State Magazine Issue 2

MAY 2008

€ 5.50

/ £4.10

music is my radar:

State.ie

daniel craig

I RELAN D’S N EW MUSIC PAYLOAD

portishead I first produced my Bristol…

sxsw The Irish Invasion

Jape The Kooks Moby Scary Éire When Irish Hip Hop Came Of Age

A Short History Of Everything holidays by mistake:

buenos aires incoming:

kraftwerk yeasayer armoured bear circuit breakers:

u:mack

Giveamanakick The Raconteurs Gnarls Barkley We Are Scientists MGMT and the best reviews in

albums, books, games & dvds 1

2

issue 02 might well contain...

Regulars

Irregulars -!9 ` ‚

MUSIC IS MY RADAR

3TATE IE

DANIEL CRAIG

58

) 2%,!. $´3 . %7 -53)# 0!9,/!$

PORTISHEAD

) ½RST PRODUCED MY "RISTOL¨

SXSW

4HE )RISH )NVASION

*APE 4HE +OOKS -OBY 3CARY bIRE 7HEN )RISH (IP (OP #AME /F !GE

! 3HORT (ISTORY /F %VERYTHING HOLIDAYS BY MISTAKE

BUENOS AIRES INCOMING

KRAFTWERK YEASAYER ARMOURED BEAR CIRCUIT BREAKERS

U MACK

muse From playing to one man and his dog in a London pub to selling out Wembley Stadium... twice.

Muse talk past, present and future to John Walshe.

'IVEAMANAKICK 4HE 2ACONTEURS 'NARLS "ARKLEY 7E !RE 3CIENTISTS -'-4 AND THE BEST REVIEWS IN

ALBUMS BOOKS GAMES DVDS

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portishead Ten years after – Portishead return but don’t call it a comeback.

incoming

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El Guincho, Armoured Bear and Sweet Jane might be giants; Kraftwerk as roots music; Yeasayer order a take away; the lowdown on Paris; Sebastian Tellier gets sensual; plus why the world is wrong about The Doors.

24

On the eve of his hotly anticipated fourth album, Richie Egan talks Technotronic, label changes and Crumlin Street Justice with Tanya Sweeney.

28

music is my radar

16 42

32

14 years of kicking against the bricks: how U:mack set about saving Ireland’s live music scene.

the greatest...

53

40

45

44

48 73

The biggest review section in the country. Albums: The Raconteurs pull a fast one, while Supergrass’ elder statesmen release possibly the finest album of their career.

DVD: Jericho: post-Apocalyptic shenanigans down Kansas way; Black Gold – coffee mourning, plus Robert DeNiro as a camp sky-pirate. TV: Welcome to the Un-PC world.

Books: Will Self ’s dark comic arts. All this and more, including the latest gaming treats for our console nation.

anger management Say cheese. The curse of the moron, the night out and the digital camera.

scary ĂŠire Ireland in the early ‘90s was a hip-hop wasteland, until RĂ­RĂĄ, DJ Mek and the Scary Éire crew shook Dublin’s foundations, plus the new kids on the block carry the legacy.

68

Living the Latin American dream – futbol, tango and the high life in Buenos Aires.

input

mgmt The new psychedelic heroes touch-down, complete with “obnoxious and antagonistic� live show.

Click click‌ boom!

holidays by mistake

sxsw Breakfast in America: the cream of new Irish talent bring the noise to the Full Irish Breakfast Party in downtown Austin.

Just when you thought you had it all.

blog standard

the kooks Musical snobbery, taking on America and the joys of free beer: The Kooks are back and ready for stardom.

Daniel Craig: 007 on his love affair with ‘70s pomp rock.

circuit breakers

jape

gnarls barkley Chart-topping producer Brian ‘Danger Mouse’ Burton and singer Cee-Lo Green on the disparate strands that make them work.

50

moby The bald New Yorker takes Kara Manning to his NoHo loft, explaining why he won’t be filling stadia any time soon.

56

giveamanakick Hooks and blips, hiccups, clangs and time-changes: Limerick’s finest are on the cusp of greatness.

96

70

we are scientists No sleep till Brooklyn: the over-tired geeks discuss their literary ambitions.

1

Editors: John Walshe, Phil Udell (editorial@state.ie) Art Director: Simon Roche

Editors’ letter

Publisher: Roger Woolman Web Editor/Staff Writer: Niall Byrne (niall@state.ie) Advertising Manager: Susan Maher (susan@state.ie) Operations Manager: Arlene O’Meara Marketing/Distribution Manager: Alan O’Dwyer Contributors: Dan Hegarty, Tanya Sweeney, John Joe Worrall, Maia Dunphy, Saoirse Patterson, Dave Donnelly, Jennifer Gannon, Martin Elneff, Ciara O’Brien, Shane Galvin, Martin McIver, David O Mahony, Durell Connor, Ciarán Ryan, Tony Jessen, Jenna Wolf, David McLaughlin, Paula Shields, Jeff Weiss, Pete Ruotolo,Kara Manning, Sinead Gleeson, Johnnie Craig, Bobby Ahern, Cian Traynor, Louise Healy, Leslie King, Paul Byrne, Joe Cross, Chris Russell, Phil Bergan, Tia Clarke, Sean Feeny, Elaine O’Neill, Shane Culloty.

Photographers: Richard Gilligan, Lili Forberg, Marcelo Biglia, James Goulden, Zoran Orlic, Liam Sweeney.

State is published monthly by State Magazine Ltd, 4th Floor, Equity House, 16-17 Upper Ormond Quay, Dublin 7.

Tel: (01) 888 0660 Email: info@state.ie Website: www.state.ie Printed by Future Print Distributed in Ireland by EM News Distribution, Clonshaugh, Dublin 5, and RMG Chart Entertainment Ltd, 2 Carriglea, Naas Road, Dublin 12, and in Northern Ireland, by EM News Distribution (NI) Ltd. ISSN 2009-0897.

All materials © State Magazine 2008. All rights reserved.

Reproduction of any part of the magazine without the written permission of the publishers is strictly prohibited. Although State Magazine has endeavoured to ensure that all information is correct, prices and details may be subject to change. The opinions expressed are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of State Magazine Ltd.

contributor vs

Louise Healy A former Dublin news reporter, Louise decided to throw it all in and go travelling around the world. So far her journey has taken her to Central and South America, Antarctica, Africa, New Zealand, with her last engagement as a skiing instructor in Japan. She likes to pick out the vowels in Heinz cans of spaghetti.

Rock, paper or scissors?

Scissors

contributor

Zoran Orlic Zoran is a Croatian-born, LAbased fine arts photographer with a flair for revealing the many moods of music photography. Most recently noted for his art photography book on The Frames and his work with Wilco, he describes his SXSW shoot with Fight Like Apes as the most exciting fifteen minutes of his career.

Rock, paper or scissors?

Rock

Result: Zoran Wins

Hello and welcome to the second instalment of the great State adventure. It barely seems like four weeks since we launched Issue 1 but already the response has been gratifying, to say the least – both in terms of media interest and the responses of people reading the magazine. The whole launch period was incredibly hectic but memorable for all of us – from a night at the Jameson Distillery to a day of live performance at Tower Records. Add to this a wealth of internet debate, discussion and comment and we can safely say that we feel we’ve arrived.

Yet, you can only look back for so long and Issue 2 is already upon us. We like to think that we’ve taken the standard that we’ve set ourselves and improved on it. As is our aim, our cover story is something to treasure. Muse have come a long way from their roots in the UK’s west country to selling out stadiums all over the world but they have managed to do it on their own terms. As they prepare for another summer of live activity, including a visit to these shores, the three members tell us about their rise and rise, the madness of their current existence and offer some pointers as to just where they might go next. At the other end of the productivity scale, yet just as important in the grand scheme of things, sit Portishead. Their ten-year absence has done little to damage their status, enhancing it even, yet in a fascinating interview, Adrian Utley lets us in to just what makes this most unique band tick.

As always though, State will be looking closer to home for the stories that matter. Ironically, for this issue that meant flying to Texas to provide a firsthand report on this year’s Irish contingent at the South By South West Festival. Johnnie Craig spoke to Cathy Davey, Fight Like Apes, Delorentos and Paddy Casey about the whole experience, while Zoran Orlic and Dan Dennison provide the visuals. Back in Ireland, we meet with Richie Egan, aka Jape, as he prepares to deliver his highly anticipated new album Ritual.

Looking back, John Joe Worrall revisits the heady days of early nineties domestic hip-hop, when Scary Éire went from playing biker bars to supporting U2.

That, though, is only the tip of the iceberg. Look elsewhere through the coming pages and you’ll find Daniel Craig discussing the power of Roxy Music; conversation with two of New York’s finest, Moby and We Are Scientists; the chaotic world of Giveamanakick and Gnarls Barkley; plus our writers’ views on classic names such as Kraftwerk and The Doors and our comprehensive review section. We’re delighted to welcome some new names to the State family as we continue to introduce you to the most exciting journalists and photographers working in Ireland today.

So, enjoy, let us know your thoughts at www.state.ie and see you on the other side. ~ John Walshe and Phil Udell State Editors

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my inspiration Duffy

It’s been too hard living but I’m afraid to die I don’t know what’s up there beyond the sky It’s been a long time coming but I know a change is gonna come Sam Cooke A Change Is Gonna Come Photography by Max Dodson “A Change Is Gonna Come” written by Sam Cooke © 1964 Renewed, ABKCO Music, Ltd. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

From the album Sam Cooke: Portrait Of A Legend 1951-1964 www.samcooke.com

3

Incoming

Ease Yourself In

they might be giants:

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings

for keeping the Amy Winehouse show on the road, The Dap-Kings came together in Brooklyn in 2000. Their aim has always been simple, to capture the spirit of the heyday of funk and soul, not least through

the use of vintage analogue recording equipment. With Augusta born Sharon Jones at their vocal helm, the Kings have become acknowledged as one of the finest soul bands of the past 20 years, if operating on a largely underground level. Ronson’s patronage, however, has propelled them to

50 words on…

a wider audience and, now reunited with Jones, the Dap-Kings are finally reaping their just rewards.

Listen: ‘100 Days, 100 Nights’ (100 Days, 100 Nights) See: Budrising, Button Factory, Dublin, April 10.

Click: www.daptonerecords.com

come in your time’s up: because life isn’t all about work, work, work

The Rags Kerry Katona: Crazy In Love Sorry, didn’t MTV used to be a music channel? Crazy In Love (and what a snide title that is) is their ultimate low, even given the nightmare that is My Sweet Sixteen. Take a troubled young woman and stick her in front of a camera 24 hours a day. Genius.

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Having arrived on the Irish music scene in some degree of style in 2005, The Rags appeared to be embarking on an enviable career trajectory. Picked up by Sony BMG after two independent releases, ‘Monsters & I’ was used as the soundtrack for a soup ad.

All seemed nicely set for their debut album but, despite two more singles, the wait continues. Now finding themselves battling it out on the Vodafone Brighter Sounds competition, their My Space site promises the album soon. Come on Rags, we want to hear from ya.

sharon jones by laura hanifin / the rags by natalie anderson

Recently gaining acclaim as Mark Ronson’s house band and kudos

Incoming

Yeasayer Go Take-Away

For the makers of the Take Away Shows, capturing moments of improvised magic on the streets of Paris is rarely straightforward. Tonight, however, is their “worst case scenario”.

Having forgotten about their scheduled session, a tired and cagey Yeasayer now seem put-out by the idea, leaving La Blogotheque’s guerrilla filmmakers to be ushered out of the venue with little more than vague assurances for comfort.

It makes for a long, uncertain wait in the cold, but when Yeasayer emerge, a well-practised blend of diplomacy and enthusiasm from Chryde, the series’ founder, and director Vincent Moon finally wins them over.

Though Moon balks at any talk of a “plan,” he appeases the band by promising to find a piano somewhere in the city. And with that, we’re off at last.

Anything can happen between here and the nearest Metro, but for the project’s co-conspirators, pushing themselves into finding something new is paramount.

If they can do that, a fuse is lit. So when Moon’s restless camerawork comes to an instinctive halt inside the station, he has everyone’s attention.

Questions subside, suggestions are misinterpreted, but as the group backs down the walkway in a cappella mode, both band and blogger alike can feel something stirring. “Tonight,” whispers Chryde, recognising the spark, “…could be something special.”

Reflecting the growing sense of camaraderie, a crate of beer is duly shared round, yet when the approaching train envelopes the party, its unsuspecting passengers play their part too. For if a ‘Take Away Show’ is an exchange between song and city, then your typical French nonchalance provides the perfect canvas, allowing Yeasayer to burst into verse uninhibited, before bowing out gracefully two stations later, the doors opening on cue.

