If Johnny Cash had grown up in Northern Ireland, or if Janis Joplin and Leonard Cohen had created a lovechild in the Chelsea Hotel, the result might very well have been Aaron McMullan. His debut record entitled “Yonder! Calliope?” was just released by ExLibris Records out of London, England. Within this album, twelve remarkably lucid songs of love, loss and inspiration are just barely contained without spilling forward. Indeed, Aaron’s reputation as a wordsmith is one of due warning, for one must enter the conversation quite prepared for the onslaught of verbal imagery.

So Aaron, exactly what are you wearing right now?

Aaron: I’m wearing two firemen and a pair of Gucci mittens. Well rocks, it does, the whole thing.

Let me try again to catch you off guard. At your various internet crashing pads – including Blogcritics and Mondo Irelando – I’ve been curious about this Kirsten Dunst perversion of yours. In the “Motherfucking Cinema” essay, were you quite serious about all the things you’ve read into her choices of roles, or were you also poking a bit of fun at your infatuation?

Aaron: Ha! Dear god… this is what happens, y’see, I get locked into focusing on one thing over another for a time, like “album stuff” over “writing stuff.” I forget the elements of one or the other and it’s quite a shock to be reminded. That was one of the last things I wrote before disappearing up my arsehole. The emphasis was very much on makin folks laugh, but in sayin’ that, the obsession is 100% factual. Shockin’ altogether, in fact. I dunno if I fully believe the cinema of Kirsten Dunst is as significant as the cinema of, say, Pasolini, and that Bring It On! or The Virgin Suicides says as much about the world and its trials and triumphs and disgraces and delights and also the fabulous art of being a human being as, say, The Decameron or Salo – BUT I wouldn’t take much convincing. A little-held view, I will concede, but still.

In most of your writing, you tend to bring in other media relative to what you’re writing about. Quite often, you tie all of these references into an anecdote of either factual or slightly amplified happenings within your own life. Is this how you create your music as well?

Aaron: That is exactly right. Exactly. I don’t think it’s possible to talk about anything, especially not any personal stuff, without drawin on that tapestry of media hanging about us every which way all of the day. It infiltrates every nook of a fella’s experience, least as far as I can tell. I don’t think I’m very good at reviewing stuff, for its a very precise thing and you need to be a certain sort of person to do it right. I think you need to go it like a surgeon, strippin’ everything else away from the bone of the matter. I’m a bad surgeon. I get caught up in how the strip-lights on the ceiling are reflecting on the scalpel there and forget all about the damn kidney or liver I’m supposed to be proddin’.

Creating music, or least writin’ the songs, goes along the same lines. Also, the constant battle to write in such a way that addresses exactly what it is with me that needs to be addressed, while at the same time doin’ so in a manner that makes it feel less like readin someone else’s self-pityin’ blog scribbles, which it can all very easily turn into. If I find myself writin a lyric that starts with “I feel so…” or somethin similar, I tend to get very annoyed. Exorcise the demons and what not, but do it in such way as there’s somethin’ being said other than “Boys oh, but I’m fierce melancholy.”

I’m relieved that you won’t be my surgeon, should I ever need one. It would be the end of me, I’m afraid! So what was the first song you learned to play on the guitar?

Aaron: “Don’t Look Back In Anger” by Oasis. Or at least, that was the first one i could play all the way through. I remember learning bits and pieces of different tunes, but that was the first one I could claim to “know” from start to end. Many’s the night the estate shook with the roars of frustration, an’ all, tryin’ to get that bastard bridge right.

How would you describe your music, and does this differ from other people’s perceptions of your work?

Aaron: The best I can really offer with regards any sort of categorization is punk-folk. I know that conjures images and sounds in the head-holes that my music probably does little to accomodate, but it’s the only pigeon-hole I’ve found any way comfortable. And it doesn’t fit everything, I’ll admit. I heard a man by the name of Grilly who makes dazzlin’ lo-fi electro-metal pop records call it “lyric led” or similar. I think that’s probably fair. Lyric-led sometimes melancholy punk-folk. Course, the term punk-folk is a bit of a nonsense, really, since, if we’re talkin Proper folk and Proper punk, one is but a shit’s fling shy of the other anyway. Tween Woody Guthrie and the Dead Kennedys there’s not that much of a gulf, far as i can tell. But it’s punk in spirit and folky in execution, so I’ll stand by it.

Certainly, I’ve been told “Oh, that sounds like Bright Eyes” or “That sounds like Billy Bragg,” and that’s fuckin’ beautiful to be told, but I think it’s maybe just wee moments here and there. I don’t know if, like, the album sounds like any of those people, or like it was influenced by any of them I should say. Of course, some of the sounds on “Yonder! Calliope?” were created by Andrew Gardiner, the producer, so you’ve got a whole ‘nother waft of influences creeping in from that angle that I would probably never have followed. A certain Radiohead feel comes in of occasion from his side of things, for example, here and there. A bit of My Bloody Valentine. Those are things I’d probably never have utilised. Lucky, i was, to encounter such a chap.

