It’s been a stellar year for Belfast local Niall McDowell. The past few months alone have continued a trend of sold-out shows, seen them selected to travel to Canada and play at the Home County Festival, release another widely praised and beautifully composed new single named ‘Start Again’, and by the time I had caught up with them, their single ‘I Have Given Up’ was shortlisted at the NI Music Prize Awards this coming November for Single of the Year.
They may be one of the newest and freshest faces on the music scene, having only begun to release music back in 2021, but have already cemented themselves as one of the must-watch artists. Previous singles such as ‘Brokeback’ and ‘It Was An Honour To Be Nominated’ showcase the brilliance of their songwriting, able to craft what seem like musical short stories that lure the listener in before offering up, as they put it themselves, ‘a sucker punch in the lyrics’.
Let’s start this off easy: would you describe yourself to our readers? Who is Niall McDowell, and what can they expect when they go to put your music on?
Well, I guess I make folk music, to an extent, and I blend it with country music. It’s funny; I’ve been described as somewhere between a choirboy and a cowboy. So that’s my elevator pitch. I think that’s a funny way to describe it. I wouldn’t say I like the sad song label, but I make very vulnerable songs blended with humour and cynicism. Many people tell me they start listening to my songs, laugh, then get quite emotional – like sucker punch songwriting.
Is the sucker punch coming from the lyrics?
Yeah, with the lyrics. I’m a singer first, so I focus more on lyrics. I first started learning the guitar to write songs. So, it comes more from a poetry perspective at the beginning. But style-wise, my voice is always the centre.
What about your live shows? How would you describe them?
My live shows are me by myself. I think my songwriting comes across well that way, and I feel really strong that way. Maybe there will be a bit more of a band setting over the next year or so, but for now, it’s all solo. They are really stripped-back performances; it lets me get to the core of the songwriting. I think people respond to it really well.
I was at one of your gigs in The Black Box in Belfast. You could hear a pin drop between the notes; everybody was really into it.
The Black Box is such a stripped-back venue. I can hear myself and everyone else there. That was a good show to get the songs across.
You touched on it a little earlier that you learned to play guitar in order to write songs. But was there anything in general or anyone that inspired you to get into music?
Well, my background is actually in classical music. I was a singer in cathedral choirs, so it was all very religious to begin with. I did that for four years. Travelling around singing at these masses. And then, after that, I completely went rogue. Looking back, it was good training for me as a singer, but I never really liked it. I started listening to my own music, and Fiona Apple was a huge one for me, then Joni Mitchell. So I had, like my, ‘not like other girls’ phase.
I had a feeling Joni Mitchell would have been an inspiration. The first time I heard your music, I thought it was like a blend of Joni Mitchell and Roy Orbison.
Yeah, she was huge for me. I think everyone listens to Blue, that’s like – thee album. I remember buying the record and listening to it in my room every night, lying there shouting the words for a good hour. It was a bit later that I got into her other records, but I always saw that album as really strong, barebones songwriting. It almost became like a blueprint for me – pardon the pun. Liz Phair was also huge for me. An album called Exile in Guyville, which is a little more rockier, was released in the 90s. She was so raw with her lyrics, and I really focused on that.
I’ve noticed you have a genuine appreciation for the arts in general. Saw you even dressed up as Andy Warhol..
Someone thought I was Noel Gallagher.
Would any other art form ever creep into your writing beyond musical influences?
Probably yeah. My friends and I were always very interested in culture; we like to stay on top of what’s happening and just like to have a take on everything. I think that comes into what I write and how I perform; I generally care about what I consume and curate it; it’s important to me. I still write down every book that I read and my favourite albums. I don’t really share it often – like journaling. I’ve journaled since I was 14. I don’t use any of it for music. It’s all just mental. But I think writers really inspire me more than others.
Your lyrics are very personal, sometimes coming across as brutally honest and very self-reflective. I saw you attended Soft Gut Song Camp. How was that experience? Was it difficult to write with others when the usual process seemed so isolated and personal?