Reconvening to an 11th floor apartment, the convoy becomes a choir when singer Chris Keating enlists everyone’s help on ‘2080’ before percussionist Luke Fasano’s initiative leads a pitter-pattering of hands through ‘Tightrope’.

It’s rousing, reckless, and exactly the kind of ‘communal ecstatic revelry’ Keating had in mind when he began Yeasayer. As a round of back-patting circulates through the room, guitarist Anand Wilder proclaims it “the highlight of our career,” underlining how far we’ve come from the evening’s ominous beginning.

“It’s like a fight that ends with a kiss,” Chryde acknowledges…a journey that Moon later condenses to a brief vignette of candid, haphazard beauty. For him, it’s “a perfect ‘Take Away Show’”, paying testament to the game of chance that continually entices them back for more.

See: http://www.blogotheque.net/

the departed:

Mongrel Magazine

The decision by the Mongrel team to shut down production after four and a half years of imaginative irreverence was met with a collective tear in the State office. Often controversial, always entertaining, Mongrel was a most welcome addition to Ireland’s magazine spectrum and its departure will leave a void in the collective consciousness. At least they left us with a stunning final issue, complete with mock Mass Card cover, which reprints some of their finest moments from the previous 37 issues, including their infamous Bertie Ahern interview.

Farewell Mongrel: you’ll be missed.

Yeasayer,3966

5

Incoming they might be giants:

Armoured Bear

Operating in the recesses of West Cork for some five years now, Anthony Byrne decided to remodel himself as Armoured Bear in 2006, creating a shadowy alter-ego behind which he could operate as either a solo artist of as part of a band.

The unconventional approach extends to touring as well, whereby the Night-Time Garden Gigs feature a travelling world of visuals

and decoration. Debut album Honeycomb Moons is due next month, an enticing journey into Byrne’s unique vision.

Listen: ‘If You Want To’ (Honeycomb Moons) Click: www.armouredbear.com See: The Crane, Galway, April 23; Roisin Dubh, Galway, May 2; Bewleys Theatre, Dublin, May 4.

100 albums to avoid before you die No. 2 Sebastien Tellier: Sexuality (lucky number) Don’t be fooled by the credentials of Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel on production duties, Sexuality is about as sensually exciting as being felt up by an incontinent drooling old gobshite.

Taking its cue from fellowFrench pervert’s Serges Gainsbourg pioneering work, each song on the album represents a different part of the sexual experience, complete with moaning women, slinky sleazy synths and Tellier, the deranged “sexual king” vicariously singing about erections, climaxing and sticky sex. It’s filthy electro alright, but not how we know it.

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Even the wonderful seven-minute electronic opus ‘Sexual Sportswear’ can’t save Sexuality. The songs are at least two minutes too long and rarely divert from establishing melody.

Tellier is following in Gainsbourg’s footsteps by representing France in the Eurovision Song Contest this year with the track ‘Divine’. Knowing the unpredictability of the event, he’ll probably bloody win it.

Still, it doesn’t excuse this ploddingly dull musical masturbation session. You may have the stamina and endurance Sebastien, but you’ve still got a limp dick.

Don’t download: ‘Pomme’ If you hate this, don’t listen to: Serges Gainsbourg, Add (N) to X, Peaches

lonely charts club: where did you go to my lovely

The Artist: Mike Oldfield The Album: Music Of The Spheres The Lowdown: Based on the celestial concepts surrounding the festival of Halloween, Music Of The Spheres is Oldfield’s first foray into classical music.

Originally due for release last October, there have been several delays before the album was launched last month in Bilbao.

The Chart Position: 87 (w/e 21/3)

K?< BFFBJ BFEB E<N 8C9LD 8GI@C ((

FE :;&JG<:@8C <;@K@FE :;&M@EPC&;FNECF8; K?<BFFBJ%:F%LB DPJG8:<%:FD&K?<BFFBJ

Incoming my roots are showing: sinead gleeson

they might be giants:

Kraftwerk

El Guincho

One Sunday afternoon in the mid-’80s, I sat down to watch MTUSA, a three-hour hodge podge of music videos and Ireland’s cut-price answer to MTV. Somewhere amid the Hall and Oates and Michael Jackson cuts, a video came on that stopped me in my tracks. It featured four human-type robots, represented in fairly clunky animation. They stood behind keyboards belting out a repetitive, synth kick: it turned out to be ‘Musique Non Stop’

by Kraftwerk. Aurally and visually, it was minimal and a little bit scary, but I was hooked. The old Betamax video was rolling and I ushered in a pal to check it out. Her verdict? “Flipping weird”. I rewound it and watched it over and over again.

It wasn’t ‘til my teens, when all spare cash went on records, that I picked up their albums. Mother Redcaps market at Christchurch yielded an almost mint copy of Trans Europe Express for a couple of quid. For all the accusations of cold robotics, of humourlessness, of music made to the letter of German efficiency, there are pockets of warmth and fun in Kraftwerk. ‘Pocket Calculator’ always makes me laugh. ‘Neon Lights’ is their lighterin-the-air track and ‘The Model’ is as near as they’ll ever come to chart-friendliness.

Many of the records on my shelves wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for Kraftwerk, but it’s musicians who owe them a real debt.

Everyone from Autechre to Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin to LCD Soundsystem, might not exist without those four German synth geeks. The revolutionary aspect of what they’ve done musically is well documented and when they started touring again in 2003, fans were sceptical - would they sound dated and cheesy?

When they finally played Dublin’s Olympia, it was clear that the godfathers of so many genres - techno, electro, electronica still had it. 18 months later, playing the Electric Picnic, I watched them from the sound desk. It was electrifying, and weirdly, almost had me in tears. Like all great acts, there are musical crests and troughs to their output, but 2006’s Minimum Maximum double live album compilation is a perfect place to start and is still the most played album on my MP3 player.

For all their classic hits - ‘Computer Love’, ‘The Robots’, ‘Autobahn’ - ‘Musique Non Stop’ has remained my favourite Kraftwerk song, even though it’s from one of their most problematic albums, Electric Cafe. When I tell people that it’s on my list of funeral tracks, they stare quizzically, but then it’s always the last song Kraftwerk play when they leave the stage. What better way to bow out?

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Born Pablo Díaz-Reixa in the Canary Islands, El Guincho left music school at 14 to become either a footballer or tennis player. Neither proved to be his calling and, following a period of teenage travelling, he arrived in Barcelona to restart his own musical journey. After spells in hiphop outfit Los Feriantes, drumming with Dead Man On Campus and his own band Coconot, he adopted the El Guincho alter-ego.

Debut album Alegranza is a dizzying fusion of global styles, from the Mediterranean to a huge afro-beat influence, throwing in trance, calypso and club culture for good measure. Fast becoming a cult artist around the world, El Guincho recently made his Irish debut at Dublin’s Crawdaddy.

Listen: ‘Antillas’ (Alegranza) Click: www.myspace.com/elguincho

50 words on…

Eurovision It’s not a turkey, it’s a puppet! Dear God, have we come this far? Either an utter nightmare or a total disaster, depending how you look on it, get ready for the collective Euro wide sound of confused despair as a joke falls flat on a spectacular scale. Nul points.

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Incoming from our foreign correspondent: Leslie King in

Paris

What has happened to Paris?

Once it was the centre of Europe.

Then it became the intellectual hot spot, where post-colonial discourse, politics, art, philosophy, cult novels, stray beatnik poets and jazz musicians merged effortlessly with social revolution, berets and women’s rights. Most people would argue that Paris peaked in 1968.

Musically speaking, this is probably true. Once in a while, a stateof-the-art band puts France back on the contemporary listeners map: Justice, Air, Daft Punk, Stereolab. Meanwhile, success stories like the retro-influenced Nouvelle Vague, Carla Bruni and Charlotte Gainsbourg only act as a reference to past greatness.

The equivalents of understated cool icons like Serge Gainsbourg, Francoise Hardy or Brigitte Fontaine do not exist anymore. Emilie Simon, an electronic composer and singer, whose beautiful face is probably more memorable than her innovative music, is an example of a modern alternative French female solo artist whose life size photographs adorn metro station walls, but who doesn’t necessarily get listened to.

The 10-year-old law which demands French radio to play at least 40% French produced or French language music means that there is a very strong market in home-grown talent. However, despite the financial incentives, French music appears to be less groundbreaking and certainly less capable of competing on a global scale, unlike the wildly successful French film industry.

If you are a fan of the timeless French chanson, well-known artists like Jeanne Cherhal, Pauline Croze and the pretentious Vincent Delarme are bound to please. Similarly, if, like the French, you’re fond of Jazz Manouche, gypsy or Spanishinfluenced song-writing and performing, you will enjoy megastar bands like San Saverino, who mix humour and politics with gitane-style strumming: that might explain why Beirut are ridiculously popular.

Most major international acts will

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hit Paris, but it doesn’t mean that Paris produces major acts. Rock–en-Seine is a yearly pop/rock festival that hits the city, but there is no rival to Eurockennes, which takes place near Belfort in the east of France and hosts every cool pop/ alternative band in the world (www. eurockeennes.fr).

Most 90s’ French school children learnt English through Radiohead and Nirvana, but as a rule, they appreciate good French lyrics, and alternative acts can survive solely from French fans, which makes a tour in a French record shop always that bit more exciting.

If you want to know what rocks the French in the pop-rock charts at the moment, there are loads of on-the-ball

50 words on…

All City Records Look out for some top quality vinyl-only releases from Dublin-based All City Records in the coming months. Featuring a split of Irish and international rappers and producers, the records will have cuts from DJ Tu-ki feat Guilty Simpson (pictured) and DJ Flip featuring Zion I and Buck 65. See: all-cityrecords.com

Emilie Simon: a face like a metro station wall

blogs and myspace equivalents that host online concours (band challenges) for popular local acts (www.cqfd.com). Their version of Rolling Stone, Les Inrockuptibles, might give you an idea of what’s going on (www.lesinrocks.com).

But really, if you want to fully experience the modern Parisian music scene, get in an airplane of your choice and go see Girls in Hawaii, the new band from Belgium who borrow Weezer melodies, sprinkle them with some Beach Boys magic dust, mix it all around with some European flavoured pop and sing in English: they love them over there (www. myspace.com/girlsinhawaii).

Incoming

Rewriting The Rulebook

The record company blurb on The Script promises “a mix of melodic pop and soul, blended in a hip hop lyrical flow with a strong R’n’B production.” Throw in some words like “gritty contemporary narrative” and they’ve a lot to live up to.

What you wouldn’t guess from listening to The Script’s first single, ‘We Cry’ is that two thirds of the act was once part of boyband My Town, signing multimillion dollar recording contracts and making a splash in the US. The good news is that The Script are a world away from My Town - a short-lived chapter in lead singer Danny O’Donaghue and guitarist Mark Sheehan’s careers. New kids on the block as far as the general public are concerned, the different members of The Script have been in the music business for some time, working with big names such as Teddy Riley, the Neptunes, and Dallas Austin.

O’Donaghue and Sheehan have worked together since their

insane in the membrane: great hip-hop lyrics of our age

teenage years, establishing a writing and production partnership that led to their move to the US. Add in drummer Glenn Power and The Script was born, “an accidental band”, according to Power.

The Irish trio have been supporting The Hoosiers in the UK, gathering a loyal following in the process from an audience “responsive to our style of music”.

The comparisons have already begun, with names of crowd pulling stadium acts such as Coldplay, Keane and Snow Patrol being bandied about. The Script aren’t complaining, mind you.

“The plan was always to make something that sounds good on radio, to let our influences come out in us: that was always going to happen. I think that artists who say they aren’t influenced by artists already out there are just liars,” says Sheehan. “We’re getting the chance to do what we really want. The Script has been something that has been close to our heart. We produced this record, we wrote this record, we mixed the demos ourselves. If this goes wrong, it’s our own fault.”

50 words on…

No. 2: Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass / Pardon me bitch, as I shit on your grass / That means hoe, you been shit-ted on! / I’m not the first dog that’s shitted on your lawn” – ‘Dogged Out’ “If you wanna die, you gotta drink my sperm / The other way to die, is eat a can of worms” – ‘Cracker Jack’ “First things first man you’re fuckin’ with the worst / I’ll be stickin’ pins in your head like a fuckin nurse” – ‘Protect Ya Neck’ “I fuck in my vest / Drive an armored tank y’all / I dead niggas like a dog buries a bone / You could never set me up I raise the pain volume” – ‘Nigga Please’

Odessa Club’s Not-So-Secret Gigs The last Thursday of each month sees Dublin’s Odessa Club open its doors for an intimate gig. The house band comprises Ollie Cole, Gavin Fox, Graham Hopkins and Justin Carroll, plus a guest vocalist each month. So far, guests have included Fionn Regan (above), Cathy Davey, Declan O’Rourke and Mundy.