As a listener, what musical acts do you find yourself obsessed with?

Aaron: The Pogues are the Big Lads for me. The Pogues, The Libertines, Lucinda Williams, Bjork, Bright Eyes, Billy Bragg, Miles Davis… these kindsa people. The Pogues and The Libertines, in fact, I’ve always thought to be very similar, and it’s no surprise Pete Doherty and Shane MacGowan have taken so fondly to each other of late. Both of them are obsessed with a very mythical London filled with poets and drunkards and wrecks and saints, both draw on punk rock and “bygone” popular music forms (The Libertines obviously owe as much to Lonnie Donegan and to old music hall acts as they do to The Strokes), and both have lyrics you can read without wincing, which is rare for lyrics. Divorced of melody, even the most seemingly profound of statements suddenly appear all the limp in the world.

A unique (singing) voice hooks me instantly. Especially if it’s apparent the person can’t actually “sing” in the conventional manner, or at least chooses not to. A “technically” brilliant voice is all well and good, and Christina Aguilera is, I think, as spectacular a performer as any I’ve ever heard tell of (and “Stripped” is just an amazing album), but all the same, there’s somethin magical about a voice all wavering and failing to hit certain bits and breaking here and there that’s all the endearing in the world. Or maybe I’ve just convinced myself of that so as it makes me feel better about my own, ahem, “range.” The difference between a good singer and a great one is how well they communicate the song, aye? So Beyonce might be technically a better singer than, say, Billy Bragg, but I know which one I BELIEVE.

As an aside, I didn’t catch if you ever got to watch the fake trailers for Grindhouse. By the way, did I ever mention that creepy dream thing of mine?

Aaron: Haha! Eli roth sex dreams! Oh.. aye, yeah of course… *cough* I don’t blame you, I saw that picture with him on the hotel bed and that… GROWTH. prosthetic or no, some images can’t help but lodge in the head. Terrible dissapointment that’s goin to prove for many’s a lass, that image.

Hey, I actually didn’t know about that monster GROWTH (very NSFW link) until after I posted the first sex dream. That image shall probably be his legacy long after Hostel and the like are long forgotten.

Aaron: D’you know I’ve been workin on an excessive essay all about Eli Roth and Hostel and post-9/11 horror cinema for the past month, and I did indeed see Grindhouse. Planet Terror was a hell of a lot of fun, and Death Proof was sublime.

Ugh, that mental image just won’t go. Please, let’s get back to your music. What are some of your most important non-musical influences?

Aaron: Well, the biggest influences are probaby the people i encountered in my life here and there, folks I’ve been lucky enough to know or to have known of. Certain muses who’ve crawled upside the soul there and what not. Certain episodes in the ol’ Past. People I met when I was mad and in a nut-shack. People I met when I drank and the sundry disgraces accumulated. All those sorts of things. The ghosts. There’s a song on the album called “Ode To Innocence” that’s explicitly about all that, and has a line about it being a “Farewell to the Ghosts,” which it wasn’t, course. But it was a coming to terms with them, if nothin’ else.

Do you have any tasty plans for the immediate future?

Aaron: Well, I shift to London in about September time, and from there will continue to whore myself like a man possessed and attempt to sell enough copies of the record to justify the funds pumped that direction by the folks at Ex Libris Records. And writing carries on, course. Aside from that, I’m workin with a Northern Irish production company regarding a screenplay that I don’t think I’m meant to say anything about so I won’t. But that too. And finishing the novel, which shouldn’t take that long now.

Let’s talk about Jack White. Did his Coca-Cola™ commercial make him a sellout?

Aaron: This I have wrestled with. Mean, even if you did it just for the sake of doin’ and take no money and so on and so forth. STILL, you’re lending your voice to a fuckin beast of a corporation, you’re helpin’ that sprawl spread that bit further, and even volunteer work for a corporation is still work for a corporation. Bill Hicks said that once you accept such work, ESPECIALLY if you don’t need to do it for the money, everything you do is suspect. Off the artistic roll call forever, is how he put it. BUT… It’s JACK WHITE! The man just released “Icky Thump!” Hell’s fire… it’s very very difficult to know what to do. Ignore it if you like them, rail like blazes if you don’t.

I was more disapointed with the Sonic Youth / Starbucks™ thing, to be honest, and I don’t even really like Sonic Youth. Now, tell me now how you’ve been, for we’ve done fuck all but talk about me except for to say about the picture where Eli Roth has a big willy.

Yeah, I think we’re done with the on-the-record portion of this conversation.

Now, go download or pick up a copy of Aaron McMullan’s “Yonder! Calliope?” at ExLibris Records. In addition, drop in at his MySpace page where he offers virtual biscuits and marmalade.