fun fun fun

Ballet Shoes – Grand Pocket Orchestra from Luke Franklin on Vimeo.

The brand spanking new video for ‘Ballet Shoes’ by Grand Pocket Orchestra. The video was directed by the luke franklin. Good job Luke and all involved!

Future’s Bright gigs

Most of these were around last year so I’m sure how it’s a showcase of new talent but all the same, there’s a great line up tonight…

Peek! An earful of Irish Underground

Side A
The High Life – Ugly Megan
Ballet Shoes – Grand Pocket Orchestra
Capogg – Supernova Scotia
The Last Bottle in the World – Dublin Duck Dispensary
Outskirts – So Cow
Glock Rock – Gran Casino
To Where is Alright – Nouveau Noise

Side B
Coat to Wear – Patrick Kelleher
Radio – Katie Kim
Breaking The Waves – Children Under Hoof
Left For Dead – Hunter-Gatherer
Typers &Trains – Colours Move

Download it.

About the bands / songs:

Side A
Ugly Megan – The High Life
Located at the confluence of gangster rap and homemade lo-fi pop, this song sees the erstwhile twee-pop duo swapping cocaine for blowjobs and living the superstar lifestyle. Who said they were sweeter than sweet? Ugly Megan are Kathi and Orlando, recently exiled from Waterford to Dublin, and The High Life is from their second release, The Gavin, Megan and Oisín EP.

Grand Pocket Orchestra – Ballet Shoes
This contribution from Dublin’s most colourful band manages to be insidiously catchy and suprisingly touching at the same time. The four-piece make their way in life peddling frantically energetic toy-pop infused with some of the innocence of childhood and most of the fun. Ballet Shoes is the lead track off their upcoming Make Happy War EP.

Supernova Scotia – Capogg
Capogg is a fresh amble through a sweet musical syrup of bubbling keyboards, lazy-day guitar and sauntering bass. Kilkenny’s Supernova Scotia manage the perfect balance of 1980s “play-at-home” Casios and general awareness of the current climate to come up with something as original as Ireland has to offer these days.

Dublin Duck Dispensary – The Last Bottle In The World
Fuzzier than a bag of chicks, this track from Dublin Duck Dispensary’s He Do The Police In Different Voices EP is as close to a single as he is likely to get. This is a two-minute dip into the strange and wonderful world of DDD’s prolific bedroom-fi recordings. There are dozens and dozens more where this came from (free on the Rack and Ruin Records site) but few are this life-affirming.

So Cow – Outskirts
“I’m not near ingenious, yeah I’m pretty much just a stomach and penis”. So Cow, Tuam’s one contribution to world culture (with “an American accent I didn’t see coming”), possesses an unusual and startling talent for describing that modern feeling of inadequacy and boredom. He also has an ear for killer garage/surf/indie-rock guitar riffs, and this one is one of the finest. Taken from the potentially never-to-be-released Wackity Schmackity Doo album.

Gran Casino – Glock Rock
This elegant, layered baroque track is a perfect introduction to one of Dublin’s more complex propositions, the twelve-piece collective that is Gran Casino. Subjects of Analogue’s first live show documentary (search for it on the website if you haven’t seen it), they bring a chemistry and communal energy to everything they play, and Glock Rock, from the Sun Music EP, is a fitting example.

Nouveau noise – To Where Is Alright
Blissed out in a way that nods to both American indie loop-merchants and European electronic artists, Nouveaunoise’s track manages to employ an accordion and what sounds like a guitar sampled off an old 78rpm record while still sounding brand new. The West of Ireland duo’s style is intricate and unique, and they do a nice line in remixing on the side.

Side B
Patrick Kelleher – Coat To Wear
Patrick Kelleher makes cold, quiet, simple songs with frozen, empty backings. And then he attacks himself with electronics, like tormented voices shooting across the song and distracting. If you cut the tension in this song with the proverbial knife, it would probably snap up at you and cut you like a string wound too tight. Coat To Wear comes from the You Look Cold EP.

Katie Kim – Radio
“Perfect swellings, slowburns, sedated distorting chaos and tickling”. Quoted from her MySpace, it’s difficult to say it better than she says it herself. Waterford’s Katie Kim sings effortlessly treacly vocals over an almost retro, swollen noir backing. But it’s the lyrics that take this beyond chill-out. “Can I be your emotional wreck?” she half-whispers on this track, and it’s hard not to let it get you.

Children Under Hoof – Breaking The Waves
Funereally paced, carefully layered and drenched in reverb, Breaking the Waves is as refined a sensory experience as you are likely to find. Nothing happens here that doesn’t sound considered, and the amalgam is lush and full, the late-summer to member Patrick Kelleher’s solo winter. A tip: give it the volume it deserves, and sit back as the ebbs and flows wash over you.

Hunter-Gatherer – Left For Dead
Starting with a peal of thunder and the sound of heavy rain, Left For Dead is a narcoleptic electronica track from the Dublin-based Hunter-Gatherer. Building gradually over the course of almost five minutes from a haunting synth pattern to a euphoric swell, the song is a dark, ambient piece from another Children Under Hoof member. Several of his EPs are available for free on last.fm.

