The Ambience Affair Ep Launch tonight

The Ambience Affair launch their debut Ep ‘Fragile Hearts’ tonight upstairs in Whelans, I’d definitely recommend going. This Ep has been a long time coming, songs have been reworked, re-recorded and mastered several times before Marc and Jamie found what they were looking for. The two tracks from it that I’ve heard are excellent and really manage to capture the energy of their live performance and then some. The title track Fragile Hearts has an eerie slow building momentum to it that sucks you in bit by bit as the guitar loops trip along gradually becoming more intricate. Support tonight comes from the stunning Goatboy and Sleep Thieves, who I’ve waffled about on the blog before. Make sure you’re there early so you catch Goatboy (think Fleet Foxes with only one guy), it’s his first gig under the name and it’ll be a great preview of the beautiful Ep he’s currently working on.

“Vacant Hearts” – The Ambience Affair from Souljacker on Vimeo.

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.