Dublin band Sack spent two years living in London, releasing records and touring up and down Britain. By 1995 their record label had ceased trading and as a new musical movement began to take hold Sack decided that it might be time to come home.
“I can remember being in The Green Man pub late on a Tuesday night. Top of the Pops was recorded on Tuesdays and we walked in, everyone was there Blur, Pulp and Elastica, all just hanging around,” recalls John Brereton, Sack’s guitarist and principal songwriter. “It was just great to be in that scene, but ultimately it probably was a bad thing for an Irish band to be around as well, because you didn’t get a sniff of interest really.”
Martin McCann, Sack’s singer, laughs in agreement: “Yeah, the clue’s in the name Britpop, it wasn’t Paddy Pop.”
“The Britpop thing and the lack of money,” says Brereton. “When you’ve no money in London it’s hard to be in a band.” The situation would have broken most bands but Sack had been through a lot worse.
Sack were originally called Lord John White. Returning to Dublin from a Cork gig on Friday 04 March 1988, the band’s van hit a cow on the road near Cashel. A headline in the following day’s Evening Herald declared: “Band in freak crash, eight group members in hospital.” “Eight of us in a Hiace van and all the gear, the van turned upside down and ended up in a field, I crawled out of the skylight,” remembers McCann.
“I went through the windscreen, it was really bad,” says Brereton. “I was actually given the last rites on the side of the road. I was in hospital for four or five months, and then in and out for two years, I had to learn to walk again. It was actually the band that kept me going through hospital and kept me fighting.”
In the early 90s as Lord John White’s sound became a bit harder the lads decided to change their name to Sack. A record deal with the independent UK label Lemon Records followed and the band decamped to London. In September 1993 the band’s debut single, the Dilettanti EP, which featured the song ‘What Did the Christians Ever Do For Us’, was awarded Single of the Week in the NME by Stuart Bailie who described it as having, “the tune of a champion and the iconoclastic cross-burning glee of Fatima Mansions.”
‘What Did the Christians Ever Do For Us’ was re-released in the Summer of 1994 and was awarded Single of the Week status in both the NME and Melody Maker.
Jennifer Nine in the Melody Maker wrote that, “guitarist John Brereton’s ruthlessly catchy songs bulge with politics and menace, while singer Martin McCann vacillates between singing his heart out and seemingly offering to kick our heads in.”
Sack had arrived. You Are What You Eat, their debut album followed in September 1994. Andrew Muller in Melody Maker declared it, “a virulent, vitriolic and highly auspicious beginning.” Everything was on an upwards trajectory for Sack until Lemon Records ran out of funds. Sack retreated home and planned their next move.
Back in Dublin Sack met ex-Blue in Heaven frontman Shane O’Neill and his brother Brian. The O’Neills ran Dirt Records and had released Revelino’s self-titled debut album. The brothers were keen to work with Sack and release their next album.
“Brian and I both loved Sack’s first album,” remembers Shane. “John is a fantastic songwriter and for some reason he is just overlooked. Martin is a great singer, and he was finding his feet with songwriting too. Derek [Lee] on bass and Tony [Brereton, John’s brother] on drums were really unbelievable together, the crunch and attack behind these great songs could take your breath away.” Sack enlisted Paul Tipler to produce the album. Tipler had engineered their debut and his CV also included engineering sessions for Stereolab and Julian Cope.
Assisting Tipler on the sessions was Garret “Jacknife” Lee, the brother of Sack’s bass player Derek. Before Jacknife became a producer and mixer known for his work with REM and U2 and one half of Telefís – with the late Cathal Coughlan – he was the guitarist in the great 1990s guitar band Compulsion.
“I was obviously very aware of Sack. I think I’d done sound in the Underground for Lord John White,” recalls Jacknife. “Sack played with Compulsion a lot in England. We absolutely loved them. They were miles ahead of what was going on there.”
“In 1996 I had left Compulsion. Derek, my brother, gave me a little lifeline and asked me to come to Dublin to record with Sack. I had just done my first remix for Björk and had moved into the world of programming and sampling. Paul Tipler was my neighbour in Camden and I was a huge Stereolab fan. I’m not sure I added that much to the album but it was fun.”
The studio Sack were using to record the album sessions was still being built when Paul Tipler arrived in Dublin to begin the recording sessions.
“We had no money really and so we just made it happen, everyone got pressured, it was a mess, but constructive,” recalls O’Neill. “Deadlines blew by and they recorded in a building site. Paul was a proper producer and he had to adapt fast. I vaguely remember having to persuade him not to walk a few times.” Out of this mess Sack produced Butterfly Effect, one of the greatest Irish guitar albums of the 1990s. As O’Neill mentioned, McCann was writing more and contributed lyrics to half the songs on the album.
“I’d always been writing little words here and there,” says McCann. “The first time to put it really into action was with Butterfly Effect. I just got a bit more confident.”
One of the album’s highlights is McCann’s ‘Laughter Lines’, a single that Morrissey later said “should be No. 1 forever.” ‘Latitude’ was also a single and if the financial resources had been in place Dirt could easily have released three or four more songs such was the abundance of guitar pop nuggets on the album.
“With no money we had to rely on press and radio which didn’t happen,” says O’Neill. “Obviously we never recouped, we actually lost our shirts. We knew that was the probable outcome before we started, but we saw it as art. As a label we weren’t cool or commercial, so in that awkward place in the middle.”
Butterfly Effect didn’t get the attention it deserved but Sack persevered. “We’re an optimistic bunch at heart, we’re not bitter people,” says Brereton. “Everyone in the band is like, ‘well, that happened and that didn’t happen, what’s next?’ You know, kind of just pragmatic.” Butterfly Effect was reissued in 2022, receiving justified belated acclaim and reaching a new audience. “I suppose it was unfinished business,” says Brereton. “I think it really holds up as an album. It’s a really good guitar pop album.”
Brereton describes Sack’s legacy as simply, “staying together, writing songs and still being friends.” McCann nods in agreement and says, “The music always takes over, regardless of anything, it’s art really isn’t it?”
Sack released their third album Adventura Majestica in 2000. Over the next two decades they reconvened sporadically to play gigs to a loyal fanbase.
In 2022 the band released the song ‘What a Way to Live’, their first new material in over 22 years. Sack release Wake Up People, their forthcoming fourth album, on 18 October. The band play Coughlans in Cork on 08 November and The Button Factory in Dublin on 23 November.