Colours Move – Typers & Trains
This one is a banger.

Hard Working Class Heroes: Saturday and Sunday

In fairness, I ought to call this post ‘Hard Working Class Heroes: Wot Darragh saw wot wasn’t that much’. So for that reason, after chewing the cud for a few days I’ve decided to regurgitate and conveniently roll Saturday and Sunday into a small, easily digestable blob of a blog for you to enjoy. If you want to blame somebody for the vile and sputumish metaphor above, email Canadian hardcore band Fucked Up whose bodily function-erific EP ‘The Year of the Pig’ is on my stereo a lot and messing with my head.

Day 2

Grand Pocket Orchestra: Andrews Lane Theatre

Grand Pocket Orchestra remind me of one of those little rubber dinosaurs that you put into a bucket of water so it grows quicky to, err, one and half times its usual size. Actually scrap that, those toys are disappointing. GPO are not. They are like one of those toys actually working. In the space of a truncated set tonight, they completely dazzle. Lead singer Paddy is a wild presence on stage, a loopy, jerky bundle of magnetic oddness. Throw in flourescent Bronwyn, who looks like a hilighter pen crossed with a girl, and drummer Peter’s spectacular mohawk, and you have the most visually arresting band around.

Old favourites are banged out with the usual vigour, as are a few songs from soon to be released EP, ‘Make Happy War’. After one listen to some of it live, and on the strength of previous singles, I’m going to throw my hat into the ring and say it’s likely to be the best Irish album this year.

Bats: Meeting House Square

Bats’ rhythmic, multifaceted take on post punk and metal is another casualty of the disastorous sound in Meeting House Square. Despite looking a little unhappy from time to time, Rupert and co. rock out as hard as the setting allows. A few people in the audience are perplexed when Rupert lets rip with some proper growling vocals. Others seem to totally get it. Catch them in a smaller venue around town if you like your music taut, intelligent, hard and fast. Yet another fine example of the Irish music scene let down by the sound system.

Halves: Meeting House Square

Another band. Another set of sound problems. Halves are annoyed because they can hear the house music playing. They soldier on, playing a set of their (wonderful in any other venue) sweeping, tripped-out post rock, that doesn’t quite fill the air, and for those near the back, the Saturday night shouts from Temple Bar are easily the match of the 80 decibel volume. Super Extra Bonus Party, Bats and Halves would all have succeeded a hundred times better in Andrew’s Lane in my humble opinion.

The Vinny Club: Andrew’s Lane Theatre

Easily the most fun gig of the weekend. The Vinny club is raucous. He appears dressed as Bono, but the wig is too long, so he’s more of a Bob Marley/Bono hybrid. He’s playing a guitar hero guitar. Because that’s what Bob Marley/Bono hybrid’s naturally do in Vinny’s dreams. A few months back I wrote I had mixed feelings about some of the early computer chip style compositions he posted on his myspace page. Tonight’s gig makes me reassess that criticism. Everything Vinny plays tonight has enough bounding energy and verve to power a small town, but also has a bit of backbone. A lot of it is really solid stuff. Don’t let the humour fool you. Vinny is no joke. And when he rules the world, fuck Tesco’s ‘computers for school’ vouchers because every child in Ireland will get their own commodore 64 on the day they are born.

Day 3

Armoured Bear: Meeting House Square

Well boy is it pissing down in Meeting House Square. A few sodden heads clump randomly together under umbrellas, to bravely watch Armoured Bear gamely try to cheer things up with some Teenage Fanclubesque rock. It was like watching someone piddle on a watercolour of a sunny day. Quite dispiriting.

New Amusement: Meeting House Square

It’s still raining. The random clumps have grown in number, so things are not completely desolate for New Amusement. These guys are unfurling quickly into being a signficant band with every gig they play. Hopefully, they won’t be fast tracked into that false ‘success’, that quickly sours into last month’s spat out leftovers, which seems to befall so many promising Irish rock outfits. Tonight, there is clear and confident demonstration of an insistent twinkling songcraft starting to mature that will need more time to blossom more fully. ‘Cos I can hear echoes of the Smiths, Orange Juice, and all sorts of sweet indie. Heirs to the Immediate’s sound and hopefully not their short career span.

The rest of Sunday melts into a tired fug. But The Ambience Affair seem to be quickly sprouting into a Dodos style guitar/drums combo to watch, and So Cow, according to others, was absolutely excellent. I do not doubt it for a minute. Dude’s got tunes. Probably wrote ten since I started this blog.

So it’s with a celebratory ‘Moo!’ I leave you ’til next year, when I will be running this festival. It will be compeered by Brush Shields in a community centre in Coolock and called ‘Irish Unsigned Bands go Spring Break Wild’. There will be an Afghan invasion and The Vinny Club will be curating the photo exhibition (selected snap shots from his favourite 8 Bit computer games). Sign up now.

Day one available here.