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First trailer for Kurt Cobain documentary Montage of Heck

By PATRICK FAGAN DID you cut the word ‘Nirvana’ into a pair of jeans and attend school on non-uniform day wearing these jeans and an Oxfam cardigan ... whilst also boasting an imperceptible hint of purple marker in your hair? Oh, you did?! Well, er, that makes two of us. And it looks like we’ll both be hitting the cinema (possibly dressed in the same outfit) when the Kurt Cobain biopic gets released here in early April.

The film’s director, Brett Morgan, revealed last week that Montage Of Heck (named after an old Kurt mixtape) will feature “a mind-blowing 12-minute acoustic Cobain unheard track”. Probably worth the admission for that alone...if you’re one of the two of us.

In the meantime, we’ll just have to sate that grunge lust with this trailer featuring snippets of chats with Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic, Kurt’s mom Wendy and his sister Kim.

#kurt cobain #montage of heck

Richie Egan: They get the Jape 'aesthetic'. I can't even draw a fucking cat!

By DAVE DONNELLY

HE'S found unlikely acclaim after being covered by Jack Whiteand Brendan Benson, and having written the most touching tribute to fellow Crumlin man Phil Lynott, but for Richie Egan, a.k.a Jape, it’s still very much the personal touch that counts.

A few weeks back, Egan released his fifth album under the Jape moniker – most of which have been more or less solo efforts – and in This Chemical Sea he feels he has a record that fully represents who he is and represents the quality he feels all of the great albums have.

Home for a few days from his current base in Malmo, Sweden – against which the nippy Dublin winter is no shock – Egan speaks excitedly about a record he believes has the power to touch just about anybody who hears it.

He says: “Do you ever get the feeling where you just know something, but you can’t express it in words? You just feel like you know something, in your soul. With this album, those songs to me, feel like the truth. They feel like shit that I have said that is true, and I hope that people get that feeling.”

#jape #chromatics #richie egan #asiwyfa #songwriting #graphic design #phil lynott

The Afghan Whigs, live in The Academy, Dublin. February 2, 2015

By PATRICK FAGAN

“NOW I’ve got time for you, and you, and you, and you…” Greg Dulli sings a line from Gentlemen, while prowling the stage from left to right, playfully pointing out women in the crowd each time he sings “you”. Then his gaze falls on a surprised male fan: “And you … can watch!” It’s a stand-out moment of showmanship in a gig full of highlights.

Up to this point, the Ohio man has crooned and screamed - with the occasional accompaniment of a booming front-of-stage floor tom - through a setlist mostly gleamed from last year’s Do To The Beast and 1993’s classic Gentlemen. It’s the start of the tour, and he tells us “this is the first show, we’re a little rusty” but I can’t recall a more polished and energetic performance by him.

Tonight’s set opened with the pounding Parked Outside, followed by the jagged precision of Matamoros, which segued into the purgatorial swagger of Fountain And Fairfax. No time to breathe between the three openers: bam, bam, bam; the Whigs announced their return with devilish intent and energy. They poured out transcendent anthems of love and addiction, and Dublin’s fateful joyously imbibed their tainted beauty. Next up were the current single, The Lottery, and the closest they ever came to a hit, Debonair, before they dabbled with a few bars of The Animals. Smiling, Dulli baritoned: “There is a house in New Orleans, they call the Rising Sun…” before interrupting himself, “No there’s not, by the way… it’s just a thing they tell tourists on bus tours.” This skit led into Algiers, before powerful performances of the first and only song from Congregation, Turn On The Water, and the epic Royal Cream.

And so, by the time we reach the “and you”s of Gentlemen, the audience is energised, alive and peaking. In this dramatic, ferocious version of their old single, Dulli whips the audience into a frenzy as he slides his guitar to the side and leans towards the heaving masses like an amphetamine-fuelled TV evangelist. He is both revelling in and admonishing the primal lust he is spewing forth. It’s intense, and it’s brilliant. And it feels eerily exciting to watch a man inhabit his own self from 20 years ago…but with a seemingly stronger life force than he had back then.

There will be more stand-out moments to follow before the night is out - including a cover of Jeff Buckley’s Morning Theft, and a joyous finale of Faded mixed with Bobby Womack’s Across 110th Street - but it’s Gentlemen that edges the rest. A smiling 49-year-old reformed libertine happily kicking the shit out of his 20s and 30s self through the medium of indie rock? Well, you don’t get to see that every night.

Set list: Parked Outside, Matamoros, Fountain & Fairfax, The Lottery, When We Two Parted, Debonair, House Of The Rising Sun (The Animals, skit), Algiers, Turn On The Water, Royal Cream, Gentlemen, Morning Theft (Jeff Buckley), My Enemy, Son Of The South, Roadhouse Blues (The Doors, few bars), Lost In The Woods. Encore: Summer’s Kiss, Teenage Wristband (Twilight Singers), Somethin’ Hot, Faded/Across 110th Street

#afghan whigs #greg dulli #jeff buckley #bobby womack

Greg Dulli: I was not shy about sharing my pain - in a sometimes absolutely inelegant way

By PATRICK FAGAN GREG Dulli is bringing a "monster" six-piece Afghan Whigs to Ireland on Monday. But asked if the beast inside himself is calmer than in his volatile 20s and 30s, he laughs: "I fucking hope so."

The Whigs' final Irish show before their 2001 split threatened to explode into violence when a punter heckled the Ohio-born frontman.

The offensive comment, delivered during a short re-tuning break in a storming set at Dublin's Mean Fiddler in 1999, wasn't memorable...unlike his target's response.

Dulli told his inebriated detractor he'd take his "girlfriend backstage and fuck her" if he didn't shut up. Almost sixteen years later, the Cincinnati man is a much more contrite and reflective man.

Bristling at the memory, he says: "I'm telling you man, on that tour, it sounds like somebody who's on a bunch of drugs...

"I'll put it to you this way, if someone heckled me, and that was the best I could come up with now, I would be sad."

Five years later, Greg was back in Dublin playing with his new band, The Twilight Singers, and had already mellowed significantly.

The best of the hi-jinks in Whelan's that night involved him trying to slip his hotel key into a girl's back pocket...from the stage. It seemed leaving the Whigs had made life more bearable.

