Glen Brady has come full circle.

The Def Nettle frontman has worked with everyone from Dolores O’Riordan to REM and his music has featured in shows like Gossip Girl and CSI Miami, but he’s returning to the sounds that first hooked him as a teenager.

Influences

“Bands like The Sisters of Mercy, The Smiths, The Cure, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. I think there’s even something of early The Stunning or U2,” he says.

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Brady made his name as a DJ in Dublin at venues like The Kitchen and The Pod in the 1990s, before becoming one of the most sought-after figures in the business as a musician and producer.

The old Crawdaddy venue beside The Pod was recently converted into an outlet for a sandwich shop chain and Brady feels despair at the destruction of cultural spaces in the city where he learned his trade.

“Clubs come and clubs go, you need to know that if you’re going to be a DJ,” he says.

“But in terms of there being a Pret A Manger there…

“I was walking through Temple Bar the other day and I walked past the Central Bank and there’s this big nasty doughnut shop there.

“If someone wants to have a doughnut every once in a while, cool. But what the hell is wrong with society, if, in the middle of our cultural centre, it looks like Kennedy airport?

“It’s like a scene from Better Call Saul. It’s sad. It made me feel lonely.”

Several lives

Brady has lived several lives.

From musician, producer, and engineer in Dublin, New York, Berlin and San Francisco and all the hedonism that goes with live touring to now living in Wexford with his wife Lindsey and two children Beatrice and Julian where he’s a regular with the local sea swimming club.

Def Nettle is his first project behind the microphone as lead vocalist and he’s not pulling any punches with the lyrics.

“I’m definitely positive, but there’s something in Def Nettle… I’m not trying to sugarcoat anything,” he says.

“The subject matter of the first song The Pills is about people in my life that have gotten messed up by pills.

Glen has worked with everyone from REM to Dolores O'Riordan in the past

“The second track War Machine, it was written on the way home after dropping a friend to rehab in the UK.

“I had to pull over the car. The whole song came to me.

“I’ve learned to see the brightest in things. But I live in the countryside now, I grow food, I go swimming and I’m very aware of the continuous destruction of our environment. And not enough people give a s**t that we’re destroying it.

“There’s a lot of darkness out there.”

Darkness

He’s channelling that darkness through this new project and the sound is heavily influenced by The Smiths, with Andy Rourke even collaborating on War Machine.

“There’s not much working with Andy. You just turn his amp on and he plays the best bassline there is,” says Brady, laughing.

“I heard one take and I was like: ‘Cool, we’re done!”

Brady first met Rourke in the mid-2000s in San Francisco when he was in The Glass — the indie dance band he started with Dominique Keegan.

They crossed paths several times over the years before working together with the late Dolores O’Riordan and Olé Koretsky on the band DARK.

“Dolores was just a wonderful person. She treated me like family,” he says.

“She’s probably one of the greatest Irish artists of all time.

“But she was still a human being.

“People would ask what’s she like because they read something in the paper, but I only experienced someone who was really nice to me, really creative and had really interesting thoughts and approaches to music.

“She had an amazing ear, I feel totally privileged to have worked with her.”

New single

Brady worked as a session musician and programmer on REM’s 2001 album Reveal when starting out and as DJ Wool and with The Glass his music has featured in a number of hit American TV shows.

He even worked for a period with the California State Symphony and those diverse experiences are all part of the mix with Def Nettle.

“This new single Architecture is a huge circle for me. It’s the music I listened to as a teenager, regurgitated through a lifetime of music,” he says.

Artwork for Architecture

“I can write lyrics until the cows come home, because I’ve lived it.”

He cites The The’s Matt Johnson as a major influence on his current work.

“When I was a teenager I really related to the beauty and soulfulness and the pain in his music,” he says.

“I’m not as overtly political, but I definitely relate to the darkness of his stuff.”

Brady has brought together the talents of people like Rourke, Jay Oglesby, Joe Donegan, Graeme Slattery, Sin Silver, Ely Siegel and former Grouse main man Ronan Carroll for various parts on Def Nettle.

He recently recorded some live tracks for the Virgin Media show Fanning At Whelan’s with drummer Jason Fleming on board.

The next single ‘Architecture’ is a gothic walk through late 80s/early 90s Dublin before the city and the songwriter changed forever.

“My memories of Dublin in the 90s are walking from one side of town to the other in the rain, in and out of doorways, trying to stay dry,” he says.

“The song is very much based on that person I might’ve been then, with a sense of isolation, pain and broken-heartedness.

“Which is a very different person to who I am now.”

When and where?

Architecture is due for release on November 18 and Def Nettle play The Workman’s Club on the same day.

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