That was weird. I really enjoyed writing around other people and seeing the difference in what they focus on as writers compared to me. The theory of here’s the chorus, here’s the middle eight and here’s the bridge, now write specific parts to these. But if the story doesn’t flow because I’m trying to fit it into these boxes, it feels silly. But overall, the experience was a really good one. It gave me some solid validation at the time. I started releasing music in 2021, but before that, I was just fucking around with demos, still finding my feet. But when I went to the camp, there were many other artists there who had been doing music for about ten years. The validation came from hearing these people like my songs. I wrote ‘Start Again’, which came out last month there with Ciaran Lavery on the first day of the camp. We wrote it in about two hours, I think.
I spotted another interview you did previously. In it, you spoke about some issues with the anxiety of songwriting and the thought of “everything having been said already”. Do you still deal with anxiety today?
I have a song called ‘I Have Given Up’ about how embarrassing it is in general to be a musician. That’s where the anxiety comes from, mainly. Maybe it’s just a Belfast thing, but it can be embarrassing to say, “I believe in myself, and I want you to believe in me too”.
Yeah, there’s a real Belfast thing: “Who do you think you are?”.
Literally – It took me a long time to get over that. It’s finally got to a point now where I say to people, I’m a singer. I think that’s a big thing for everyone who’s an artist. How successful do you have to be before you can say yeah, this is what I do? Because then you meet someone who’s an ‘actual’ musician, and they say, what have you done? Then, you have an existential crisis. What’s even worse is people saying – “let’s play it.” – The song is about trauma; let’s not do this at a family party.
Let’s talk about your latest release – ‘Start Again’; what is it about, and what inspired you to write it?
Flea Bag and the hot priest kind of inspire it; I was rewatching it with my mum and just latched onto it, a specific scene when they were in the confessional box. I evolved that a little more into a song about literal life and death. Asking what’s the point in life if you don’t know what you’re doing. So yeah, it’s my hot priest song.
You were invited over to play at the Home County Festival this year in Canada; how did that go?
It was really weird, such a wild experience. When I started releasing music back in 2021, the aim was to play some shows around Belfast. So it was really weird to me that I was suddenly able to go over to Canada, selected to play for these people who would otherwise maybe never heard the music. It was a surreal thing. It was the biggest crowd I’ve played to. I think over the course of the weekend, there were a few thousand people there. We didn’t realise we were even headliners until the day before. Someone told me the few who were over from Belfast were the draw, and people were coming to hear us, the ones who had travelled so far to be there. Again, it was quite validating. A lot of people really liked it. But you know it’s funny because as a musician, when something like that happens, it’s like, okay, now what comes next? You’re thinking you have to keep it up. I’m not sure I’ve even fully let myself process that I went over and did that.
So finally, congratulations are in order, ‘I Have Given Up’ has been shortlisted for the NI Music Prize’s ‘Single of the Year’. How does it feel?
It’s fun. I wouldn’t say I like to get too excited about these things. It’ll be really nice to go; I went to the event before as part of a Yeah Centre development programme last year as a guest to see what it was like. So it’s nice that the year after, I’ll be there, and my song has been selected, getting to see my name up on the screen. That’s a really exciting thing. I think the positives from it, though, isn’t if I win. It just feels good, and the validation again is nice, but I already felt that when the song was released, a lot of people did connect with the song. I can’t bring myself to beg for votes. It’s so cringy, so I probably won’t win, but I’m excited to meet the other artists!
Niall McDowell Upcoming gigs:
14/11/23 – Scratch My Progress Showcase at Oh Yeah Centre as part of Sound of Belfast – free tickets
23/11/23 Supporting Rachael Lavelle and Naoise Roo in The Black Box Belfast – tickets
20/01/23 Your Roots Are Showing Folk Conference – Dundalk
NI Music Awards – Single of the Year 2023 – Vote for the winner here.
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