He explains: "How can I say this, I had anger issues in my early days, and I self medicated, and I was not shy about sharing my pain in whatever way...sometimes in a poignant way, sometimes in an absolutely inelegant way that served no-one.

"So, those are things you learn about. Time goes on and, hopefully, you mature somewhat so you can actually be taken around in public without lashing out."

However, some of this anger - and a fair bit of love and heartache - did fuel one of the mid-Nineties' hidden musical gems, the Whigs' third release, and first on a major, Gentlemen.

The album was sandwiched between another two, Congregation and Black Love, that shared the theme of desperate longing and loss.

Dulli says: "Love is a part of many people's continuing journey. Gentlemen and Black Love, Congregation before that, those three records were written during stormy times in my life.

"I was chronicling what was happening to me in real-time. When those things happen or don't happen, you can't predict them. I'm certainly not going to write about something that I'm not feeling or experiencing.

"Most likely, those things will never happen again, and they exist in that time. In a lot of ways I can go back through my records and they're like photographs...I can remember the me that existed in that time.

"Certainly, Gentlemen, in particular, was a crazy time in my life. But I still enjoy singing those songs today, so there's a peacefulness in that too."

Following the Whigs' break-up, Dulli toured and recorded five albums with the Twilight Singers, and one album with former Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan, under the name The Gutter Twins.

Then, in 2012, the old band reunited for a string of shows that garnered rave reviews. The expanded Whigs line-up featured original bassist John Curley and lead guitarist Rick McCollum, the latter of whom fell out of the picture before the recording of their stomping 2014 comeback album, Do To The Beast.

Dulli smiles as he admits he relishes playing as a six-piece - minus Rick, far left of the photo above. He says: "I love it, it's a monster of a band. There's many gears to the band, it's got a great dynamic. It switches gears with ease. All of the players are monstrously talented." But asked if there is any way back for Rick, Dulli gets suddenly solemn. He says: "I miss playing with a version of Rick that existed a long time ago. Honestly, I missed playing with that guy on the reunion tour in 2012, because he was not there either.

"That's really all I gotta say about it. Rick is not who he used to be, and I don't think we'll ever see that person again."

Dulli lights up again, however, when talking about the upcoming tour, which kicks off in Dublin's Academy on Monday night.

"I am so looking forward to it. We rehearsed last week and it sounds amazing, and I'm so excited to play."

And there's still plenty of that cheeky swagger about him, even if the anger is gone.

It's put to him that former Red House Painters singer, and current Sun Kil Moon man, Mark Kozelek has been bemoaning the fact there's no "hot chicks" but plenty of "guys in anoraks" at his own shows nowadays.

Greg laughs again: "I love Mark Kozelek, he's great. Women (still) show up (at our shows), that's all I know. Although, years ago, the Gutter Twins were playing in Belfast, and I looked out there, and I was like, 'Where are the chicks?'

"That was the only night I remember thinking, there won't be a line at the ladies' room tonight. But we do all right with the ladies."

The Afghan Whigs play The Academy in Dublin this coming Monday, February 2. Their comeback album, Do To The Beast, and 21st anniversary version of Gentlemen are both out now.

#afghan whigs #greg dulli #gutter twins #mark kozelek

Aphex for Choice? You cannot be Syr-ious!

By DAVE DONNELLY

IT may only be celebrating its tenth anniversary, but the Choice Music Prize has long since become one of the most interesting fixtures on the Irish music calendar.

The announcement of the shortlist for Irish album of the year is always the source of much discussion – and not just because it happens to fall right at the beginning of January when there’s literally nothing else musical going in the country bar the collective groan of the country’s remaining workforce as they slowly trudge back to work nursing their damaged bank accounts.

Invariably, the list – which is compiled by a panel of 12 judges from the music media – is criticised for being too conservative or too mainstream, ignoring the fact that any sort of consensus list will favour artists with more mass appeal and popularity, however the presence of established artists like U2, Damien Rice and Sinead O’Connor do back up this view somewhat.

The most controversial aspect of the shortlist might, funnily enough, be its most leftfield selection: not only does electronic genius Aphex Twin stick out like a sore thumb musically, there’s the small matter of him possibly not even being Irish at all, as the only source for his alleged place of birth is a suspicious Wikipedia entry from 2005. Syrley some mistake has been made?

Aphex Twin – Syro

The man whose Wikipedia bio claims he was born in Limerick has had a busy 13 years or so, doing just about anything except release an album as Aphex Twin. It’s an itch the man christened Richard D James (possibly in Limerick) clearly hasn’t felt the need to scratch until now, and for all intents and purposes it’s as if nothing has changed. Lead single ‘minipops 67 [120.2]’ is a glitchy, ‘80s-inspired techno jam that could as easily have appeared on his last Aphex Twin record, 2001’s Drukqs, and Syro continues solidly in the same vein.

Delorentos - Night Becomes Light

It seems obligatory, when discussing Delorentos, that the North Dublin band decided to jack the music game in entirely in 2009, shortly before the release of their second album, only to change their minds when they realised they actually enjoy music after all. It’s just as well that they did, as they’ve moved from success to success ever since, and Night Becomes Light is exactly what we’ve come to expect from Delorentos: clever and concise pop songs, beautifully produced and performed, and tracks like ‘Home’ that seem tailor-made to be sung as the sun sets on a summer festival.

The Gloaming - The Gloaming

Somehow the word ‘supergroup’ just doesn’t do it justice – the Gloaming are a revelation as much as anything. The quintet comprising Irishmen Martin Hayes, Caomhín Ó Raghallaigh and Iarla Ó Lionaird, as well as Americans Dennis Cahill and Doveman, have almost single-handedly introduced a new generation to traditional Irish music. More than that, they’ve done it in a way that challenges even the most demanding musical mind with elements of jazz, classical and minimalism alongside the jigs and reels of old.

Hozier – Hozier

After the year he’s had, Bray’s Andrew Hozier-Byrne was close to a certainty to make the shortlist having won or been nominated for just about every other prize the music industry has to offer for his haunting alternative love song, ‘Take Me To Church.’ While that song is a phenomenon in itself – the most unlikely of worldwide hits – Hozier’s self-titled debut album is proof it’s no fluke. Taken as a whole, it’s a more upbeat and soulful collection of songs than the rather sombre single, and there is a hint of Van Morrison in the Celtic soul of ‘Somebody New’ and ‘From Eden.’