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Incoming they might be giants:

Sweet Jane

average white band: not awful, just ordinary

The Doors

Ah, the sixties, an era of experimentation, of breaking

Based around the duo of guitarist Danda and the splendidly named Lydia Des Dolles on vocals, Sweet Jane have injected a dose of the dark rock ‘n’ roll arts into the capital’s music scene of late. Expanding to a five piece, gigs have included slots with mutual soul mates Giveamanakick, The Things and Mainline. Their fuzzy, sleazy guitar sound has caught the attention of many, not least producer Graham Sutton (Jarvis Cocker, British Sea Power) with whom they are due to begin work on their debut album soon.

Listen: ‘Heartbreak’ Click: www.myspace.com/officialsweetjane

50 words on…

Predator Rap Six minutes of pure rap homage to the film Predator as Mouthmaster Murf, with music from DJ Mayhem, narrates the plot of the original movie in rhyme form.

Hilariously interjects Arnie and company’s lines into the rhymes, providing a fresh look at a bloody classic:”Get to the chopper!”

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovi-djkUgd0

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down barriers and opening minds. A time of revolution. And a time when any old crap with a vague air of psychedelia about it was lapped up by middle-class drop-outs, killing a few years before they took that job in the stock market. Ladies and gentlemen....The Doors.

Quite how such a middling rock band became anointed with the status of legends is still astonishing. It certainly wasn’t down to the three accountants playing the music, nor that music itself – at best reasonable pop tunes and at worst...oh don’t get me started. No, The Doors’ trump card came in the form of their singer, his smouldering good looks and his leather trousers. Jim Morrison was, so we are told, the shaman of rock.

Er sorry, come again? It’s his lyrics, they’ll tell you. Oh yes, lyrics like “O great creator of being, grant us one more hour to perform our art and perfect our lives. The moths & atheists are doubly divine and dying”. Right. You say shamanistic, I say nonsensical, let’s call the whole thing off.

For an icon, Morrison’s reign was inauspiciously short. As early as 1968, Rolling Stone magazine was calling him a fake and by the following year, the lean, mean, smouldering machine was replaced by a bearded, incoherent shadow of his former self. Yet perhaps it is best to remember Morrison and The Doors in those early days, when they maybe really did have the world at their feet. Except of course, The Doors won’t let us do that.

Like many other bands who lose a singer, they don’t see any reason why that should stop them. In fact only continuous legal wranglings have spoiled the party, meaning that those craving The Doors experience have been able to go and see The Doors of the 21st Century, D21C, and Riders on the Storm (AKA The Former Doors and Members of The Doors). Classy. Even Ian Astbury had had enough of the confusion by last year and decided that trying to flog The Cult again was a better option.

So by all means stick the poster on your wall, listen to yet another re-packaged Best Of and feel that you’re somehow one of the ‘in crowd’ but please, please don’t try to tell us that this was as good as it got.

12A

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Incoming dan hegarty

show time

Once In A Lifetime I can’t think of many bands that have lived through a mixed

existence quite like The Frames. I say mixed in a number of senses: commercially, artistically, but moreso their relationship with their fans and their detractors.

The Frames are many different things to a growing number of people. They’ve felt the adoration from their extremely loyal fans, yet they’ve also endured relentless attacks from critics who inject their venom with Cranberries-sized measures!

The critics’ assault inevitably lands squally on the chin of Glen Hansard.

I’ve often thought ‘how the hell can you keep taking this, and not feel like giving up?’ But whether you like it or not, The Frames’ procession is into the latter stages of its second decade, and hasn’t missed a creative beat in quite some time.

This brings us to the not-so small achievement of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova’s Oscar nomination and subsequent victory for the song ‘Falling Slowly’. This was far beyond the singlefingered salute to the begrudgers that some viewed it as. I looked on it as a triumph of persistence, and a signal that you don’t necessarily have to be aligned with a multi-national conglomerate to gain critical and commercial vindication.

By the way, this column is by no means an ode to Glen Hansard, The Frames, Marketa Irglova, or Once: it’s simply stating things the way I see them.

By this point, you’ll be either agreeing with me, or you’ll have come to the conclusion that I’m a prat and have flicked on to the album review section!

As for the film, it’s received the traditional foreign blessing before it’s been fully appreciated in its native land. It’s a pity that this had to happen, but at this stage it hardly matters.

For Glen Hansard, Marketa Irglova, John Carney (the film’s writer and director) and The Frames, the future looks very promising. Somewhere intertwined in the film’s storyline and real life, there is a wonderful irony. A fictional character that resembles Hansard in so many ways has brought him the exposure that he

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Republic Of Loose The Academy, Dublin, April 4, 11, 18, 25 Having lost momentum with their second album, Republic Of Loose have arrived back with a band by whit of their Sinead O’Connor collaboration and expectations for the forthcoming new record are high. This Friday night residency will feature different special guests each week.

Preston Reed Playhouse, Derry, April 12 In a world where keyboards, laptops and sequencers are king, Preston Reed is an old fashioned guitar hero in the truest sense.

His one man show takes in heavy metal, jazz, blues and all points in between, in a dazzling display of virtuoso talent.

Jazzy Jeff Trinity Rooms, Limerick, April 13

could and should have had many years ago.

You’d wonder though, will Glen and The Frames be haunted by Once references like they were with The Commitments all those years ago? Will the success of Once become bigger than everything that Marketa Irglova or John Carney will do in the future? That’s always a risk: will one moment in your life eclipse everything that you have done and do from that point on?

It’s hard to pull any negatives out of this situation; I just hope that The Frames get to reach a wider international audience. In turn, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova’s seasonal swell is projected in only one direction, one that they both deserve, and will hopefully enjoy every second of.

I’ll leave you with ten Frames/Glen & Marketa-related songs that you should listen to the next time you have an hour or two to spare: The Frames: ‘God Bless Mom’; ‘Roger’; ‘Ship Caught In The Bay’.

Glen Hansard: ‘Fallen From The Sky’.

Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova: ‘Drown Out’; ‘This Low’; ‘Falling Slowly’.

Interference: ‘Vinegar Girl’ Tune into Dan Hegarty’s Alternative To Sleep on RTE 2fm, weeknights from midnight to 2am.

Part of the ongoing 5th birthday celebrations of the influential Limerick club, Jazzy Jeff brings 20-plus years of music industry success, along with a hand in producing some of hip-hop’s most influential records. Joined

by Detroit MC Mad Skillz and a full local supporting cast.

2FM 2Moro 2our Cyprus Avenue, Cork, April 19, 20 Two dates for the latest 2FM sponsored package tour, this time featuring the pop of The Coronas, the rock of Boss Volenti and Juno Falls’ sophisticated indie, plus local supports on all dates. Sunday 20th is an all ages show, kicking off at 3pm.

Björk Waterfront Hall, Belfast, April 28 Only Irish date on this leg of the 18month Volta world tour, following her spectacular Electric Picnic set last summer.

Given the recent fuss she’s been causing for controversial song dedications, her performance of ‘Declare Independence’ should be interesting to say the least.

Alphastates Roisin Dubh, Galway, April 29 Out of the public eye for way too long, Alphastates return with an album, Human Nature, and a smattering of live shows.

Daniel Craig

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Music is my Radar Teaming up with his buddy, former music video director Baillie Walsh, for Flashbacks Of A Fool was a trip down musical memory lane for 007 Daniel Craig.

As told to Paul Byrne ~ Photography by Perou

Music has always been really important to me, not just in my personal life – who doesn’t have a soundtrack to their own lives? – but also in the work that I do. It was really Martin Scorsese who made me realise that you can take a song that has an incredible amount of baggage, a song that means so much to so many people, and use it in a scene to take you even deeper into what is going on. It’s very manipulative, but very effective. The sense memory in your brain just goes into overdrive…

For Flashbacks Of A Fool, Baillie Walsh and I knew that a big, big part of our story – which takes part largely in the 1970s – was the music. With David Bowie and Roxy Music pumping out on the soundtrack, this is pretty much a trip down musical memory lane for both me and Baillie. The story itself is all about a faded Hollywood star thinking back on the days of his youth, when he hears that his best friend has died. It’s a comingof-age tale really, but it’s Bowie and Roxy Music that fuel these teenage lusts and dreams and hopes.

There’s one scene in particular that just knocks me out. Harry Eden – who plays the teenage version of my character, Joe – has somehow managed to get a date with the most beautiful girl in this English seaside resort, Ruth – played by Felicity Jones – and she brings him home and just glams him up. And then they dance to Roxy Music’s ‘When We Were Young’, and it’s just incredible. Erotic, exotic, innocent, heartbreaking, charged… you know it’s a moment that these two dreamers will never really fully capture again.

Baillie wrote the script, and given his background in directing music videos, it was somewhat inevitable that his movie would be immersed in music too. Baillie has done some incredible work with Massive Attack – he directed the videos for ‘Daydreaming’, ‘Safe From Harm’, ‘Be Thankful For What You’ve Got’ and ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ – and he’s worked with Oasis, INXS and others. He just has that understanding of music and images going together, something that worked incredibly well here.

I’ve known Baillie for about ten years now – we actually met when he was an extra on the set of Love Is The Devil. We hit it off straight away, and we always had movies and music to talk about, to argue about, to celebrate, and, in the case of the music, to listen to very, very, very loudly. Baillie actually wrote the part of the washed up movie star Joe Scott specifically for me, six years ago, and I loved the idea of it from the get-go. He could be anything really, once he was this rich guy in a big house who had lost touch with reality. We struggled to get the finances for Flashbacks..., but signing on as James Bond has kinda helped me in that respect. Studios tend to react a little more positively when you’re 007.

That’s another example of how important music is. The Bond theme is so distinctive, to the point that we argued quite a bit on the first outing that I was involved in, Casino Royale, how soon was too soon to let that theme break through. You don’t want to let it happen too early, especially in a film dealing with the birth of Bond, in many ways. It’s this wonderful ace up your sleeve, like the chorus to a great, great song, that you can just tease the audience with before finally unleashing it.

Which must make me sound like a frustrated rocker at heart, right? But then, aren’t we all?

Flashbacks Of A Fool hits Irish cinemas April 11th.

Bond 22 will be released in November.

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Portishead

Third Chance Saloon Words by Phil Udell Photography by Adam Faraday

If you ever get the chance to talk to Portishead, whatever you do, don’t ask them why their third record took so long to make. To head off any potential awkward moments, they’ve issued a succinct run-down of the past 14 years – made an album, went on tour, made another one, then a live album and spent the next decade doing things at home, recording solo projects and working on a new record.

Simple really.

They may not want to talk about it (more to do with time constraints on interviews than being precious) but been away they have, and as Adrian Utley is the first to admit, absence makes the myths go stronger.

“There’s been a lot of misinformation rather than a myth really,” he avows. “Speak to different parts of the world and you’ll hear different stories. Since we haven’t been doing stuff for a while, these ideas have grown up about us. I guess that’s what happens though: if you don’t hear from somebody, you make stuff up. It’s just Chinese whispers.”

The last time that Utley, Beth Gibbons and Geoff Barrow were releasing records as Portishead, it was a hugely different landscape.

Promos and white labels were flung around with abandon, whereas now the security surrounding virtually every new release is mind boggling. How does Adrian view this brave new world?

“I can’t really comment on that from our position,” he says.

“It’s different for us in that we’ve had this 10-year gap and one hopes that there is a certain amount of expectation from people, which happily there does seem to be. I can imagine that if you were in a new band, it would be very different with the plethora of stuff that’s around. It’s indecipherable sometimes, but things do cut through if they’re good enough, I think. It’s always been difficult for bands but hopefully in the end, the music will speak for them.”

Given the very different music industry that they emerged into, blinking in the light, did Portishead ever consider jacking in

their contract and start releasing their own music themselves? Not according to Adrian.

“The record company never bothered us at all,” he notes.

“It would have been mad to do that, and I don’t mean that in an arrogant way. It wouldn’t have worked and they know that. We were working hard enough on what we were doing but because we’ve sold records, we’ve never been in debt to them, so they can’t hassle the fuck out of us. If you take huge advances, then you’re immediately in debt and you know what the bank are like when you owe them money. Luckily, we’ve never had that and we’ve always had sympathetic people around us: they’ve never bombarded us.”

