BackstageOL Artist Spotlight: Two Door Cinema Club

It’s not that often I hear a band and immediately stop everything I’m doing to tune in. It was a little over two years while putting together a list of prospects we wanted to interview for the 2011 South by Southwest Music Festival that I found now one of my favorite bands of all time. That day I went through over 200 music videos of bands that ranged from African tribal groups to indie folk singers to the hottest electronic DJs coming out of Europe. Somewhere in between all that chaos I found North Irish rockers Two Door Cinema Club aka “TDCC”.

The song that caught my ear and caused me to drop everything I was doing was “What You Know”. It was catchy, poppy and unique. Simply a sound I had never heard before. I immediately called BackstageOL’s Dave Morales, who was working for a Houston Hot AC radio station at the time, and told him “you got to check out this band. We’ve got to interview this band. They’ve got something.” It just so happened that the band recently signed to a new independent record label called Glassnote Records for their debut album ‘Tourist History’. The founder of the label, Daniel Glass, was a good friend of Dave and helped make the arrangements to set up an interview at SXSW. You may now recognize Glassnote’s artist line-up due to their recent success with Phoenix, Mumford and Sons, and The Temper Trap.

The interview went great, especially because we were interviewing Irish guys on St. Patty’s Day. It doesn’t get much better than that. We talked about their debut album ‘Tourist History’, the success they were having overseas (‘Tourist History’ won the coveted Choice Music Prize for Irish “Album of the Year” in 2010), placement in video games (they had no clue they were featured in NBA 2K11 and didn’t know what it was), and how they were enjoying the States. Right after the interview the guys hopped on a plane and flew back across the pond to play a festival in the U.K. the next day. We wouldn’t see the guys again until the summer of 2012.

When the lineup for Houston’s Free Press Summerfest (FPSF) came out I was excited to see Two Door Cinema Club would be making their live debut in the Houston metroplex. The group had stayed busy over the last year and a half selling over a million copies worldwide while performing in the UK, Europe, Asia, South America, Japan and South Africa. The guys had also teamed up with Jacknife Lee (Snow Patrol/AFI/Weezer) to produce their sophomore album ‘Beacon’. Now with blossoming success overseas and here in the States, it was time to sit down and catch up with the guys again. So I called up their Glassnote label rep and said “you got to hook us up!” Below is the interview that ensued.

Now the band has returned to Houston while on their way to perform in front of over 50,000 people at Austin City Limits Music Festival. Instead of being restricted to a 45-minute festival set (like at FPSF or ACL), the band will get to perform their full catalog for the first time in Houston during a sold-out intimate show at the House of Blues Saturday night.

Since tickets are going to be hard to come by, Two Door Cinema Club will be performing a FREE set at Cactus Music tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon at 5pm. Come check out the tunes, meet the guys, and purchase their new album ‘Beacon’ and, if you don’t have it, ‘Tourist History’. Maybe they’ll even sign it for you!

Come see for yourself why Two Door Cinema Club has been chosen by Paste Magazine as ‘The Best of What’s Next’, a ‘Breaking Out’ Artist by SPIN Magazine, and ‘Best Bet of 2011’ by Billboard Magazine. If you don’t know about TDCC yet, you soon will!