James Vincent McMorrow – Post-Tropical

If ever an album title could tell you so much and yet so little about the contents of a record, it’s Post-Tropical. January albums often get lost in the mix when it comes to annual awards and the like, and it’s testament to the strength of the Dubliner’s second studio record that it stayed in the memory long enough to make the cut this year. The album was recorded in solitude on the Mexican-American border, and being cut off from the world allowed him to perfect the electronic and hip hop influences that a lack of technology meant he’d been unable to incorporate on his first record, and the result is a thoroughly modern and forward-thinking r&b album.

Sinead O’Connor - I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss

The Irish Sun’s choice for album of the year in 2014 is the engine that’s driven one of the most prosperous years O’Connor has had in decades. A string of sold-out dates across Ireland and Europe followed on from her first appearance at #1 since 1991, and for the first time in a long time she’s attracting widespread attention for her music rather than her viewpoints. I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss is a light and playful pop record – sung in the character of a woman coming to realise that romance isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be – and one that measures up to all but her untouchable debut, The Lion and the Cobra.

Damien Rice – My Favourite Faded Fantasy

Of all the criticisms that could be levelled against Damien Rice, the one that would never stick would be that he rushes things – it takes an awful lot of time to sound this perpetually startled. In fairness to him, inspiration doesn’t work to strict timelines, and there’s a fair amount of it on display through My Favourite Faded Fantasy, his first album in eight years. With the exception of the odd bit of electronic percussion, there’s nothing that will surprise fans of his, but Rice retains a peerless feel for the dynamic of a song and how to stretch an idea to its limit.

The Riptide Movement - Getting Through

If you don’t know the Riptide Movement but you have a television, then you know the Riptide Movement, as theirs is the jangly sound behind ‘All Works Out,’ the REM-inspired soundtrack to the Discover Ireland ad campaign that was ubiquitous on Irish TV throughout 2014. The West Dublin four-piece earned their stripes busking on Grafton Street in the capital before they were able to devote themselves to their own music, and the influence of those years is clear on Getting Through as each song, while simple, is infectiously hooky and cleverly-arranged.

U2 - Songs of Innocence

There is only one thing that anybody needs to know about Songs of Innocence. And that thing is that, on Songs of Innocence, U2 sample the Angelus. Four middle-aged men – whose job is to make albums – spent the guts of three years working on this record and came out sampling the Angelus before launching into a cack-handed Beach Boys tribute while Bono sings about how California cries like a baby. Four men, three years, millions of dollars… the Angelus.

We Cut Corners - Think Nothing

The title of Dublin duo We Cut Corners’ second album probably reveals more about the band’s development than was intended for, while it’s as clever and well-written as its predecessor, Today I Realised I Could Go Home Backwards, musically the duo rely far more on instinct. Whereas their first album was quiet almost to the point of meekness, Think Nothing is a brash and self-assured record filled with loud guitars, cacophonous drums and ambitious string arrangements. It’s a sound that, surprisingly, suits them, and stand-out tracks like ‘Blue’ and ‘Best Friend’ show the benefits of backing one’s instinct.

#aphex twin #damien rice #we cut corners #The Riptide Movement #delorentos #u2 #u2songsofinnocence #hozier #jvm #James Vincent McMorrow #the gloaming #Sinead O'Connor

Royal Wood: Ireland helped me disappear and reset as an artist

By DAVE DONNELLY

WHEN his personal life was in tatters and having produced what he admits was the only “disappointing” record of his career, singer-songwriter Royal Wood did what any sane person would do – he went to live in Slane.

The Canadian had made some friends in the County Meath metropolis on previous visits to Ireland, and following the breakdown of his marriage in, it made sense to him to move to a remote spot outside the town and re-connect with himself as a person and as a writer.

He locked himself away without phone or internet – and his only way of getting into town was to walk the six miles – and it turned out to be just what Wood required to move on, personally and professionally, and it was there that he built the foundation of his seventh studio album, The Burning Bright.

Speaking to Something for the Weekend in a small pocket of time between checking out of his Dublin hotel and getting a taxi to Montrose to record a piece for the Late Late Show, Wood reflects proudly on what is his most refined and ‘mature’ record to date.

“When I was going through my separation from my wife, I just wanted to disappear to a place where I felt like people didn’t know me,” he says.

“I had friends outside Slane who set me up with a cottage in the middle of nowhere, no phone, no TV and no internet, just me. It’s what I needed to reset and feel like an artist again and make sense of my life. It all just happened.

“One foot in front of the other, I got a batch of songs and then I decided I wanted to demo them, so I started recording and then things just happened.”

Wood’s previous album, 2012’s We Were Born To Glory, was warmly received but the artist himself feels that he was trying too hard to make the record he was expected to make, rather than trusting his own instincts.

He says: “I think sometimes people, when they start, get lucky and mature because they’re not in the way. Then you start going along and you start thinking too much and doing things you think you’re supposed to do and it gets a little muddy.

“I thought the last record was muddy. I personally fell victim to an industry that I was trying to succeed in, and I think I made a few choices I wouldn’t make again. I’m thankful for it, because it led to me making a genuine, artistic record again, the way I used to make music.”

Wood’s early records were lush arrangements that invited comparison with songwriters like Rufus Wainwright – not just because they share a home country – and drew from his background in jazz and classical ensembles.

The Burning Bright shares the same sensibilities but, compared to previous records, is relatively free of the ‘bells and whistles’ type production he favoured in the past – it’s simpler, more direct and more heavily focused on the lyrics and Wood’s light vocals.

He says: “In terms of songwriting I’m surprised by what I wrote, but production-wise it was always my intention to strip it all down and simplify it, and not just be a wall of sound. I wanted it to be tasteful little bits, let the girls sing, have a little bit of horns and [focus on] the lyrics and the voice – I wanted that to be the subject. In that sense, the record was everything that I wanted it to be.

“It was a concept from beginning to end. Even the last line on the very last song, ‘and now our story ends,’ it was supposed to wrap all of that up. The beginning of a separation or a divorce or the end of anyone’s relationship, you go through a lot of feelings.

“You’re sad and you’re morose and sometimes faintly hopeful that it could work out, and then you’re angry, but by the end of it I wished my partner well. Truly, I have nothing but love for her. That’s, ultimately, how I wanted it all to feel.”