For such an affable person, Utley is still forthright on certain subjects. “I’m slightly delighted by the demise of MTV,” he says, before rediscovering his inner English gentleman. “I mean, I’m not happy about the demise of anything related to music, no matter what it is, but it’s great that you don’t have to make a £100,000 video with speedboats and helicopters. We’re making our videos for very little these days. I loved our Chris Cunningham video for ‘Only You’. It wasn’t cheap to make but it was imaginative. There is a lot to think about and, as we manage ourselves, there’s more every day. After three or four weeks of promo, I started thinking ‘I wouldn’t mind playing some music now’.”

Ah, the music. The third Portishead opus is with us and it’s called, ahem, Third. From the opening rumbling sub-bass of ‘Silence’ to the final, crashing chords of ‘Threads’, it’s a tough old listen. Track after track ushers in a range of disjointed, jarring sounds. In short, music for dinner parties, it isn’t. Adrian agrees: “It can be warring to get through it all in one go, there’s a lot of information coming at you.”

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The sound of the record was very much a product of its environment. “Making it was harsh at times, simply because of the regime we’ve historically always had about how we make our music and the deconstruction process,” he admits. “We make things and then destroy them completely. It’s a fragile line between succeeding and wanting to throw yourself out of a window through a lack of creativity. All of us listen to harsh music. The sonic harshness of it comes from that. A lot of the music that I like is pretty degraded.”

However much they managed to cocoon themselves from the industry, blocking out the outside world at large was much harder.

With work on Third starting in 2004, the recording sessions had a fairly crazy backdrop in the news arena for one.

“All of that stuff has an influence,” says Adrian. “It’s not as if we overtly tried to write a record in protest against politics and world events, but if you’re living in that environment and talking to each other about those things, it’s bound to effect how you emotionally respond. If I listen to the Gorecki piece about Auschwitz, that’s a direct emotional response and it’s largely instrumental. I’m always thinking, ‘is there a way of representing something politically aware with instrumental music?’ You’d think it would be more about lyrics.”

It was the combination of music and lyrics in hip-hop that first caught the attention of the jazzloving Utley, in particular the work of Public Enemy – the band who helped forge a bond between himself and Barrow. Like many others who cut their teeth in those early days, the majority of today’s rap fails to connect with him.

“I really like Madlib at the moment but even that’s not the same. He is utterly and completely brilliant but for me I think Public Enemy are a thing of their time. They’re timeless,” he

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Portishead

argues. “That was so powerful, in the way that Jimi Hendrix was so powerful, that I wouldn’t try and find another one. I think it’s going to come from other worlds. I don’t know where hip-hop’s gone, same as I don’t know where jazz is going. Geoff has always been deeply into hip-hop in a fully, all consuming way, whereas for me, it came as a more surprising inspiration in my life at some point.”

Yet hip-hop is only part of what has made up Portishead’s collective musical psyche. The other elements were given a full public airing when they curated the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival at the end of last year, something that strikes as the equivalent of compiling a giant mix-tape.

“That’s exactly what it’s like,” enthuses Adrian. “It has all the same connotations, because you’re presenting so many things to the world, standing up and saying, ‘This is the kind of music we absolutely love and this has had an influence on our lives’. I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever been involved with. The coming together of that many bands and getting to meet some of them was just brilliant.

“What’s good about ATP is that the people who go there absolutely know the rules,” he continues. “These are people who are so heavily into music, to go to Butlins in the middle of December with the howling fucking wind coming at you, the rain and nothing else to do but watch music and get drunk; it’s not like Glastonbury where you can go shopping or just hang out. It’s very much about music. We spoke to lots of people while we were wandering around and it was amazing.”

Third is the result of all these influences, both from the music world and beyond. Yet however much you try and avoid the issue, you can’t deny that it took a very long time to make. Does Adrian feel that this is the only way

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they can work now?

“Dummy we did in a very short time, less than six months and we had it done. That album was coming from a different place; it was like a fresh new marriage. A lot of stuff has happened since then and a lot of ideas have been expended,” he confesses. “I heard something that Joe Strummer once said, ‘no input, no output’. You have to feed yourself. The nature of our band is that it is a slow process, but I think we’d all like it to be a bit faster.”

Having put so much painstaking effort into making the music, Utley finds himself conversing with people like State and trying to sum it up in half an hour. It’s not something he particularly enjoys.

“As soon as you finish a record, you have to talk about it and it’s very difficult,” he says. “If you make an album with more than just yourself in mind, then you’re into compromise and that is a really good thing as well as a frustrating thing. Part of the frustration with our band is the compromise. That goes for the relationship between the three of us as well. It’s a good struggle, but that means that you can’t be objective about things afterwards, because you have taken on other people’s points of view, and a collective point of view that is 15 years old. You come out of making a record and a fairly intense creative period and you have to talk about it, when perhaps you’re not sure what you think yourself.”

What he really wants to do is stop talking and start playing again which, with a tour looming, is about to happen. Given his background, it’s unsurprising that this is Adrian’s favourite part of the process.

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Portishead

“When I play live, I get a new take on everything. I can open up the top of the box and have a look in and discover stuff that I never really knew about. I know that sounds weird and arty but actually it’s totally true. The difference is that Geoff doesn’t like to play live at all: he absolutely hates it. The sound we make live is so difficult to reproduce sometimes, we have to take great care with all the instruments. There’s nothing running off tape, we have to play it all, and that’s quite a challenge to reproduce through a big PA in a weird room. If you take a band like Coldplay, they’re instruments stay pretty much the same and their music fits into a stadium setting. For us, it’s fucking weird to do that. For Geoff, it’s a nightmare because he refuses to accept that the sound won’t be absolutely perfect.

“I like touring, so there you have the compromise,” he continues. “We all compromise for each other. We are only touring until May, so we won’t be going to Japan or Australia.

We’re not touring America, so to some extent we’re doing a few things because I think it’s important to play live: it’s part of being a band.”

This refusal to take the easy option to live shows may have created a rod for their own back, yet it does offer a stimulating alternative to the laptop warriors of the current dance scene. Andy agrees: “It was a valid approach years ago. It was really exciting seeing Human League with the tape machine going round: I don’t know why, but it was. For my life, it’s important that we present our music on a live level and we play everything and we all agree on that. I’ve spent most of the last 18 years in a studio, so it’s vital to me.”

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THE IRISH TIMES 23

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Words by Tanya Sweeney Photography by Richard Gilligan

With or without Jack White’s approval, it’s no small understatement to say that the multi-faceted Jape – the brainchild of Dubliner Richie Egan – are currently purveying some of the most finely-realised and diverse music Ireland has ever heard.

Starting life ostensibly as a (sort-of) side project to Richie’s other outfit, The Redneck Manifesto, Jape has evolved from an intimate, sweetly esoteric bedroom project to a joyously fascinating band, brimming with self-assurance, energy and direction. Taking a lead of sorts from the likes of LCD Soundsystem, the genre-straddling Egan has proved himself adept at undercutting introspective electro with a wily pop bent, all the while proudly and cleverly wearing a whole spectrum of influences on his proverbial sleeve.

But, as Egan himself would be the first to admit, it hasn’t always been this way. Like many a Dublin teen, he has sometimes lost his way on the path to musical enlightenment. Remarking on said influences, Egan recalls how he was brought up on Simon & Garfunkel and The Beatles in his Crumlin home, but soon graduated onto Minor Threat and Black Flag during adolescence.

“There was a brief thing about Technotronic...I was really into them as a kid in fact,” he admits. “But then, from punk you can move onto anything.”

This brief foray into Belgian house music notwithstanding, Egan spent a rather injudicious six months as a straight edge punk enthusiast after copping an earful of Fugazi on the now sadly defunct Radio Active station.

“When you’re a teen, you have a lot of...how do you put it... misguided principles,” he deadpans. “I think I might have taken the lyrics a bit too literally...I must not have been getting too many girlfriends at the time! I think there was that thinking, ‘If I don’t drink, I’ll be cool’. I think then I might have gotten a girlfriend and stopped a lot of the weirdness, like collecting dead flies.”

Jape

Joker In The Pack

Then he adds with a wry flourish: “We used to walk down the street and take the cigarettes straight from people’s mouths – Crumlin Street Justice!”

Another episode he’d rather forget from these so-called glory years is the first and last time he made the uniform pilgrimage to Feile in the early 90s. The Trip to Tipp is a rite-of-passage that many of his peers now regard with a sort of sepia-tinted glow, but the festival weekend was not to be one of Richie’s finest hours.

“I was crying during a Supermac advert!” he hoots. “The friends I went down with got backstage and left me behind when I was pissed out of my head on cider. I think it was during Elvis Costello, and I was so pissed off at being left behind, I got the first fucking train out of there in the morning...what an unmitigated disaster!”

Clearly, the entire episode hasn’t put him off the festival experience; right after this interview, Richie is readying himself to board a plane for New York to make an appearance at the famed Mercury Lounge on the Lower East Side, where Jape will perform alongside David Kitt and Delorentos at the dubiously-titled Craic festival. Despite travelling in some rather fine company, it’s a prospect that Egan appears to be viewing with ambivalent sentiments.

“Get this...I’ve to fly over on the Friday, so the gig on the Saturday and fly back on Sunday,” he reveals. “I’ll tell you though, I’m shitting myself as I’m not a good flyer at all.”

Referring to his previous US festival experiences, he adds:

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“Jape did South By Southwest last year and the Rednecks have toured the US a couple of times. It’s a great showcase but playing SXSW is horrific because there are so many major bands playing at it, everyone else is kind of pissing in the wind. All these halfassed attempts at publicity are a bit pointless. It’s funny; all you can hear the whole time are hundreds of drum-kits. When we played, it was in a sports bar and Bon Jovi was blaring from downstairs. Because it was Paddy’s weekend, there seemed to be all these Mexicans wearing ‘Kiss Me I’m Irish’ T-Shirts. Grim.”

Moby may have made a similar sort of exponential leap some time ago, but how does an Irish teenager go from a being a straight-edge Minor Threat fan to creating vast and vivid electronic soundscapes using samplers and synths? Surely, many punk purists wouldn’t go within sniffing distance of a sampler?

“I was definitely of that school,” concedes Richie. “Matty (Bolger, guitarist in The Redneck Manifesto) will kill me for saying this but he once said when we were younger, ‘I’ll never use an effects pedal...I hate fucking reverb!’ But when you’re writing songs on your own, you find there’s only so much you can do with a guitar. Do it if it feels good, but it can be fairly limiting. Once you get the 4-track, the next thing you know you’re sitting in a room full of synths and keyboards! It all kind of seeped in over time.

“There’s a definite feeling that songs are already out there in the world and you have to pull them from the air, but fuck that in some ways too,” he adds. “There’s a good way of writing songs...start with a different task or start with a new sample to keep it all fresh, otherwise you start developing some shit habits and that’s just not good. I get the samples from different places:

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Jape

I sample stuff I’ve already played, stuff off records. I have this battery sampler I sometimes walk around town with.”

Since the release of 2004’s breakthrough single, ‘Floating’, many changes have been afoot in the Jape camp. For a start, the band has organically grown into a five-piece. “I do much prefer to bounce shit off other people instead of being there on my own,” observes Richie. “I think drums and a band make a huge difference, plus I like to look into people’s eyes, not into the sampler.”

Jape have also migrated from the Trust Me I’m A Thief label towards the Co-Op label group, home to Memphis Industries, Bella Union and Wichita. All this, of course, happened with a brief interlude with V2 Records sandwiched in between...a working relationship that to the public eye was almost over before it ever really began. Unlike most other artists, Egan’s master plan hasn’t been dented one bit by the episode.

“How it came about was they signed me, and then they went bust when they were taken over by Universal,” he explains.

“What happened then was I got signed by Co-op and I’m much happier there. It was cool [when] I was getting money (from V2) to buy equipment, which is all I really wanted to do. When it all went belly-up, it didn’t matter but what I knew was that I did want the album out there one way or another. I was very lucky... the A&R girl at V2 now works at Co-Op and took me over there, so it all turned out really well.”

One fortunate side effect of this brief pit-stop on V2, of course, was that the label fronted some cash for the making of the stirring video for ‘Floating’; a stylish and slickly-shot minifilm in which Egan is pelted with various foodstuffs.

“V2 gave us some money towards it but it’s the work of DADDY, Red Jam and M&E, who pulled in all the favours,” asserts Egan. “It looks like it was made for 20 grand but it cost

State

€4,000 in all. We got the rotten fruit for free from Superquinn!”

