Biography

If people see this record as over-the-top that will be fine with me, because I was never aiming low.
Rogues Gallery, the debut release by Sean OReilly and his band, is certainly not an album lacking musical fanfare. Lush strings, regal horns, and ethereal woodwinds meet pounding drums, the rhythmic drive of acoustic guitars and the raucous rumbling of electric bass and guitar in an album that is anchored by the 23 year-old singer/songwriters massive piano riffs. For many of the tracks, we rented a Fazioli piano. This piano was 102; I believe its the longest piano in the world. We had to travel all through New York to find this sound the kind of sound that can cut through 50 other tracks and still be an orchestra in its own right. The piano was the foundation and almost the symbol of what I wanted to achieve. I own many indie records and listen to them all the time you know the ones that are very intimate and tasteful. I didnt want that. I wanted a big budget sound, even if I really couldnt afford it. If I came home with a record and all I could think was gee we really couldnt afford to get a bigger drum sound or authentic strings, but what we have here is very tasteful and sparse. I think I would have burned it. Out the door with tasteful-ness, give me more tympani and some fuzz guitars!
In order to achieve this sound OReilly had to get creative figuratively and literally, contributing more to the recordings than most artists ever would. We self-produced the album. My father, my brother, and I made all of the creative decisions. It was an OReilly affair to be certain. I even arranged all the strings and when we needed a choir the female half of the family came in quite handy. All the ladies in my family could sing so it only made sense to use them. Then I added in some vocals of my own as well as Patricks, my brother and a great guitarist, and voila: a choir was born.
Its the Sean OReilly Band because a) we werent feeling particularly creative the day the title was born and b) too many people put so much effort into this album for me to think of it as a singer/songwriter record. From the musicians to the songs themselves Patrick sings some of the lead vocals. There were contributions that needed to be recognized.
So we finished the album and I saw that, yeah, if a song wanted to rock out, it rocked out, and if it wanted to be campy, it was campy. However, the problem was that there was no connection between most of the songs on just about every level. So the only logical way for me to think about the album was for the songs to be paintings in a gallery: the surrealist right next to the impressionist and realists in a big beautiful eyesore. My old man, who wrote some of the lyrics to some of the songs, kind of laughed at the idea and said call it rogues gallery and I took him seriously.
A Rogues Gallery: a coterie of undesirable people. Thats how it appears in the album. And while its a fun jab at the members of the band, it very well represents the songs on the album: a group of rulebreakers that follow their own musical paths to dark and lonely corners of dissonance, anger, sorrow, heartbreak, or unabashed beauty.