The one song that stands out as different – and thus gives a somewhat misleading sense of the record – happens to be the first thing most people will have heard of the record.

Forever And Ever is an upbeat, jaunty pop song that, on first listen, doesn’t quite fit with what’s around it, however Wood explains that it was a "happy accident" that brought the whole thing together and inspired him to push on and finish the album.

He says: “That song was actually a happy accident. It’s the one song not written in Ireland. I was in Los Angeles writing a song for a film and this guy, Bill Lefler, and I sat down in the morning, wrote it, and by the afternoon we recorded it. I played all the instruments and he played the drums.

“We mixed it and sent it off, and it never got used for the film, but I just loved the song. It was so not something I think I would have written – had Bill not been in the room, that wouldn’t have happened.

“The way Bill and I wrote it, it was mixed by the end of the day. Then the label heard it in Canada and it took off on its own, it got plugged on the radio and it became a hit. I was like, ‘there you go,’ I’ve got to finish this record because everything is happening.

“It was very much a song about wanting love and wanting something that actually lasted, but also being sad at not having it yet, truly. It all made sense to me on the record to include, and it got to be the one reprieve.”

Wood’s success has meant his time spent in Europe has typically never been much longer than a brief run of shows, but he plans to spend a lot more time here in the coming months as he attempts to make inroads on the continent.

He says: “Canada and North America have always gone so well and it’s always been so busy, and it’s always like ‘Hey, I’ll get to Europe,’ and then you have minimal amount of time so you come over and you do a quick run of shows and quick press and then you get the hell out because you’ve got shit going on at home.

“I don’t think your home truly loves you until you’ve broken someplace else. And then they’re like (he applauds) ‘we’ve always known!’”

The Burning Bright is out now. Royal Wood plays Boyle’s in Slane on Monday, October 6, and Whelan’s in Dublin on the 8th.

#royal wood #slane #divorce #songwriting #ireland

Sinead: This is the shit women think when they are in love

By DAVE DONNELLY

THE title of Sinead O’Connor’s tenth studio album – I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss – may sound like the title of a brash and typically opinionated record from a brash and typically opinionated artist.

First impressions are notoriously unreliable, however, and digging beneath the surface reveals quite the opposite – it’s a character-based record that’s more as thoughtful and introverted as it is confrontational, as typified by lead single Take Me To Church.

Speaking in Dublin’s Westland Studios – formerly Lombard Street Studios – where, fittingly, she made her very first recording as a 15-year-old, O’Connor explains that she is enjoying the freedom being afforded to her by the new, more detached writing style.

“It’s not autobiographical. There are possibly three or four female characters on the record, and then there are three songs that are about me personally: Eight Good Reasons, How About I Be Me and Dense Water Deeper Down.

“The rest are these characters, and a particular romantic journey of one of them. There is one character who is perhaps learning the difference between projection and reality as far romantic matters go, and Take Me To Church would be her ‘Eureka!’ moment.”

The spine of the album centres around this one particular, unnamed, character, for whom the songs are an expression of her gradually coming to realise that sometimes the reality of love and illusion of love are very different things.

She says: “She’s had a set of illusions about someone – beer goggles, for want of a better expression – and she’s come to realise the difference between projecting on to somebody what she wants to be there, and the actual reality.

“She’s coming to understand the difference between love and desire – if you have only desire, that’s like a bird with no feet, and if you’ve only love that’s like a bird without wings. It sounds a bit deep and meaningful but at the end of the day they’re just pop songs.

“If you could describe the album, it’s basically the shit that women think when they’re in love.”

O’Connor’s decision to switch from the highly personal and visceral style of songwriting that resulted in classic albums like the Lion And The Cobra to working with characters came about in a rather unusual way.

“It started with the last record,” she says, referring to 2012’s How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?, which is also the title of the opening track on I’m Not Bossy.

“When I was younger I had a different platform for writing songs – I guess they were very personal and I had a lot of stuff to get off my chest – but with the last record a bunch of movie people had sent me scripts and asked me to write songs for movies, and what I used to do was write the songs and not give them to them.

“Because of that, the character in the movie would be the person singing the song, so that suddenly became my favourite way of working. Not that I wouldn’t write a personal song as such, but you don’t really need to if you can manage characters.

“It’s brilliant because it’s all completely imagination. Somebody compared it, which was really accurate, to being a puppet master. To some extent it’s you and to another extent it’s not – you can be much more free, and the puppet on the string or the character on the end of your arm can be a lot more free, and do things and talk about things that you couldn’t.”

The freedom to broach traditionally difficult or forbidden subjects has been a life-long battle for O’Connor, beginning at the age of 14 when she started to write songs as an outlet for feelings she wasn’t able to express openly.

She says: “I was about 14 when I realised I could make money from songwriting, but I didn’t become addicted to it until later, when I was about 15 or 16, and I got more addicted over the years.

“It was out of necessity – I had a lot of shit to get off my chest. The Ireland I grew up in is hopefully unimaginable to the younger generation, but the place I grew up was a theocratic place. There was no such thing as therapy, no chance of recovery for people like me who came from child abuse or whatever, so music was really a therapeutic platform.

“[Music] was a place to say the shit I couldn’t say anywhere else, that was forbidden anywhere else, whether it was ‘I love you’ or ‘I hate you’ or whatever. It was really a form of therapy until, really, the last record when I started to write about other shit.”

Organisations in Ireland and further afield, such as First Fortnight, have done a lot to put musicians at the forefront of the movement to promote awareness about mental health issues, and O’Connor can see a clear difference between the attitudes expressed by her children – aged from seven to 27 – and those of her own generation.

“Somehow, and for some reason, the worst thing to be considered in this world is mentally ill,” she says.

“The reason that is the most frightening thing to be considered is because people get treated like shit, if they’re perceived to be mentally ill, so their illness is used as something to beat them up and discredit them.

“That’s something that I don’t understand and I don’t think we can necessarily change, but it won’t be until everybody over the age of 35 has passed away and the theocratic way of thinking and conditioning will pass away at the same time.

“What I observe from my children is that they think differently. When they’re hanging out with their friends I can see they think differently. They’re much more compassionate and they’re much more understanding. They wouldn’t dream of using the word ‘crazy’ as a term of abuse, or using somebody’s illness as something to beat them up with.

