What’s The Skinny?

Those ever-admirable champions of art rock in Ireland, Skinny Wolves, have lined up a wonderfully noisy October for Dubliners. Having already showcased acts like No Age, Mika Miko, Magik Markers and Les Georges Leningrad before their popularity burgeoned, be sure some of the upcoming acts appearing on SW posters around town will be gracing blogs and hype-sites a-plenty in the future.

Things kick off on the 3rd of October with the screechings of “based nowhere and residing pretty much everywhere” no-wave outfit Lovvers. Surfing the crest of the current wave of melodic noise-punk, they stir up familiar influences like the Minutemen and old-school Sub Pop with a distinctly British edge. Not to mention their seriously screwed-up EP artwork. Their blank generationisms will be on show in the Boom Boom Room with support from popular-with-earplug-manufacturers Bats and the nicely rhyming Weil Rats.

Probably the biggest name on the SW calendar is Telepathe upstairs in Whelans the next night. A tear through their hypnotic song “Chrome’s On It” is pretty much worth the ticket price alone, and horror-movie “Sinister Militia” would be a nice bonus. We won’t even hold the fact they’re mates with These New Puritans against them. Support comes from Jenny and the Deadites, who have sweetly named songs like “Amongst The Piss” and “Throne Of Blood” (Kurosawa reference?), and work some thumping industrial hip-hop beats. Think dark anticon, like Sole, except Irish, and you’re about there.

The Creeping Nobodies have been slugging out post-punk trips since 2001, so it’s a bit unfair to compare them to Liars. But they sometimes sound quite like Liars, circa 2001, but a lot more layered and erratic. Nevermind cowbells, their track “Your Likeness” utilizes samples of bovine mooing over a break, before fucking your head over with a brass breakdown towards the end. It’s not going to be a laidback ride, in other words. The faint of heart might be more comfortable with supporting violaist Anni Rossi, who has supported the Ting Tings (never heard of ‘em) on their tour amongst other plaudits. Both do a good line in percussion, and both are worth your second trip to check out the new Boom Boom Room on the 11th.

Rounding off the month’s lovely line-up on the 17th are Mahjongg, a band with a clear appreciation of Liquid Liquid, Brian Eno and David Byrne. For once I find myself agreeing with a promo sheet: “Mahjongg have chewed up their influences, spitting back a sinister musical polyglot that will reward the curious and infuriate the impatient”. They mix their sound up with some obscure African elements, but not so tokenistically as most experimental bands tend to, and sound as if they’re pretty much impossible not to dance to in a live setting. Sure we’ll just have to head up to Whelan’s to find out, won’t we?

Have a goo at the Skinny Wolves Myspace for some tracks from the upcoming artists.

Our Brother the Native announce Irish dates

Michigan/California trio Our Brother the Native have just announced an European tour including not one, not two but four Irish dates. They bring their experimental hijinks to the Limelight in Belfast on September 27th, Crawdaddy in Dublin on the 28th and the Roisin Dubh in Galway on the 29th of September. Their website also says that they’ll be playing in Cork too but there’s no further info on that.

The band released their epic sophomore album ‘Make Amends for We Are Merely Vessels’ on Fat Cat earlier this year receiving quite a lot of critical acclaim both in Ireland and internationally. Jim Carroll of the Irish Times gave the album ‘Cd of the week’ in his review in the Ticket. No wonder they landed four Irish dates. Analogue was lucky enough to talk to the youngest member of OBTN Josh Bertram in issue 3.