 2003, he released Square 1, somewhat of a concept album, which scored poorly with critics, many of whom saw it as supremely self-indulgent and lacking the seductive imagination of his earlier efforts.

Inspired in its entirety by a romantic relationship, the album nonetheless fared well in Ireland, where it sat atop the charts for three weeks, but its failure to succeed overseas saw him unceremoniously dropped.

As one might expect, he found the entire experience deflating, once relating in an interview: "I had put together a six-piece band and I had plans. The album went to number one in the Irish charts and I had just completed a sell-out tour of the UK.

'What more could they want?' I thought. It's a great base to build on for the future but two weeks later I was dropped. It was a shock."

All of his momentum was effectively undone by a single album and like some intractable counter clerk, the media summarily dismissed him and looked for the next person in line.

Soured by the experience and disillusioned by the industry, he took some time away before tentatively returning with an album of supremely imaginative cover versions, The Black And Red Notebook.

Beautifully realized, the work included innovative versions of tracks from well-known acts such as the Beatles, Thin Lizzy and Sonic Youth, to more obscure covers from artists like Toots and the Maytals and recent Choice Music Prize winner and sometime collaborator, Jape.

He also used his newly found modest predicament as an opportunity to connect further with the Irish public, by playing smaller venues in towns and villages throughout the country.

Not everyone in the industry had forgotten his name, however, as he discovered after a performance at Glastonbury in 2005, when he was approached backstage by members of the Magic Numbers, who revealed themselves as huge fans of his music, and subsequently took him on several tours of Europe and the US.

In fact, the Magic Numbers, Stoddart siblings even appeared on Kitt's 2006 album, Not Fade Away, an exhilaratingly defiant riposte to those that had written him off so easily, as evidenced by track titles like Don't F**k With Me and I Know The Reason.

Back to his imaginative and melodic best, it was unquestionably his best work since The Big Romance, and perhaps even his strongest to date, though sadly it failed to strike commercial pay dirt.

In the intervening years, Kitt has continued to firm up his support in Ireland, taking time to smell the roses as he travels the nation's highways and byways. In the process, he has rediscovered his love for music, the only pure thing about an industry often populated by charlatans and snake oil salesmen.

I can recall being at a house party some time ago where he sat in a corner armed with an acoustic guitar, pouring out cover version after cover version for hours, sometimes to a rapt audience in the room, and at other times only to himself.

The performance left me with the overriding impression that this was a supremely gifted man who truly loves what he does, someone whose love of music transcends the physical world.

This mix of love and compulsion saw him return to the same bedroom studio set up in the last year, where he regularly put in 80 hours per week working on his latest album, even as he found himself slipping so far into debt that he was threatened with legal action by Dublin's country sheriff.

The fruits of those labors arrive next week with the release of The Nightsaver, an album that will only be released in Ireland and online for the moment.

All early signs indicate that this will be his finest work to date, with tracks like the seductive and pensive A Real Fire and utterly sublime Learning How To Say Goodbye, offering absolute proof of an artist that has so much more to give, and one that deserves to reassume his place in any conversation regarding the best acts that Ireland has produced.

Given his low profile in recent years this album may not exactly haul him in a king's ransom but it should at the very least generate him enough to pay his rent and keep him out on the road touring, where he can stay one step ahead of the sheriff and his posse.