Egan’s preoccupation with the marriage between sound and visual is another aspect that immediately sets him apart from many of his contemporaries.

Much like the ‘Floating’ promo, Jape’s press shots and album covers have often been striking and idiosyncratic, neatly showcasing their subject’s distinctly creative bent. Responsible for much of this visual output is Egan’s Rednecks’ bandmate Matty...one half of acclaimed design duo M&E. “Actually, the aesthetics are so important...I find it amazing that it’s not more so for many artists,” he ponders. “It’s all about bouncing ideas, and M&E have a very weird way of looking at shit, a weird world view. Put a bit of love into what you’re doing, and I think people respond to it better. I just don’t know why you wouldn’t bother. I see all these bands with plain album covers. If you do your best at everything, you feel good about it: if not, you just have regrets.

“When (the video) got a million hits on YouTube that was funny,” he continues. “The comments were things like ‘let’s throw rocks at his ugly head!’ Like a dagger through my heart it was. Another great one was, ‘the song’s quite good, but he’s a fucking midget!’

Ah, the much touted Irish begrudgery rears its ugly head...

“It’s a very teenage thing, isn’t it though?” he observes. “To worry about what people think. You do encounter a bit here but everyone is a human being and everyone’s just trying to get along in their own lives. You’d hope for it to happen to you but when things go well for you, you’re not hurting anyone.”

That said, Richie is probably one of the most reluctant big hitters on the Irish music scene.

Jape

“If you go looking to try and become famous, all that happens is that you become famous,” he says. “If you discover yourself in the music, there’s no end to the things you can do.

Fame should be a by-product. I’m a bit mad or something but honestly, all I want to do is try and understand the world and make some sense of myself. If you’re stubborn enough about it, people will eventually pay some attention.

“You find your niche...I mean, there could be some dude who plays a belt with a shoehorn and he’ll eventually hit on an audience. Even if they’re saying ‘what a weirdo, he’s amazing!’ I think songwriters are mad, driven by a need to understand. Look at someone like Cass McCombs, on Domino, who’s been a hero of mine for a long time...he’s just doing his own shit.”

Proving that he has indeed found his niche, Richie now finds himself in the enviable position of gearing up for the release of two albums. Not only will Jape’s fourth album, Ritual – bearing the brilliant ska-influenced dancefloor filler ‘Christopher & Anthony’ – be available in May; a new Redneck Manifesto album is also slated for release in the coming months too.

“85% of the new album is written, so we will go back down to Black Box Studios in France. I’m not just saying this, but I do think it’s the best stuff yet,” he declares. “It’s upbeat, melodic, and happy sounding stuff.”

Despite their productivity, The Redneck Manifesto aren’t about to stage a massive return from their self-imposed hiatus of 2007, preferring instead to orchestrate a steady and slow burn.

“Well, Niall (Byrne, bassist) has got three kids now, so we’re a bit like old men in a feckin’ golf club or something,” laughs Richie. “We’re kind of contrary old men who don’t give a fuck about playing live...just making the music, really.”

Ritual is out on May 12.

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State

The Kooks

International Bright Young Things Words by John Joe Worrall ~ Photography by Timothy Norris

These are, so the rumour goes, enlightened times, and in such an era, it really is quite easy to take the piss out of a band who wear straw hats, come from a vaguely posh upbringing and have a penchant for celebrity girlfriends. The Kooks tick all of these boxes. Add in a bit of band warfare (they complained that Arctic Monkeys never say ‘hello’ to them), as well as an embarrassing trip to the police station (after frontman Luke Pritchard failed to produce ID in a London pub called Crazie Homies), and you’ve got the makings of tabloid fodder pop tarts.

Pritchard even found himself unfavourably compared to Johnny Borrell after exclamations of the band’s talent when they hit the mainstream with their 2006 debut album, Inside In/Inside Out. Two years on, though, and with two million album sales and counting, even the frontman’s former schoolmate Lily Allen calling them “twats” hasn’t seemed to affect them in the slightest.

Right from the get-go, Inside In/Inside Out revelled in its simplicity. The tunes were played live when they hit the studio and before they knew it, the band had a record that stormed European airwaves, while singles ‘Ooh La’ and ‘She Moves In Her Own Way’ provided two festival highlights that year.

“I think the answer to whether people like us or not can be seen in the festivals,” says Pritchard. “People being snobby about their own type of music, it all goes out the window at things like Oxegen or Glastonbury. If we play ‘She Moves in Her Own Way’, every fucker out there is singing that song and that’s why you do it.”

That’s probably been the root of some of the criticism levelled at the band: the unashamed worship of three-minute tunes to make people happy, as opposed to shoe-gazing and social

commentary. “If it doesn’t make you feel good, what’s the point?” wonders Pritchard rather simply.

Chatting from EMI’s London offices, the former boyfriend of Katie Melua and Fearne Cotton can at times seem very much the man of only 22 that he is. The ‘yeah but, no but’ usage is high and he strays from one thought to the next with abandon, but in between, he’s open and more than a little humble. He talks as excitedly as his general indie layabout demeanour will allow about the band’s new album, Konk, recorded in the main late last year in London, with a few loose ends tied up in some Los Angeles sessions, as you do.

“We wrote loads for this record, so there was no fear,” he says, making light of any second album syndrome rumours. “I don’t really get this phrase of people saying you have your life to write your first album: so you’ve only written 10 songs in your life? That’s kinda weird. Though then again, maybe people write hundreds of tunes but they could’ve just been crap songs.”

Recording once again with former Beck and Supergrass producer Tony Hoffer (“I think he enjoys putting you in situations that you don’t necessarily wanna go to”), Konk was finished in around six weeks , which was more than enough time, as far as Pritchard is concerned.

Asked if he could ‘do a Radiohead’, he seems horrified at the thought. “I couldn’t do it. Six months or so. No way,” he avows.

“I’d go fucking crazy, mate. Six weeks is a fuck of a long time in a small room doing a record. If you need more than six weeks to do a

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The Kooks

“It’s still really amazing, even at this stage, that when you go to a new venue, they give you shitloads of free beers. It’s pretty cool! You can’t complain and say you want a white unicorn or something.”

record, you probably shouldn’t be doing a record, don’t you think?

This record has urgency. If you labour over it, you could end up insane. Some of it is hard, some of it is amazing.”

The recording of Konk did, however, coincide with the much publicised problems of now ex-bass player Max Rafferty. He was fired from the band in late January, with several forms of substance abuse rumoured but never confirmed. Either way, he rarely looked healthy during his final few months with the band. Fellow Brighton resident Dan Logan has since become a Kook, making up the present quartet with lead guitarist Hugh Harris and drummer Paul Garred.

“We’ve known Dan for, like, three years,” reveals Pritchard.

“Not known him that well: he was just a lad from Brighton but a really fucking amazing musician, so we knew that he’d nail it. We wanted someone to add to the band but I’m not sure what’s gonna happen right now, I’m not gonna make it solid to people, but… so now Dan’s playing with us. We want someone who’s gonna write songs, who’s gonna be an influence, someone who will be part of the band not just someone playing basslines, and he will [be all that].”

He tails off, only to come back full of beans. “It’s fucking hilarious. We’ll finish up a tour after six months and be fucking sick of the sight of each other, then go home and two days later it’s like. ‘Paul do you wanna go for a beer?’ You can’t keep away, really. We’re just like brothers: we’re really super, super close and somehow we’re still really good friends, though obviously Max left for various other reasons, but it’s still like we’re just best friends and we get on so well. It’s amazing really.”

A cover of Peter, Bjorn and John’s ‘Young Folks’ is set to be one highlight of Konk, according to Pritchard, while some of the finer moments of the fairly decent new record such as the ACDC-ish ‘Do You Wanna’ and the soulful ‘Down to the Market’ should also help during what will be a busy year, with

30

the US a particular target.

“It’s nice to be wanted, alright,” he laughs. “The record company keep on asking us over anyway, which is a good sign and we’ll be touring loads there.”

Having played the London Astoria the night before and claiming it seemed “small” to them, how will playing pokey dives in Utah suit the former Brit School of Performing Arts student?

“My favourite gigs are always the ones in small venues, like 200 or 250 capacity, but y’know it’s because of bringing everyone together and it’s so much easier to wrap your arms around a small crowd. It’s like… The Rolling Stones [whom The Kooks supported on the A Bigger Bang tour]; one of the hard things about playing stadiums is that people barely know you.

You just can’t get any intensity: it’s just fucking sterile. If you hear any fucking Stones song then you’re gonna go nuts, everyone’s gonna go crazy, but with us, half the people didn’t have a clue who we were.”

As he prepares to leave home for months on end, he says he doesn’t miss it much when he goes away (“well, a little”), and the band, he claims, are still good guests, despite the newly acquired star status.

“We don’t have a rider, put it that way,” he laughs. “I don’t really give a shit, to be honest: as long as there’s some beers, some whiskey and food, I’m okay.” He begins to sound his age once again, “But it’s still really amazing, even at this stage, that when you go to a new venue, they give you shitloads of free beers. It’s pretty cool! You can’t complain and say you want a white unicorn or something.” O…kay.

And with that odd note, Pritchard tells State that there’s “one more bit of talking about myself to go, and then I’m off oooooout”.

So, what with life going pretty rosy, is there anything that’s irritating The Kooks at present?

“Hugh,” he chortles immediately, referring to the band’s guitarist. “We generally have good taste but Hugh seems to be obsessed with that song ‘Umbrella’, which I fucking despise. I don’t allow it. Don’t worry, I’m not havin’ that on the tour bus.”

And State thought it was pretty good.

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31

State

SXSW

Fighting dwarves with Paddy Casey. Delorentos crack-house experience. Cathy Davey’s stagefright and stealing saucepans with Fight Like Apes. Ireland’s bright young things invade Austin, Texas.

Austin Powers

“Welcome to the Live Music Capital of the World” reads the greeting on arrival at Austin-Bergstrom placed Austin second in its ‘list of airport. State has arrived, like thousands of others, for the world’s annual pilgrimage to South By South West Music, the evergrowing, ever-sprawling, ever-surreal musical extravaganza. Over four days, 1600 acts from all over the globe will be showcasing their wares to anyone who’ll give them time of day: they’ll play in dedicated music venues, pubs, bars, restaurants, shops, gardens, street corners, rooftops, even in the back of pick-up trucks, anywhere they can possibly tear an audience away from the copious beer and pizza slices around the festival’s main hub, 6th Street. Some bands are here for the prestige or straightforward fun ‘n’ frolics; others are hoping to catch the eye of the ever-decreasing circle of record company A&R people who reputedly stalk SXSW in search of their Next Big Thing.

It’s an odd but perfect location.

Texas may be George W. Bush country but, looking around downtown Austin, he doesn’t seem to have made his mark around here. The new slogan of choice is “Keep Austin Weird”; it’s redolent of a progressive lifestyle you wouldn’t find up the road in Dallas. Money Magazine

32

America’s Best Places To Live’, on account of its cleanliness and commitment to sustainable living. Despite being home to many giant corporations, it’s actively shunning globalisation, in favour of supporting local businesses, many of them structured around the annual SXSW event.

It’s attracting more visitors and, as any taxi driver will cheerfully tell you, dollars to the city each year; it has grown from a few hundred visitors in 1987 to tens of thousands in 2008, and it’s clear from the streets, shops and copious takeaways that Downtown Austin is not a typical, bustling US city built on a financial centre; they’re building this city on rock ‘n’ roll.

The date is Thursday March 13. The location: BD Riley’s pub on 6th Street.

The event, the Full Irish Breakfast Party, a showcase organised by Music From Ireland. A nine-strong contingent of Irish acts will perform to a largely invited audience, each with 20 minutes to make their mark. The weather augurs well for the crowds; it had be howling with gales and whinging with rain back in Ireland, but here, outside this almost comically Irish-themed pub, the sun is beating down

Words by Johnnie Craig, Durell Connor.

Artist portraits by Zoran Orlic, other photography by Dan Dennison.

on 6th Street.

Inside, there’s a palpable, sweaty tension in the air as the acts await their turn to take the would-be stage; in reality, it’s a platformed seating area by the pub windows, which are invitingly opened to the street outside. As the anticipation builds, Music From Ireland’s director Angela Dorgan is running hither and thither, trying to calm the nerves of her entourage. State suggests to her that she’s fussing over the bands like a mother hen. “I’m more of a fairy godmother,” she smiles.

