Rock’s Raising Jupiter aiming for the stars

Raising Jupiter, a three-piece powerhouse who bring to mind the American rockers Soundgarden, play Monroe’s Live on Friday, January 23. The Cork rock band are Dave Aitken (vocals/guitar), John McGrath (drums) and Sean Scott Baird (bass). They started playing together three years ago when John and Sean asked Dave to join their band, which was a covers outfit.

“I was looking for a way to get back playing, I’d taken a small hiatus,” Dave says. “That was around 2012, but to be honest we kind of tired of that – well, I did anyway. I was more looking to do the original stuff. So John and myself started working on that. Sean went off – he was involved with a metal band at the time.”

Dave and John eventually had an album’s worth of material and, buoyed by some shows in Spain, decided to form Raising Jupiter. They needed a bassist, but there was only one name on the list.

“We just thought ‘right, what are we going to do with these songs?’,” Dave says. “We said ‘let’s make the three-piece thing happen’ so we invited Sean to come back. We spent the next while gigging, gearing up to release the album in May of 2014.”

A Better Balance has the sound of a rock band with ambitions. To get the final sheen, Dave went to Florida and asked engineer Brett Hessla to mix the album. Hessla had previously worked with Creed, who have sold over 40 million records.

“Brett was eager to get on board,” Dave says.  “He’s just one of these guys who’s multi-talented when it comes to music, and a hell of a nice guy to boot. He mixed the album. It was good to get that outside set of ears, giving their interpretation of what you’re doing. He added that polish. We were really happy with the end result. He brought another piece to the jigsaw.”