Chumbawamba has just become a name to watch out for. After 15 years of hanging around at the edge of popular music, the band have just signed a major deal with EMI and a new album "Tubthumper" set for release, an album packed with potential hits.

Chumbawamba are a band who have a long history in Ireland. When they played the St. Francis Xavier Hall in 1992 with Fugazi, they were banned for throwing condoms out to the audience and were never invited back again. (At the time, distribution of condoms in Ireland was heavily restricted.) The fact that Alice Nutter appeared on stage dressed as a nun carrying a whisky bottle didn't help matters.

However, their subsequent gigs have become somewhat of an annual event among Ireland's alternative population. Every year as the winner rains end and the spring rains begin, Chumbawamba roll into town. For the last four years, an entourage of punks, crusties and all out weirdoes buy their tickets and scare the decent people of Dublin by descending on whatever venue (not the SFX of course) to jump up and down for an hour or so.

A few hours before their most recent performance, I met Alice for coffee in the coffee bar at the Red Box to discuss music and politics. Alice, herself, is the world's most unlikely pop star. With a strong northern English accent, short spiky hair and a complete lack of ego, Alice is one of the nicest and most approachable people in the whole of the music biz. So what is the new album like?

"I think it's the best thing we've ever done and I don't say that every album, 'cos I thought '...Raymond' (their last album) were shit. "Tubthumper" has loads of dance beats with bits of jungle mixed in with big pop choruses and straight down the line politics."

"Swingin' with Raymond", their last album was an experiment for the band. From their first album "Pictures of Starving Children" up to "Anarchy", the music had been characterised by blatant politics. "..Raymond" was different. Divided between the Love side, a collection of straight-forward love songs, and the Hate side, a mix of punk songs that lacked the punch of their earlier stuff. It was a chance for the band to do something they'd never done before, write straight-forward love songs.

"Once we'd done it, it were like 'yeah, fine', but now we want to go back to where our hearts lie. We're not poets. We can have a crack at it, but I think we're more fighters than writers."

However, Tubthumper does represent a change of outlook for Alice. She has come to realise that Chumbawamba are a band who play music with politics mixed in. She no longer regards the politics as the most important part of the Chumbawamba experience.

"The stuff we're doin' now, the politics are totally apparent. We wrote it all about Britain, but it is the most friggin' musical thing we've done. I've come to realise that the reason we're a band is because we like playing music."

This does not mean that either the band or Alice are becoming less political. The politics are still there, and just as strong as ever.

"I'm not fucking interested in Boy meets Girl, so I won't write about it. I write pamphlets and articles and I do all the things that you do to get your ideas across, but in a way Chumbawamba is something different. I'm not musical enough to make music on my own."

The reason for the change in Alice's outlook is the realisation that, despite the fact that they may all want the some things, they are not a united political front. Alice no longer speaks about the group as a single unit.

"It's took me years to realise that we've got broadly based sympathies, but we don't all have the same motives for doin' it. Some people do it 'cos they just love the music. They might sympathise with Class War, but they won't join it. Everybody gets the right to veto ideas. The problem with parties is that everyone is supposed to fucking think the same and that is really damaging, because there's no room to manoeuvre."

Another big change for the band is the fact that they have now signed to a major label. Alice admittes that she was "totally gobsmaked" by the reaction of the big labels when they left One Little Indian. As a punk band, signing onto a major label could be seen as selling out, but Alice has a different reason for doing so.

"My reasoning for doing it isn't how we're going to get our message across to more people, it's nothing to do with that. It's because my experiences with One Little Indian and the music industry have convinced me that they're all the fucking same. There's small business men and big business men and they have got a different agenda to us. There's no good or bad capitalism."

The band's signing with EMI marks the latest chapter in the horror story of Chumbawamba's experiences with record companies. When the band started out, they thought they could do everything on their own, including run their own record company. They then realised that the only way that would work was if they didn't pay themselves anything.

"It's like co-ops, you work harder for less money, because you exploit yourself. But, we couldn't be a band and a record company."

From there they went to work with Southern Distribution, where their anarchist principles got them into trouble. They decided to work on trust and not to sign a contract.

"How fucking ridiculous, it's like expecting capitalism to put it's hands up and say 'well, I'll behave, because you're saying you are'. We went to One Little Indian, and that were even worse."

The bands deal with EMI holds a certain element of satisfaction for Alice. Despite the band having a few minor hits from Anarchy, the band have never received much media attention.

"If you cite Chumbawamba's name, it's like sayin' 'I'm an unfashionable bastard'"

The band have continued to exist despite the lack of coverage and are now getting their own back. The media is being forced to take notice, because Chumbawamba are becoming a hit without their help. Success, though is not the most important thing to the band.

"We don't give a shit. If success were all we wanted, we'd have given up years ago. Never let the bastards grind ya down, we're fuckin' carrying on. I've sort of realised that you have to value things not by how successful they are. The things people value in this country, they value by how many people bought the fuckers and how much it cost and how much money there is in it. That is a ridiculous way to judge summat, because there's so many other things involved."

There is the buzz of hearing your song on the radio.

"The first time I started hearing us on the radio, I were really excited. A bit of me went 'Stop it, stop it. Turn off the radio, it doesn't matter. And another bit of me were going 'Oh, we're on the radio'."

Well, with "Tubthumping", the first single from Tubthumper, racing up the charts, that's something Alice, and the rest of the chart-watching world, is going to have to get used to.