Granting wishes is pretty much how her organisation is working here. Music From Ireland was formed just under four years ago with the aim of representing the Irish Music Industry at major music conferences around the world, while assisting bands financially (via grants from Culture Ireland, IMRO and the Arts Council) and technically in their ambitions to take their music to a larger stage. Last year, Fionn Regan clinched his deal with Lost Highway after the Irish Breakfast showcase gave the label their first chance to see him play; since then he’s gone on to be touted as the saviour of folk

State

SXSW

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State

SXSW

“If you want to sign something, go to a post office and send a registered letter to yourself, otherwise play your gigs – if you get your break, you get your break.”

by Vanity Fair and been nominated for the Mercury Prize. Potentially, careers are at stake here.

This year’s acts have been handpicked from all areas of the Irish scene’s current crop: the acoustic folk-pop of Paddy Casey and The Lost Brothers; the balls-out rock of Driving By Night and The Bleedin Bleedins; the crafted, singular songwriting of Cathy Davey, Delorentos and Angel Pier; and the contrasting electro styles of Channel One and Fight Like Apes.

“I love our line-up this year,” Angela coos proudly, bouncing and clapping with excitement at the spectacle. All around BD Riley’s, punters are ladling into egg, sausages and rashers, courtesy of the show’s host. “We’re embracing the Paddy’s Day kitsch,” Angela explains.

“The Australians have their barbecue, the Canadians have their beer-out, we have a full Irish breakfast. This is the fourth year we’ve been doing this but the first time we’ve been approached to be an official party, so the Breakfast really has caught

34

people’s imaginations. We’ve always had a very high standard of acts and people have cottoned on to that – we have a standby guest list of 350 for this event, all labels, bookers, agents… bands can’t get that, even if they tour America on their own, they’ve no guarantees of anyone seeing them.

That’s what we’re here for.”

The venue has filled nicely by the time Paddy Casey takes the stage. Of all the Irish acts, he has arguably the busiest week; he’s already in the midst of a North American tour but, with up to three gigs per day at SXSW, he has, he later admits, been “running around like a blue-arsed fly. I’ve only had 10 minutes to myself, so I managed to see 10 minutes of Vampire Weekend, that’s been it!”

Uniquely in the Irish contingent, Paddy is on his third album, the Meteor Award-winning Addicted To Company (Part 1) and is a firmly established act on home turf. But that, he says, makes no

difference here: “I think we’re all in the same boat. No one has a clue who I am in America, but it’s just nice to see if you can cut it somewhere else. It’s hard to know what SXSW can do for your profile: it’s a different world here.”

Still, some impressive TV slots are set to alter his US profile somewhat in the coming weeks. “At the end of the tour, I’m doing the Letterman show and then MTV are doing this Paddy Casey Week, which I think is gas – they have me fighting dwarves; I suppose they thought those were the only people I could take on. It’s just nice to be wanted, I suppose.”

Queues continue to stretch from the packed venue and even SXSW badge-holders can only peer in the window to get a glimpse of The Lost Brothers’ engaging set. While that’s going on, Cathy Davey and her minstrels are pacing the floor, readying themselves for their turn.

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Before SXSW, Cathy admits her festival apprehension to State. “They tend to give me the fear,” she confesses. “I think it’s because I got lost in shopping centres a lot as a kid.” But tracks from Tales Of Silversleeve have already been seeping through to the American consciousness and there’s a roomful of goodwill when she and her band assemble on-stage. From the first note of ‘No Heart Today’ she has everyone enraptured; by the end of her set, they’re in love with her.

“I hate singling people out,” says Angela, “but last year, Fionn Regan stood out a mile from everyone else; the year before it was Iain Archer; but this year, I think it’s going to be Cathy Davey’s SXSW. Everyone who’s seen her has just been mesmerised.”

“She is so amazing,” purrs Pockets from Fight Like Apes. “And what a band she has too; Conor O’Brien from The Immediate and the lads from One Day International, what a class act.”

“I got up and realised I wasn’t nervous,” chirps Cathy after the gig.

“I felt really comfortable. There’s no soundcheck, so it is what it is, there’s no room for nerves. I mean we had a dizazo

36

SXSW

(© Cathy Davey) of a trip over, ending up in Dallas and having to hire two cars due to a malfunction of organisation – but it worked out. We were tired but elated, it went so well.”

The instant rumour-mill is abuzz that there were impressed industry heads in attendance but Cathy isn’t having any of it.

“You create your own buzz, so it’s hard to tell,” she says guardedly, before breaking out a trademark giggle. “I don’t have a competitive or careerist streak, that’s my manager’s job. I just wanted to come off stage and feel happy with what I’d done.

I want people to like it, and hopefully get my album released over here and continue playing here - but only if it’s enjoyable.

I don’t want to be touring here for six months to make it – that’s not why I’m doing it!”

Meanwhile, the Delorentos juggernaut crams on to the tiny stage and their set, not to put too fine a point on it, rocks. “Can they get any tighter?” Angela enthuses. It’s true, the four of them are, as always, a solid unit. Yet today, they’re up against it

from the start. Vocalist / guitarist Kieran McGuinness breaks a string early on and his replacement guitar is woefully out of tune, having been detuned for their flight here. This leaves Rónan Yourell alone on guitar duties for the first three songs: naturally, he copes admirably. Outside, a throng of strangers want to know who on earth that band are and afterwards sleeveless copies of the album In Love With Detail are handed around by the band and their manager, Hugh Murray, a man who looks very happy at his work.

Today’s been a triumph over adversity for Delorentos, who have had a torrid time of it since arriving in North America. “I had a massive chest infection before we came out, so I couldn’t sing at our first gig in New York,” Kieran says with a rueful grin. “Then, because of blizzards, we couldn’t get to our next gig in Toronto and we accidentally stayed in a crack house – so we’re pretty happy to get to Austin, even if our gig last night was on at the same time as REM’s…”

Of the Irish acts here, Delorentos are the only SXSW veterans, having made their debut here last year. “We’re still new kids on the block,” Kieran insists, “because

State

we’ve learned from last year. We used to say, ‘oh, there’s an A&R man coming’ and fuck around with the set but we don’t do that anymore, we just play the music we enjoy. And it works.”

Such a determined attitude is an inherent part of the Delorentos mindset and it’s winning them fans, not only in America, but around Europe; a speedy return to Italy beckons in the near future.

“We’ve got a bit of a following there,” Kieran says. “It’s early days, but this time when we start playing somewhere else, we’re no longer these fresh-faced boys who don’t know what they’re doing. I think audiences respond to that. We feel like we know who we are now. We’re going to be doing this in five years, even if it’s in a GAA club, where we’re handing CDs out the boot of a car. This is what we do.”

Back in Riley’s, estimable sets

by Angel Pier, The Bleedin Bleedins and Channel One are keeping the pints flowing and the visitors coming. All the same, it’s clear that nothing the locals have seen or heard yet has prepared them for the visual and sonic onslaught that is headline act, Fight Like Apes. ‘Do You Karate?’begins with Pockets bashing lumps out of the pub’s fixtures with a saucepan, which breaks almost immediately; the audience stand on chairs for a better look. By the set’s closer ‘Lend Me Your Face’, a shoeless MayKay is writhing around the floor while the band knock further lumps out of the pub. It’s beyond brilliant to behold. “They remind you just how much fun music can be,” is Angela Dorgan’s proud verdict.

“Definitely my favourite gig outside of Ireland,” says Pockets afterwards, barely concealing his glee. Considering the memorable gigs they’d played on tour with The Von Bondies in the UK and their jaunt to CMJ in New York, that’s some boast. Did they, in all their wildest imaginations, think they’d be wowing American audiences at this tender stage of their careers?

“This is going to sound really cocky, but yes,” beams MayKay. “However much we love the crowds we get in Ireland, we always knew we couldn’t make our whole career there. We’re ambitious, we need to go elsewhere, and now we’re here at SXSW. You know, we never got nervous, we never got anxious, we’re just…” “…cocky bastards!” finishes Pockets.

[

SXSW

Texas, Stadia and the Big Beat

A recent starring role in Tarintino’s Deathproof is yet another reason why Austin is viewed to be the capital of some sort of alternative culture. Let’s face it, San Francisco has too much shopping and technology for the title. Whilst that culture is in bed with just about every corporate and major giant on the planet, the positive energy from the performers and artists who both inhabit and pass through Austin is really pretty, pretty special (thanks Larry).

We only briefly try and relive Deathproof with a trip to The Texas Chilli Parlor and it’s creepy, even without stuntman Mike at the bar.

For all its reputation as a town thriving with music, many of the flea pits and dives here have undergone name or paint changes, as the venues try to establish a hierarchy over the years as to where is hip and where is not.

So you’ve got Emo’s (or to be correct, three venues which are part of Emo’s and yes, it’s punk rock), Stubbs Bar BQ, open air favourite of Willie Nelson (big field, BBQ sauce, beer), The Mohawk (scary bear in the corridor) and perhaps the most evocative venue in the world. Sixth street is packed with bars, there’s a couple of churches joining the charge this year but king of them all is still The Continental Club (think a rock and roll Twin Peaks). It’s most closely associated with Austin’s dearest adopted son Alejandro Escovedo, a slinging guitarist who plays here every Sunday post-festival and makes everyone else seem insignificant.

The festival is always known for hosting bands with wonderful names. We noticed it first with I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness and this year the noisy Joy Division guitar apocalypse of A Place To Bury Strangers (complete with Peter Hook doppelganger) and Holy Fuck (quite simply the best band here) are the ones who match their imagination with scorching sets. Local heroes, White Denim are the buzz band and the latest in a new

]

line of acts to let their Creedence influences shine through. Sometime in 2008, they’ll be lumbered with the new Kings Of Leon tag.

It’s a treat to see Daniel Lanois do ‘Where Will I Be’ with yer man (Rocco DeLuca) that Jack Bauer manages (in his capacity as tour manager, Keifer loses his cell phone every night on tour). Little Ones bring some sprightly Hawaiian guitar pop to the party. Shelby Lynne brings the slick soul covers for all old people, whilst Sea Wolf manage to master the art of songwriting and come out of the wash like the Buffalo Tom of 2008.

Indonesion band White Shoes & The Couples Company are the perfect feelgood end to the festival: all dressed in smart white, they grab a load of lounge influences into their indie shoes, and all wear grins that say, “what the fuck, we’re in Texas.” They have a guitarist whose only concession to non-bleached clothes is his black Celtic belt, a drummer who steals the stage for the happiest spot of drum rolls you’ll ever see and a gorgeous singer with all the pop moves to steal Beth Ditto’s crown from last year.

But really, how the hell is one meant to put this festival into words? Everyone here has an opinion (mostly positive), everyone here has a favourite, everyone here has a good time. As you walk down Sixth Street, you can never be sure if the melodies floating from the crammed rooms are being performed by their original owner or just borrowed for the night.

On Wednesday The Lemonheads’ It’s A Shame About Ray was being performed by its owners (who strangely sounded like The Lemonheads always should have sounded: tight, coherent and sober), REM’s ‘Drive’ was too, The Thin Lizzy cover was courtesy of Motörhead whilst a version of ‘Starsign’ by Teenage Fanclub belonged to a local bar head (heaven, maybe?). Toto, this ain’t Kansas but I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be. ~ Durell Connor.

37

State

“But you have to be really ready for this.

I feel sorry for some of the bands who end up with really short sets because of their complicated set-ups: you just cannot be anal at SXSW. You plug in your instruments and you go, you don’t worry what it sounds like, that’s your soundman’s job. And if you don’t have a soundman… (blows raspberry).”

“The sound guy in Riley’s was very good,” says MayKay. “The bands who look stupid are the ones who are playing well but keep shouting to the soundman, ‘turn up whatever instrument’ – nobody cares!

You do your job, they do theirs. We’re the least techie band in the world, so our first song was our soundcheck!”

Did they come here with any particular ambition in mind?

“It’s pretty sad to pander to what’s expected of you,” answers Pockets. “Bands come here thinking, ‘we’ve got our break, we’re gonna get signed now – let’s sign our names down!’ If you want to sign something, go to a post office and send a registered letter to yourself, otherwise play your gigs – if you get your break, you get your break.”

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SXSW

Expectations or not, Fight Like Apes’ wide-eyed wonder at being here encapsulates what all the other acts have said and felt. Are FLApes impressed by the quality of Ireland’s offering in Austin?

“Big time, but people’s expectations are different now,” Pockets says. “The dynamic has changed from the traditional singer-songwriter; two years ago, Paddy Casey would have been headlining this but now they’re putting him on at the start – not that this is about competitive billing but it is a very interesting change.”