“It’s a disgusting world, really.”

I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss is out now. Sinead plays the Electric Picnic main stage on Sunday from 3.50pm to 4.50pm.

#electric picnic #sinead o'connor #recording

JVM on EP: It is my job to win over festival crowds

By DAVE DONNELLY

WHILE for many the festival calendar is an opportunity to see a host of international acts that wouldn’t normally grace these shores, one familiar name that’s stood out this summer is that of James Vincent McMorrow.

The Dubliner has just completed a run of dates in Europe supporting The National, and a performance at Electric Picnic tomorrow will bring to a close the busiest summer of his career, where he’s played more festivals in more countries than he ever has before.

And whereas once upon a time the self-styled soul singer would have been one of the first acts to go out – playing at two or three o’clock as a warm-up for the bigger acts later in the day – now he’s ranked among the headliners or the second-to-last acts to play.

While his own particular style of music – which has a tendency to be quiet and nuanced – isn’t obviously suited to a demanding festival audience, he’s profited from electing to take the challenge head on and adapting his music to make it more direct and immediate.

He tells Something for the Weekend: “You can walk out on a stage and it might be a lot of people who don’t know who you are, or you might walk out on a stage to not a lot of people at all depending on what country it’s in, and then the night afterwards you might go [to a bigger crowd].

“You have to approach it from a very different mindset from your own shows. I see it as a competition, and your job every night is to treat the crowd like nobody knows who you are, and you have to win them over.

“Even if that’s not the case – even if it’s your own crowd – you still have to put on the same show every night. Rather than treating every crowd like they know who you are and playing that show, I go, ‘Listen, my job is to come out and win you over on the stage.’”

His second album, Post-Tropical – released in January of this year – was a great leap forward from his critically-acclaimed debut Early In The Morning, not necessarily in terms of quality but certainly in terms of the sophistication of its production.

McMorrow explains that the commercial success of Early In The Morning - it was nominated for the Choice Music Prize in 2011 – allowed him the freedom to record the follow-up the way he wanted to and to put the focus firmly onto what he believes is his greatest strength: his singing.

Due to the lo-fi character of Early In The Morning – it was recorded on a shoestring with little more than his voice, a guitar and a piano – McMorrow feels he wasn’t able to fully express himself as a singer, something he was able to correct second time around as he finally had the means and the technology to fully realise his ideas.

“I’ve always wanted to push myself as a singer,” he explains, “and I don’t necessarily feel I did so much on the first record – a lot of that was bound by circumstance – but on this one I just wanted to go for it.

“In terms of the synths, I just love singing over washier arrangements – it fits my vocal a lot more. My vocal never really fits very well around a dry guitar, so it’s difficult for me, but if I play a Fender Rhodes or even a piano, something that has a broader sound, I can do more vocally.

“Everything I’m writing and working on going forward is in my wheelhouse as a singer, as a soul singer.”

While he admits he had little understanding of live performance when he was writing and recording Early In The Morning, he wrote Post-Tropical with half a mind on how the record would sound in the larger venues he was then playing.

He says: “I think that’s a good place to be. With this album I thought more about playing live because when I made the first record I had no idea about playing live really, so I didn’t have any idea about how a song might work in a room.

“With the second record, I was definitely thinking a lot more about how this part has to be effective in a room and how this part has to be effective to a group of people, not just on an album.”

He’s been working on new material while on the road – his own work as well as some collaborations that aren’t far enough along to reveal – and his experience of playing large arenas and festival grounds has allowed him to further hone his craft as a songwriter.

“The newer stuff again feels a lot more direct than anything I’ve worked on before. There’s a lot more singing and it’s a lot sharper than anything I’ve worked on before, and that’s definitely a reflection of the shows we’re playing and the size of venue we’re playing.

“It should have an effect – you should have an instinct about how a song flows through a room and how a person at the very back of the room can hear it the same as the person sitting in the front row. That’s a good place to be.

“I feel good about that because 90% of being a musician now is about touring and playing live. It used to be a lot less than that, but you make a record and you tour for two years and that’s the cycle.

“That’s where you have to be because you can’t make money off selling records anymore. You’ve got to play live, which is cool, but you have to think about it how songs are going to work and what you’ve got to do.”

James Vincent McMorrow plays the Electric Arena at Electric Picnic from 11pm to 12pm.

#James Vincent McMorrow #electric picnic #recording

Picnic-bound Foals: Festivals like markets - not restaurants

By DAVE DONNELLY

FED UP with a life mired in math-rock obscurity, Jack Bevan and Yannis Philippakis – drummer and lead singer respectively – traded cult status for colt status and formed Foals, and they’ve hardly broken stride since.

The Oxford natives turned heads instantly with their still-quite-mathy debut album, 2008’s Antidote, and when Total Life Forever dropped in 2010 they’d managed to find a much tighter balance between esoteric indie and straight-up stadium rock.

By the time they came to record album number three, Holy Fire, they were comfortable enough within themselves to fully embrace their love of old-school rock 'n' roll, and there’s a bluesy, Led Zeppelin-like feel to much of the Mercury-nominated record.

Bevan explains to Something for a Weekend – while enjoying a rare day off amid a crowded summer schedule that includes this weekend's Electric Picnic – that himself and Yannis have always yearned to create something more gutsy and direct, but until recently they lacked the confidence to fully back themselves.

“That influence is been something that’s been with us since the beginning,” he says.

“Me and Yannis have been into heavier styles of music for years, ever since we met, and I think we didn’t really find a way to channel that into Foals in a way that worked before.

“Working with Flood and Alan Moulder, who had done a lot of our favourite rock records growing up, gave us the confidence to try do something a bit more direct and something a bit more bold.

“It feels like something that really fits with us – we really enjoy playing that kind of music – and it definitely didn’t feel like we sat down and went ‘right, we’re going to go rock right now'. It felt like a natural progression from what we’d done in the past.”

Much of their new-found freedom emanates from frontman Yannis, who Bevan feels has become increasingly open in his lyrics, expressing his feelings in a much more direct fashion, which compares and contrasts nicely with the more aggressive musical style.

He says: “I think, for Yannis, over the course of the three records we’ve made, he’s found he’s finally able to fully open up. He writes all the lyrics, so I can’t talk to you specifically, but he’s definitely become more direct as he’s become more confident over the records we’ve made.”

