‘Soul-destroying’ is the term Paul Mahon opts for when recalling how the band to which he’d dedicated all his adult life faded meekly, almost apologetically, into the shadows in the winter of 2017.
The guitarist is revisiting The Answer’s final run of shows promoting 2016’s Solas, the four-piece’s acclaimed sixth album. It’s a bold, experimental record, with its hard-rock foundations augmented by Irish traditional music and subtle electronic flourishes. Hopes back then that it might broaden the Downpatrick group’s increasingly selective appeal dissipated when it failed to make it into the Top 40. Closing out the tour as special guests on Mr. Big’s UK theatre tour, a booking he regarded as “a dead rubber”, Mahon was acutely aware that The Answer were nearing the end of the road in more ways than one.