“And now they have this new Irish punk band playing last,” MayKay grins.

Their sheer enthusiasm onstage and charming personalities off gives lie to their supposed cockiness; not for them, then, the hotel-wrecking shenanigans of many a rock band before them - Pockets’ broken pot notwithstanding.

“Well, here’s a story for you,” MayKay says. “I went to the hotel last night and asked for a kettle to make some tea, they said ‘yeah, no problem’ – they gave me a pot. I said, um, there’s no oven rings in our room, so I thought, well, street justice, I’ll rob the pot.”

“If you don’t live by street justice, you never get what you deserve,” agrees Pockets.

So you stole and broke the pot?

“That fucking told them, didn’t it?” she notes “If I go to ask them for my room key now, are they going to give me a flower pot? Don’t think so.”

The following night, Fight Like Apes are joined onstage by The Von Bondies, somewhat trumping the Breakfast performance. As MayKay says proudly, “No one comes home from SXSW dissatisfied.”

But no one is more proud at the end than Angela Dorgan; The Full Irish Breakfast may be the band’s vehicle at SXSW but it’s Angela’s baby. As the bands drift off into the afternoon to do other things, Angela’s ear-to-ear grin speaks volumes for the showcase’s success.

So, same time, same place next year, then; a new line-up and whole new set of hopes and dreams. BD Riley’s; a little corner of Austin, Texas that will be forever Ireland.

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State

Professional Development

40

MGMT

Words by Niall Byrne ~ Photography by Richard Gilligan

State

Newly-rechristened Dublin venue The Academy is getting its first serious dose of gig mayhem, with stage invaders aplenty singing along to MGMT’s last song of the night.

The bouncers are noticeably frazzled and start pulling people down from the stage. Ben Goldwasser’s synthesizer echoes a police siren, disorienting the room further, while frontman Andrew Vanwyngarden enjoys the melee around him. It’s some introduction to these shores for a band visiting Ireland for the first time, especially as the album Oracular Spectacular was only released last month.

As State sits down with songwriter/guitarist Vanwyngarden, the disbelief at their current status is palpable.”We weren’t really expecting such a big crowd but that’s kind of how it’s been in every city,” he grins.”It’s been crazy.” It’s been an odyssey characterised by luck, circumstance and shape-shifting musical interests, with Ben and Andrew seemingly magnetised towards a global audience despite their best efforts to resist and punk themselves along the way.

The duo have undergone a series of musical and performance transformations since they first began making “obnoxious electronic music” together in a Connecticut college, circa 2002.

“We started out as freshmen making music on laptops and playing shows that were obnoxious and antagonistic but also fun,” he recalls.”We started writing the catchiest electronic pop songs we could. We would do it karaoke style. That lasted even after graduation.”

The shows were characterised by the kind of antics designed to annoy, like hitting guitars on bungee cords with drumsticks housed in a PVC cage, or playing the Ghostbusters theme for an hour until everyone left the room. Understandably, they weren’t exactly talk of the town, despite cutting the ‘Time to Pretend’ EP and touring with Of Montreal. Subsequently, the band went on hiatus but somehow, luck drew them back in.

“Ben and I went our separate ways. He was living in upstate New York, I was living in Brooklyn. We weren’t making music together or talking even,” notes Andrew.”We didn’t have any plans for the band for the future. He was going to move out to California and he stopped through Brooklyn. We got an email from Columbia Records while he was there. An intern there had heard our EP, played it to an A&R woman and they wanted to talk to us about signing a record deal. It was completely out of the blue and unexpected.”

With a renewed focus and a desire to achieve their goal of “affecting people on a big scale”, they knuckled down to serious songwriting. The result was an album infused by ’70s influences, but created with modern sensibilities. At the time, the singer notes, they were listening to everything from Todd Rundgren and Bob Dylan to soundtracks from Australian psychedelic surf movies, “one called Morning of the Earth, another called Crystal Voyager”. Vanwyngarden admits he listens to little

MGMT

modern music but expresses enthusiasm for Animal Collective and Baltimore’s Beach House.

With the album written, the band went in search of the right person to take their distinct brand of retroleaning psychedelic pop to the world. A dream producer list was drawn up, including some joke names (Barack Obama, Prince), some old school ‘70s producers (Bob Ezrin, Todd Rundgren, Tony Visconti) and some appropriately recognised names. After talking with Dave Fridmann (formerly of Mercury Rev, producer of albums by The Flaming Lips, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Gemma Hayes), it became clear he was the right choice: “Dave appreciated where we where, finding ourselves on a major label and wanting to make music that’s not perfect, that has mistakes and is a little weird.”

Despite, Fridmann’s trademark sound, Vanwyngarden insists MGMT’s debut was a collaborative effort: “It’s not like he was putting his signature spacey sound on it, because we had that idea ourselves.”

However, the producer was involved in more than just making the album sound right: “He’s worked with so many bands and dealt with so many people from labels. We didn’t have a manager at the time so he really helped out our relationship with our A&R woman, helped us figure out how to deal with labels while recording. I think it’s great that he still has a desire to mess things up. He’ll take a full complete mix and run it through a shitty ’90s compressor, make it all dirty.”

Their efforts paid off. Last month, Oracular Spectacular debuted in the Irish album charts at number 5, thanks to extensive radio airplay, a major-label backed promotional campaign and a genuine interest from Irish audiences, and they’re already pencilled in for a May return.

Another outcome of all the hard work is that the theatrics of yore have been largely left behind, although they promise that that spirit is currently hibernating and will return in the coming months. That still hasn’t stopped MGMT drawing comparisons to novelty acts, which to be fair, they brought upon themselves via a playful biography taking in paganism, mysticism, psychedelia and general japery.

“I’ve heard a couple of people compare it to Flight Of The Conchords or Ween but we don’t ever go into the realm of joke song,” laughs Vanwyngarden, with slight hurt in his voice. He continues, quick to dismiss the pagan reference as nothing more than a hobby, “We don’t perform rituals or sacrifice virgins or anything! It’s more the cult/pagan imagery that I like. I like reading books about new age philosophies, conspiracy theory books.”

41

Words by Niall Byrne

Independent’s Day

For 14 years, independent promoter U:mack have been “handing out flyers in the rain”, promoting a experimental visions of Venetian Snares multitude of diverse international artists to the capital. Genres may come and go, venues may close, bands may split up but U:mack have established themselves as an authoritative Irish promoter of alternative rock, electronic and dance DJs, operating under the radar of the mainstream and showcasing challenging music, regardless of genre.

Founder Paul Timoney, with help from his friends Gib and Mo, runs the shows, which vary in size from the likes of post-hardcore heroes Fugazi in Vicar Street (2002) to the electronic

42

in The Hub (2006). Timoney insists he’s “never really done anything except promote gigs”. It’s a tribute to his hardworking, self-sustaining ethic that as an independent promoter, he is able to hire out large-scale venues like Vicar Street and Tripod and pack those rooms to capacity.

The U:mack name is now synonymous with unique, off-the-radar and respected musicians, so audiences know that even if they haven’t heard the band, they can expect a high standard.

U:mack’s seed was planted in 1994 when Timoney began helping Alan

[

U:mack: flying the flag for quality independent shows.

]

O’ Boyle and Dennis McNulty (then of Decal) run the record label Ultramack Productions, which segued into the promotion of gigs. The first gig took place in now defunct venue, The Funnel, on City Quay in Dublin, with the UK’s highly original electronic duo Plaid in 1997. Timoney was inspired by Hope Promotions, an independent collective who operated from 1987 until 1999.

U:mack were one of the first promoters to extend their remit to electronic artists, bringing over acts like Autechre, Luke Vibert, Mu-Ziq and Two Lone Swordsmen in a regular club night environment called Phunk City, also in The Funnel every Friday night.

“When we started that club, it was really important to us to do things slightly different to other clubs going on in Dublin at the time, most of whom ran nights with a strict music policy of either House music, Techno, Break Beats etc,” notes Timoney. “We tried to have a more diverse music policy. Because of this, it took us quite a long time to attract a regular audience but eventually people started to come every week, without knowing who was going to be playing, or what style of music they’d hear. One week, it would be someone quite experimental like Autechre or Richard H Kirk, and the following week it might be an Alex Patterson Dub Reggae set, or a Techno DJ like Cristian Vogel.”

Timoney was also inspired by John Loder, the recording engineer, who produced Crass, as well as the man responsible for their record label and distribution wing, Southern Records. “My favourite ten seconds of recorded music is the opening ten seconds of ‘Punk is Dead’ by Crass,” he enthuses. “His way of dealing with things was quite influential on me. He helped U:mack out a lot, by recommending us to bands as being good people to work with in Ireland. One of the bands he hooked us up with was Shellac.”

damien mcglynn

Circuit Breakers

Vicar Street Thursday May 15

BATTLES

the

LIARS

ex

LAU G HTE R LOU NG E E DE N QUAY W E DN E S DAY NOV 21 S O U N D C E L L A R , S P I N D I Z Z Y & O N L I N E AT W W W. T I C K E T S . I E / U M A C K

TICKETS €27 FROM ROAD RECORDS, CITY DISCS, SPINDIZZY & SOUND CELLAR & ONLINE AT WWW.TICKETS.IE/UMACK

WEDNESDAY 1 MAY

TICKETS €17 FROM ROAD, COMET, FREEBIRD,

U:MACK PRESENT

TEMPLE BAR MUSIC CENTRE SAT FEB 24

U

U PRESENT PRESENT

ACID S O M THELRE TEMP ING & THE MELT .O. PARAISO U.F

+ THE FREAK ACCIDENT (

FEATURING RALPH SPIGHT OF VICTIMS FAMILY

7.30 (early show)

TICKETS

€17 from Road Records, Spindizzy, City Discs, Sound Cellar, Wav Box Office 1890 200 078 01 & online at www.tickets.ie

DOORS 8PM • TICKETS €16 FROM ROAD R ECOR DS, CITY DI SCS, S O U N D C E L L A R , S P I N D I Z Z Y & O N L I N E AT W W W. T I C K E T S . I E / U M A C K

www.umack.com

U:Mack’s favourite gigs 1992 - Killdozer The Baggot Inn

)

WHELANS Saturday 29 September DOORS

www.myspace.com/acidmotherstemple

Nutshell 1998 - Autechre The Funnel

W H E L A N S W E D N E S DAY N OV 1 4 SUPPORTED BY

(FRICTIONAL)

TOIRSE ALAN & DENNIS (DECAL)

STATIC present from Detroit:

supported by

(UNDERGROUND RESISTANCE)

SUBURBAN KNIGHT ANTHONY “SHAKE” SHAKIR

www.umack.com

U:MACK

tickets £12 from road, comet, freebird, big brother and tbmc box office

plus (rephlex) saturday 22 july doors 11pm

mike dred temple bar music centre

AUTECHRe

U present static featuring

tickets €16 from road, sound cellar, city disc & online at www.tickets.ie

darren o’sullivan

V ICAR STR E E T TH U R S DAY M AY 1 5

TICKETS €15 FROM ROAD R ECOR DS, CITY DI SCS,

TEMPLE BAR MUSIC CENTRE

saturday 10 february crawdaddy doors 8pm (early gig)

U:MACK PRESENT

THE REDNECK MANIFESTO

d witch with boneyar

TICKETS €13 (£10.27) (subject to booking fee) FROM SOUND CELLAR ROAD

U present

PRESENT

TUES 18 JUNE

U

VICAR STREET

present

Fugazi

U

www.myspace.com/myspaceiswrong

1999 - Fugazi Temple Bar Music Centre

www.myspace.com/thefreakaccident

U:mack and Timoney enjoy a good working relationship with

Left, Battles live in Vicar St; Above, vital to the

the bands that visit, and many of them have returned a number of times, thanks to his hospitality: “There are artists that we’ve been working with for more than ten years, such as No Means No, Plaid, Autechre, Rob Hall and Andrew Weatherall. When I confirm concerts with a lot of the acts we’ve known for a long time, it’s as much about old friends coming to visit as it is about the actual performance. There are other artists who we haven’t known for as long who are such a pleasure to be around that it always makes me happy to hear they’ll be coming back. Bands such as Caribou, Battles, The Ex, The Melvins and Wolf Eyes would immediately spring to mind, but there’s plenty more.”

Some artists, however, have eluded Timoney’s desires to travel to Ireland and play a show - “There’s plenty of artists who I have been trying to book, but never quite managed. There are some acts I’ve been pursuing for 13 or 14 years.” Amongst those who never made it off the ‘want’ list include artists who initially confirmed but later reneged for various reasons: “The saddest of those cancellations was Ivor Cutler, who we had booked to perform in Vicar Street. Another was Rachels, who very rarely perform live.”