While they’ve undoubtedly grown as people and musicians, so too has their audience: having sold out two gigs at The Academy in Dublin early last year, they sold out twin dates in the Olympia in February of this year, and they’re justifiably one of the top names on the bill for Electric Picnic.

While festivals can be an arduous experience for many artists, away from the comfort of playing for their own paying fans, Bevan and his bandmates are excited by the challenge of trying to win over completely different audiences, many of whom might not be in the mood to pay much attention.

He says: “I think it’s more of a challenge and sometimes that can be a good thing. When you have a huge amount of people at a festival watching you, maybe only 50 per cent of them knew you before the festival and maybe only 10 per cent of them have been to your gigs, so you’ve got a chance to play to new people and you’ve got a chance to win over new fans, and that’s something we see as a challenge.”

Tailoring your show to suit not only your own fans but what is often a majority of non-fans carries the danger that the show will become generic and impersonal – trying to please all-comers instead of focusing on what worked to begin with, but Bevan doesn’t see it that way.

He says: “I don’t see festivals as impersonal. When you buy tickets to a festival, you are buying tickets to an experience. You’ll have a selection of bands you want to see.

“And I think now festival organisers are so good at curating festivals into line-ups that work so well, so I just see it as a different experience. It’s more like, instead of going to a restaurant, it’s like going to a market where you’ve got a lot of different stuff you can try. Sorry to be cheesy!”

It helps Foals that their music straddles the invisible boundaries between festival-friendly genres, so they’re well able to adapt their set depending on the particular demands of the festival’s attendees – not quite horses for courses, then.

“We try to tailor our set quite a lot to fit what we expect is going to happen with the crowd,” says Bevan.

“For some festivals, we will try to play a sort of dance-orientated line-up so we will go in with more dancier songs, while if it’s more of an alternative festival we’ll play more experimental songs.

“It’s something that is quite hard to piece together, a festival set, because you want to engage people who have never heard you before right from the beginning, so it’s something we change as we go.

“I think we play more or less a different set every festival, trying to come to the perfect line-up.”

While the band’s busy schedule means that they have yet to begin writing their next record – and they’re not the type of band to bring an acoustic guitar on the tour bus – Bevan says he is excited by the prospect of beginning album number four once the summer rush is over, and that the band feel no pressure to live up their considerable hype.

He says: “I think because we’ve had such a gradual increase in popularity, it’s never felt like anything’s changed, which is great because if it took off too quickly I think it could be a bit bewildering.

“If you put your first record out and it’s stratospherically big, it puts a lot of pressure on your future writing. But I think the pressure has grown with us, so we’re not really nervous about our next record – we’re just excited.”

Foals play Electric Picnic's main stage tomorrow (Friday) from 9pm to 10.15pm.

#foals #foalsfoalsfoals #electric picnic #recording

Wild Beasts: We have a bit of Stevie Wonder-style optimism about us now

By DAVE DONNELLY

THE name Wild Beasts throws up all sorts of imagery – stampeding buffalo, ferocious lions, chest-thumping gorillas, that sort of thing.

So it would make sense to assume a band with the name Wild Beasts would be similarly, well, wild – a thrash metal band or a thumping techno outfit (perhaps the one that killed Deadmau5).

London indie-rock quartet Wild Beasts don’t quite fit into that mould – their style is tilted more towards lush, evocative textures and disco-informed falsettos – but yet their moniker seems appropriate.

Having shot to prominence with the release of their second album, the Mercury Prize-nominated Two Dancers, and the 2011 follow-up Smother, they released their most accomplished work to date in the form of Present Tense earlier this year.

While previous records would be described as positive and uplifting, there is an undercurrent of aggression – a wildness even – that is evident from the start of opening track Wanderlust, with its expletive-ridden chorus, and doesn’t let up.

Speaking to Something for the Weekend, co-frontman Hayden Thorpe explains that much of the motivation behind the album comes from putting themselves outside of their comfort zones and experiencing new things.

He says: “We hadn’t quite lived in the real world enough to have anything of use to say.

“That time out allowed us to, personally, grow up a little bit and maybe just get a grip because if it does anything for you, the music industry, it can make you feel like you’re doing the most important job in the world and that it’s crucial, but ultimately it’s not!

“You’re kind of pursuing your own fantasy and it’s important within that to galvanise, and we were happy that we were a gang again and being in each other’s company, whereas after being in four or five years of non-stop album cycles before that, it had taken its toll on us as people.”

Thorpe acknowledges there is an aggressive edge to the album, but all in all he perceives it exuding a positive outlook, something he acknowledges is difficult to pull off believably in such a cynical world.

He says: “Ultimately the music is a lot more positive. It’s instilled with some optimism, which is a difficult thing to pull off in music, because you can’t help but imagine Stevie Wonder with two thumbs up, that almost ‘Hollywood’ optimism

“This is more of a stoic optimism in that it’s a belief in the better in spite of whatever troubles or pain everybody experiences.

“I think there’s a gusto and a bit of fight in it, which I think is positive. It’s not lying down and it’s not resigning itself. There is the aggression but I take that as us having a bit of fight in us. There are bleaker moments but they’re always tempered by a positive outcome.”

#forbidden fruit #wild beasts #caribou #four tet #clams casino #leo abrahams #lexxx #hayden thorpe

Claire Beck Gig Guide: May 30 - June 6

FESTIVALS: Forbidden Fruit is back this weekend at The Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, Dublin, this weekend. If you want to hear quality tunes and soak up the festival atmosphere without having to forego showers and comfy beds each night, day festivals are the way to go. Saturday highlights include And So I Watch You From Afar, Lisa O'Neill, Flying Lotus, F**k Buttons, Girls Names and The Flaming Lips. On Sunday, I'd recommend checking out Public Enemy, Warpaint, Wild Beasts, Little Dragon (pictured above) and Klangkarussell. Even though they seem to play here ALL THE TIME, it would be rude not to nip down for the 2ManyDJs headline slot on the main stage too. Day tickets €59.50 / two-day tickets: €110. TONIGHT: Dr. Feelgood legend Wilko Johnson has reluctantly had to cancel all of his public engagements to undergo a medical procedure, including his show scheduled for The Academy, Dublin. Refunds are available from point of purchase. Catch Christy Moore live at Belfast's Waterfront. Doors 7.30pm, Tickets £30-35. Codes play a headline show at Whelan's, Dublin, tonight with support from Carriages and The Choir Invisible. Doors 8pm, tickets €10. This makes me very sad: Croupier are disbanding after six magnificent years and are playing a farewell gig in the Twisted Pepper this evening. TIckets are €7, or €10 including copies of both of our physical releases: 2012's self-titled album on CD, and 2013's The Visor EP on 12" vinyl, while stocks last. In the meantime, lovely lads that they are, their entire back catalogue is available to download free at croupier.bandcamp.com/. MIDWEEK: On Thursday night, Gigonometry presents Amoric / Million Little Gods / Plutonic Dust / The Good Rain at the Workman’s Club, Dublin. Ticket price: €7/€10 for members.

