A little about us...
"Somewhere you're sleeping and cotton clings to your skin where I should be, but words and love were not enough to have you here with me."

You can't accuse RoySeven's Paul Walsh of pulling any lyrical punches. Listening to that line from 'Happy Ever Afters', there's no mistaking a man who's had his heart ripped out and stuck through the meat grinder. It's one of the eleven tracks that make up The Art of Insincerity, his bands dark, fragile, epic and beautifully melodic debut album. "I'm not very good at hiding my feelings, am I?" the Irishman laughs. "The Art Of Insincerity is mostly, though not exclusively, about my last relationship, the person I loved and hoped I would spend the rest of my life with."

As with all classic break-up records, hurt and despair gradually give way to anger, defiance and the elation that comes from realising you've survived going emotional cold turkey.

"There were times when, yeah, I was falling apart and nothing made me feel better, but that said there's still a lot of hope on the album," Paul resumes. "The reason it comes across as lyrically raw or honest, perhaps too honest, is that I wrote it for myself rather than other people. We all find solace in different things I suppose."

The intensity of Walsh's spleen venting is matched by his band-mates who construct an intricate wall of sound around his vocals. There's also a deep melodic sensibility running through The Art Of Insincerity, which comes from a collective love of The Doors, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Rufus Wainwright and Jeff Buckley to name but a few.

"As a kid I really only listened to music that was on the radio, mostly pop, or to my Dad's showband at the weekends. I didn't buy my own music 'til I was twelve when I spent €2 on a Doors bootleg. It was Jim Morrison ; the doors that opened my eyes to music that can be both melodically interesting and lyrically inspiring and challenging."

Paul's hometown of Clonmel in County Tipperary may be short on rock 'n' roll thrills .. Marilyn Manson getting married nearby is about it in terms of recent excitement.. but there's a long tradition of music, stage and performance art in the town that he's proud to have been part of.

Although they'd been together in various guises since the start of the millennium, it wasn't until September 25th 2003 that the band arrived at its definitive line-up.

"That's when we had the first rehearsal as a six-piece and knew we'd finally got the chemistry right. I'd started writing songs like 'Crash', 'Aberdeen', and 'February' and 'I Laughed Alone' which made their debut at Christmas '03 when we supported a legendary Dublin group called Aslan."

It wasn't long before RoySeven were playing sell-out headliners in the Irish capital.

"Actually, to be historically accurate, it was Jove who did those gigs. We decided to change the name to reflect the new line up and music. We went for 'Roy' as it's the title of the oldest song in our set and we all have a bond with it. To avoid a recurrence of the name duplication we had with 'Jove', we decided to add something to it. We heard a David Bowie interview where he commented that a song is never complete until it's heard by the listener, hence RoySeven. There are six of us in the group, plus that listener. Let's face it , RoySix sounds shit anyway!"

One of their last acts as Jove was to rent Dublin's historic Olympia Theatre, and stage a Rising Bands night with some other acts that attracted over a thousand people.

"We'd been offered the record deal shortly beforehand and realised it was time to find a producer and start recording The Art Of Insincerity."

Having recruited rising producer, and Muse's live soundman, Marc Carolan, it was off to Grouse Lodge Studios in Westmeath where Manic Street Preachers, Doves, Hope Of The states and Snow Patrol have all recently assembled albums.

"There are a lot of big moments in the songs, which we hadn�t been able to capture properly in the studio until Marc came on board. When he played the first track back to us we all had shivers up our spines."

So does all of this add up to a happy ending?

"Happy may be overstating it a bit," Paul smiles, but the last line of the last track on the album, 'Send Me To Hell', asks: 'Can I start again?' It's a hopeful ending."

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