Electric Picnic shows Blondie ambition

By PATRICK FAGAN

New wave legends Blondie and post-rock goliaths Mogwai are among the 21 acts added to the Electric Picnic line-up this morning. The initial EP announcement back in April was greeted with little fanfare as fans turned up their cultured noses at the idea of two returning veteran acts - trip-hoppers Portishead and hip-hoppers Outkast - being the main headline acts.

But this morning's additions - which also include Sinead O'Connor, ex-LCD Soundsystem svengali James Murphy, R&B popper Kelis (no one tell the Sea Sessions their headliner is also at EP!), goths-turned-shoegazers The Horrors and Irish indie boppers HamsandwicH - make Ireland's favourite festival a lot more palatable.

It is arguably Blondie, who are this year celebrating 40 years as a band, that are garnering the most attention online, and their set looks a front-runner for another of those "I was there" EP moments.

Other acts added to the line-up include UK grunge revivalists Drenge and - rekindling the best of the decade before - 80s-inducing Twin Shadow.

All in all, it's looking up for diehard Picnic fans, with a raft of the already-confirmed acts such as St Vincent, London Grammar and FKA Twigs firmly in the ascendancy of late.

Here's the up-to-date line-up including today's additions:

#blondie #foals #twin shadow #mogwai #james murphy #london grammar #portishead

Just catching up with this now. Class new tune and great-but-sad video from Dublin twosome We Cut Corners. Their album, THINKNOTHING, is out now in Ireland and rest of the world. Order the CD and 12” gatefold vinyl online at delphilabel.com

Claire Beck Gig Guide: May 2 to May 9

FESTIVAL season is finally upon us! It's kicking off today in fantastic style with Vantastival music and campervan festival at Bellurgan Park, Co Louth. Don't worry if you don't have a bus, tent campers are welcome too. Highlights will include performances from Fight Like Apes, The Hot Sprockets, Booka Brass Band and The Barley Mob as well as the Campervan Cook-Off and the Goldenplec.com unplugged stage at The Vantastibar. Three nights camping is €95, Sunday tickets are €45. Don't bother getting a babysitter either, Vantastival is a perfect family activity so bring the kids along.

If you're not ready to crack out last year's smelly tent just yet, here's some of the highlights of this week's standalone gigs.

TONIGHT

DJ Jazzy Jeff plays Twister Pepper, Dublin, as part of The Beatyard festival (see The-Beatyard.com for full listings). Tickets €20, doors 10.30pm.

Daithi plays Cypress Avenue, Cork at 10pm tonight. Tickets €10. TOMORROW

If you're heading to The Button Factory, Dublin to catch Dimitri From Paris, be sure to get there early to catch Waterford's finest, Get Down Edits, play the support slot. Tickets €15 SUNDAY

One of the best live acts in Ireland at the moment, Overhead, The Albatross, play Roisin Dubh with Race The Flux and the suberbly named Punchface Champions. Doors 9pm and it's a mere €3 at the door.

I'll be legging it back from Vantastival on Sunday afternoon, as there's no way I'm missing on of hip hop's founding fathers, Grandmaster Flash, play a DJ Set at The Village, Dublin. Doors 11pm, Tickets €15. MIDWEEK

Tori Amos plays The Olympia, Dublin on Wednesday and Thursday next week. Tickets from €39.05.

Jagwar Ma were one of my favourite acts at Glastonbury last year. See them Thursday evening at Whelans, Dublin. Tickets cost far less than a trip to Glasto at just €15.50.

Le Galaxie: L.A. mixing, 66e, peacocks, mental-health stigma, marriage equality and beards

By DAVE DONNELLY

LOS Angeles loves Le Galaxie and Le Galaxie love Los Angeles – so much so the Dublin electro-rock outfit have headed stateside to put the finishing touches on their second album.

Frontman Michael Pope speaks to Something for the Weekend in between mixing sessions about LA, the band’s ambitious vision for album number two and their forthcoming Love System gig in support of marriage equality.

Pope says: “We’re here putting the finishing touches on our 2nd record ‘Le Club’ with ex-DFA engineer Eric Broucek. And by ‘finishing touches’ I mean FINAL mixes and not us still faffing around with cowbells and getting lost in synthesizer paradise for days on end.

“That time has passed. Eric is taking it over the line and beyond at the moment, making our 13 tunes sound better than we dared dream. And we dream BIG.”

The quartet’s particular brand of euphoric pop is a natural fit for the City of Angels, with its stone-splitting sunshine, wide highways and palm trees the perfect backdrop to their obscure references to 1980s Hollywood.

He says: “It’s funny, Eric is a born and raised Los Angeles native and even he kind of understands where we’re coming from with our fantasy Los Angeles obsession. He dropped us downtown yesterday whilst listening to Jazz FM though, that wasn’t exactly what we’d imagined when we saw Drive.”

It’s been three years since Le Galaxie released their first record – the confusingly-titled Laserdisc Nights 2 – but Pope doesn’t feel the album has aged particularly well.

He says: “We’re a little cool on that record, three years on. There’s no doubting that it propelled the Le Galaxie mothership forward a huge amount and we proudly had it under our arms for the following 18 months, but listening to it now is a little painful.

“We hadn’t fully realised what we wanted to be, or how to condense all our ideas into listenable songs! We listened to Solarbabies last week and we’re baffled by what kind of song it even was. Is it even a song? Dude, I’m so seriously!”

This time around, the band sought to take their time and do things properly (hence the projected release date has been pushed back a few months), drawing influence from the absolute pinnacle of the album-oriented dance music.

Pope says: “A great dance music album: that was our mission statement. Surrender from Chemical Brothers, Homework by Daft Punk, † by Justice, Richard D. James by Aphex Twin, Second Toughest In The Infants by Underworld. Entire pieces of work that work from start to finish and you can dip into at any time and instantly fall in love yet again. It needs to be said that I am not comparing us to those wizards. I’m just saying that we are aiming big.”

Anybody who’s borne witness to Le Galaxie’s energetic, glowstick-wielding live show (they recently performed at the UCD Ball in the O2) may be surprised to learn of their past life as chin-scratching post-rockers 66e, pictured above, back when that sort of thing was still vaguely unusual.

“It’s so long ago it’s hard to remember exactly why we stopped wanting to make enormous sad music and make dance music instead. Maybe it’s because we were not good at it. I like to describe 66e as ‘math rock for people who failed the Leaving Cert’.

“We’d always been obsessed with dance music, from Eighties 4/4 synth pop to Nineties euro house nonsense, but I suppose we never felt comfortable enough to see if we could do it for ourselves. And in fairness, it took a little while for Le Galaxie to figure it out too.

“We still love our areas of light and dark that’s for sure, but in terms of how we approach songwriting and live performance, it’s thoroughly dissimilar. Post-rock never suited our character, it was too subdued and internal. We needed something vibrant and colourful. We’re like old sexy peacocks really.”

Ultimately, the chin-scratching and beard-stroking element of post-rock was never a good fit for the band, particularly Pope, who apparently prides himself on immaculately-coiffeured facial hair.

He says: “If you look after your beard, you should never have to scratch it. I recommend Tom’s Beard Tonic. Fully dry and gently backcomb your beard after showering then let it sit for ten minutes.

“Pool a dozen or so small drops of Beard Tonic into your palms and gently work the oil into your beard, replenishing the natural oils that have been removed by your shampoo. Then head out into the world with your head held high, confident that your beard is ready for wherever life takes you.”

After wrapping things up in Los Angeles, it’s back to Dublin that life takes Le Galaxie and straight to the Academy in Dublin for Love System, a fundraising event the band have organised in support of equal marriage.

Pope, pictured above in LA with aforementioned beard, explains: “There’ll be a lot of misinformation, rhetoric and discrimination being spouted by the other side of the debate in the lead up to the referendum next year, and we want to financially get behind the cause of equality in any way we can.

“The idea of some middle-aged, pasty white guy in a cheap suit thinking he can tell any citizen of this country who he or she can marry is obscene. It’s nothing to do with you, old timer. Accept human beings for the way they are. Accept the world for the way it is. Go do some actual good.”

Le Galaxie are regular fixtures on the schedules of First Fortnight, the annual series of events that seeks to spread awareness of mental health issues through the creative arts. Pope sees it as part of the band’s ethos to champion causes they believe in.

He says: “It feels like the same overall goal, in a weird way. You want people to accept the actual way the world is, not the way they’d prefer it to be. Men love men. Women love women. People’s brains are fragile, delicate mechanisms and can cause them a lot of pain. Sometimes in very sad and scary ways. It’s not their fault. Help them. Accept them.“

Nevertheless, he’s wary of the general concept of musicians as campaigners and admits it’s not a role for every musician to take up.

“I don’t know [if it’s for everyone]. It’s undeniable that if you have a microphone with a thousand people in front of you, they will listen. But maybe I should just shut up?”

Le Galaxie play Love System in support of marriage equality at the Academy in Dublin on May 9.

#le galaxie #daft punk #dfa #underworld

Claire Beck Gig Guide: April 25 to May 2

Tonight: To mark the release of their debut album, New Secret Weapon play a headline show tonight at Button Factory, Dublin. I hear that pre-sale tickets are almost gone so if you haven't got yours yet, get down early to avoid missing out. Doors 8.30pm with support from Tongue Bundle, Val Normal, Phazam Haze and a DJ set from DjAckulate. Tickets €10 with a free download included. Also due an album release soon, We Cut Corners play Roisin Dubh, Galway, tonight. Doors 9pm, tickets €10. Gavin James will be playing Cypress Avenue, Cork tonight. Doors 8pm, tickets €15. Tomorrow: Berlin based duo Booka Shade celebrate the release of their latest album Eve with a live show at Vicar Street. I've seen their excellent DJ sets before but never their live set, looking forward to it. Doors 7.30pm, tickets €27.25 & €29.50. Midweek: London-based noise rockers Yuck are back with a new line up and a kick ass new EP. They'll be bringing their offensively good live show to The Workmans Club on Wednesday. If you're a fan of Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine, you'll enjoy this show. Doors 8pm with support from This Other Kingdom. Tickets €16.50 Multi-faceted violinist, guitarist and singer-songwriter Joan As Police Woman (pictured above) plays The Button Factory in Dublin on Wednesday night (7.30pm, €22.50) and The Limelight 2, Belfast, the following night (8pm, £17). Also happening on Thursday at The Copper House Gallery on Synge Street in Dublin is All You Need Is Love, an exhibition in support of Marriage Equality. The exhibition will be introduced by Panti, Ireland's most fabulous drag queen and self-described accidental and occasional gay rights activist. DJs from Dublin's best Saturday night gay club, Mother, will provide the soundtrack to the evening. The exhibition, which runs for one night only, will bring together some of Ireland’s most talented artists including photographers, graffiti artists, illustrators and graphic designers. Limited edition prints inspired by the theme ‘All You Need Is Love’ will be for sale on the night for €30 with all profits going to Marriage Equality. A number of artists have also contributed one-off pieces for sale on the night.

deadlinecom

Robert Downey Jr.’s newly launched Twitter feed (@RobertDowneyJr) is getting a lot of exercise in its first few days, just as he and the rest of the cast for “Avengers: Age of Ultron” gathers.

Here, he’s posted in short order photos with co-star Mark Ruffalo (who posted the photo originally with the caption “Bros”), with executive producer Jeremy Latcham, and as the short seat as the crowd of director chairs assembles.

#film #avengers #RobertDowneyJr #MarkRuffalo

sftwireland

Interesting reblog on Robert Downey Jnr and Avengers. Can't make up my mind whether I like RDJ anymore. I'd say he's very worried about this.

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