Despite those disappointments, there have been many highlights (see panel) over the years. However, in the time since U:mack began, some things have changed for the worse, including the lack of allages events. “When I first got involved with gigs, it was much easier for people in their early teens to get into rock venues,” he notes. “Nowadays, concerts are almost

through the years, has been friend and graphic

1999 - Warp’s 10th Birthday with Plaid, Plone, Radioactive Man & Mu-ziq Temple Bar Music Centre.

operation of U:mack’s concert promotion down designer Niall McCormack, who has designed every poster in their history.

always strictly ‘Over 18s’, which is really awful: we’re denying the experience of a rock concert to those who would probably enjoy it the most.”

In May, U:mack have lined up the mouthwatering bill of Battles and Redneck Manifesto in Vicar Street, one of their biggest shows yet. “I hope that it will be one of the best,” muses Timoney. “We’ve been very lucky to get the bands to agree to it, and to have it in such a great venue.”

This is a success story of no small proportions and it must be re-iterated that so many independent promoters flounder in small venues week-in, week-out, attended by a handful of people, so it’s all the more impressive that U:mack have not only survived the standard but excelled to compete alongside the larger promoters. Timoney’s take on it is simple: “I can’t speak for other independent promoters, but U:mack happily co-exist with the big promoters most of the time. What we do is quite different to them, but there’s a place for everyone. I read that MCD are doing a show for REO Speedwagon this summer. I really love REO Speedwagon.”

Coming soon are shows from Sebadoh (April 23), The Ex (April 24), Pissed Jeans (May 14), Caribou & Born Ruffians (May 18) Melt Banana (June 20) and the return of old familiars Plaid (June 6). Timoney is especially enthusiastic about the

2004 - U:mack’s 10th Birthday with Shellac (above), Plaid, Decal, Redneck Manifesto & the Bug Vicar Street 2006 - Rocket from the Crypt Temple Bar Music Centre 2007 - The Ex Crawdaddy Favourite DJ set 1999 - Alec Empire The Hub

forthcoming Japanese New Music Festival on April 29, which features members from Acid Mothers Temple and RUINS in a unique project: “three musicians playing seven different projects in one night. I just got a CD of it, it sounds great.”

Timoney’s enthusiasm is infectious and the future doesn’t daunt him much.

Why should it? He’s survived in the promoter game for this long, so he’s afforded a little optimism. When State enquires about the early years, Timoney replies, “I hope these are still early years for U:mack”.

43

State

[

Scary Éire

When Irish hip-hop came of age. State gets ringside for Scary Éire’s legendary Barnstormers’ residency in 1992.

]

Beats, Bodhráns and Bloody Mayhem

Words by John Joe Worrall Photography by Paul Tarpey

Smoke fills the room, sweat drips from every forehead, stray bikers wonder what’s going on and Scary Éire rule everything in their sights. Get into it or make your way back outside into the pissing rain on Capel Street. The concrete floor and indescribable sheeting used on the walls can barely be seen at the back end of Barnstormers; the regulars’ pints interrupted by this crowd of young yokes for the sixth week in a row. Meanwhile, A&R men, curious ex-punks and the rock hierarchy stand back from the crowd, taking it all in.

“And I wish, and I wish, and I wish, and I wish, I wish I was out there listening to this,” shouts RíRá at the crowd, the Scary Éire MC holding the room in the palm of his hand with ease, while DJ Mek cuts a menacing beat on decks behind, tri-colour draped down upon the tools of his trade.

“They were fuckin’ amazing gigs,” remembers Kilkenny native Captain Moonlight of Scary Éire’s infamous sixweek residency at Barnstormers, a “bloody hardcore” bikers’ bar on Capel Street, known these days as Bleu Note.

It was early 1992 and the men of Scary Éire (RíRá, Mek, DaDa Sloosh and Mr Browne) were on the cusp of something special. So went the feeling of everyone who was there anyway. Flyers were handed

44

around the city streets in the run-up to the gigs featuring a Kalashnikov-shaped logo for the band. Word of mouth was spread through Mek’s demo tapes, handed from one taken soul to another. Those who heard the band loved them. Those who loved them needed to go to Barnstormers.

“Those gigs were arranged by our manager at the time, Collie Carty,” remembers Mek. “I think he was mates with one of the owners. It was a mad biker gang joint - a pub at the front with a live venue round the back. They were all really cool people, walkin’ round with their ‘Devil’s Disciples’ jackets and bandanas and shit.”

RíRá takes up the story, “It was like playing in your own gaff with your mates around. I mean half the fuckers were on and off the stage with us. People would

stroll on, skin up, and fuck off back to the bar. It was a fuckin’ madhouse. I remember one night the ceiling being torn, and they were jumping up grabbing at it until the fuckin’ thing was literally ripped down.

“There were punks, bikers, b-boys, ska heads, fuckin’ allsorts. Those gigs were like a release for everyone in there, the band, the crowd, the bouncers. But through all the madness, nobody ever sustained an injury that hadn’t been self-inflicted. It was always positive and well meaning, and a fuckin’ great laugh. All that and the stink of stale beer.”

Many Tullamore natives, friends of Sloosh and RíRá’s, would also populate the crowd, along with Dublin’s nascent hip hop community as it was; most of whom had been drawn from around the country to find some sort of solace in the capital.

Cormac Cullinan, formerly known as Cool C in his guise as Captain Moonlight’s DJ, was also present at the Barnstormers’ nights and says that he and Moonlight were “the only ones into hip hop in Kilkenny back then”, adding that even when he moved up to Dublin, there were “about 40 people in total into it: it’s hard to explain how odd it was at the time.

“I remember one night, going into the bar in Barnstormers and getting this look

State

Stiff Little Fingers

45

State

of death and thinking ‘right, in the wrong place then’ and headed into the venue. It was that type of place, a really hard bar.”

The timing and importance of the gigs are still fresh for those who were there.

The late ‘80s and early ‘90s was an age when Public Enemy played the Trinity Ball while it was still light outside, when only a handful of the city’s clubs even played dance music, when the only exposure hip hop got on national airwaves was when Eamonn Carr would hijack Dave Fanning’s 2FM show while the latter was on holidays. Then Scary Éire “hit the nail on the head”, says Moonlight.

Along with Marxman, the Oisin Lunny led Anglo-Irish hip hop group, Scary Éire had touched a nerve. By the time of the Barnstormers gigs, Lunny’s band were heading towards the US to record their only album for Talking Loud, where they would have a video shot by

Scary Éire

for Dublin and beyond, spreading the culture in a way that you had to keep up with the beats and the lyrics. If a new slant appeared, he would work it into his sets and school the audience. At this time, he was the equal of any selector in New York or London.

“Moments like this just never happened before,” Tarpey continues.

“There was no DJ culture in Dublin, certainly nowhere else that had gigs like this on. That’s why people were so loyal, you had a few rock venues but Scary Éire hit on something and people wanted to see it.”

The Barnstormers gigs would see a loyal crowd come back week

a young Spike Jonze and be produced by DJ Premier of the influential east coast Gangstarr rap group.

“I knew Mek from a long time ago,” Lunny notes. “There was an event a mate of mine was running at McGonagles and we invited Mek along: we’d never seen anything like it. The decks, the beats, he was above everything. Then when I saw Scary Éire, I was blown away by them.

They really nailed the Irish rap crossover.

With Marxman, there were elements of it, but we were certainly broader and there were London elements as well, it was different in focus. Everything was spot on with them and when we were in the States, we thought they would be over after us six months later. I really thought they could go down huge in the States.”

Paul Tarpey, who would photograph the legendary Barnstormers gigs, adds, “Mek was always passing out tapes. He operated as a one man Irish radio show

46

on week, with assorted randomers and curious “old rock heads” as Moonlight says. RíRá himself says that the band would usually turn up during the day with their gear, set things up, “make sure it was all working as well as it could be, scribble down an indefinite set-list, and then drink until it was time to play.

“Mr Browne didn’t even do soundchecks,” he laughs. “He’d turn up on the night, have a few spliffs and a few beers and ask which mic he was using. I think he felt more in touch with the crowd by not knowing what songs we were gonna play.

We never practiced as a band, not properly.

Any attempt to practice turned into tireless drinking sessions. But it always came good on the night. We always knew exactly what part we each played, even when it was straight off the cuff.”

Before RíRá took to the stage, the crowd were baying for entertainment and assorted warm up acts, like local legends Dotsie as well as Ghost n’ Jay, would build the atmosphere before what one witness describes as a “pure fuckin’ monster” set from Scary Éire. By the end of 12 songs and with the bar owner shuffling people out the door, their sweat turning to ice in the

March breeze, all anyone could think of was the following week.

Mek takes up the story: “Every week, the crowd got bigger and louder. Record company dudes started flyin’ over to check us out: Adam Clayton would just stroll in and chill at the back, noddin’ his head. It’s kinda funny, lookin’ back at it now. Rock superstars, b-boys, crusty old rock dudes and hardcore hip hop heads all in the same room. There was somethin’ for everyone - you could walk in and hear Thin Lizzy, Schoolly D, Cutty Ranks, The Clash and Moving Hearts bein’ scratched up. Where the fuck else was that goin’ down in Dublin?”

Producer and DJ, Hazo was another disciple at the Barnstormers nights. He says it’s hard to realise just how cutting edge the whole thing was at the time, “There was a huge buzz around Dublin, which was a very different place back then, about these nights. It just sounded so mad, you had to go to them. The thing with Scary Éire was that in the ‘80s, trad groups had tried to mess around with black music and it didn’t work, whereas here you had these gigs where Mek would start playing alongside a bodhrán and a flute and it wasn’t gimmicky. It was of its time certainly. House of Pain was gimmicky: this wasn’t.”

“It was just a melting pot of so many different people,” says Hazo, “the capacity was around 200 to 250 and you’d have skinheads, republicans, and everything else, all the undercurrents of Dublin meeting in this one place and that suited the band and what they were playing: there was just a huge amount of energy”.

Recollection can often be a problem, particularly when alcohol is added into the mix, but with the biker jackets and the human can of baked beans atmosphere, events seem to crystallise for most.

Says RíRá, “I think those gigs helped structure the band. We improvised a lot, kind of found our footing, while ironically being legless. I wouldn’t say they were

State

Scary Éire

Beats International Continuing the tradition, some of the finer hip hop acts to have come from Ireland since the heady Barnstormers’ days.

Infomatics Championed online by State’s own Niall Byrne, The Infomatics’ debut album Kill or Create is an absolute beast, one of the finest things to come from this country in 2008, hip hop or otherwise. Combining

the best performance gigs: but it felt like something really fuckin’ good was going on, even if nobody was sure what it was.

You could cut the energy with a hatchet.”

L-R, Bodhrán and decks – together at last; The Tullamore crowd at Barnstormers; RíRá backstage on the Zooropa tour; The lineup (Da Da Sloosh, Mr Browne, Mek abd RíRá) and Sloosh, Mek and

Steo and Mr Dero’s vocals with live

Brown on the decks.

drums and bass, as well as two producers, along with keyboards,

infomatics by richard gilligan

Paul Fingleton of Dublin reggae favourites Firehouse Skank also braved the crush to catch a closer look the band. “Barnstormers, because of where it was and the people who would usually be there, it was kind of a step into the unknown. You were never sure what would happen: there was always some kind of tension. Potential violence is one way of putting it, maybe: some people were off their heads. But it was something you had to go to.”

Politics, of course, was an issue that was never far away from Scary Éire, be it the rumour of Mek donning a balaclava during a DJ set in Club 92, the aforementioned tri-colour and the “ooh ah up the RA blah, blah, blah vibe”, as Cormac Cullinan puts it, that came from some of the Scary audience.

Cullinan, who now jointly runs the All City label and store in Temple Bar, continues, “There was that element alright. You wouldn’t ask somebody what their politics were, put it that way. But beyond the Kalashnikov and whatever else, Scary Éire were just on-the-nose. It wasn’t intimidating on those nights, it was just the best gigs you were gonna see.”

Such moments of course often have a bittersweet taste. While the four February gigs would be repeated the following

year (along with other intermittent Barnstormers one-offs) Scary Éire would go on to album release hell with Island Records, then break up for over a decade, only to finally let loose the hulking

flutes and other assorted instrumentation, their live shows have become integral parts of their quick ascent to cult favourites.

Messiah J & The Expert By way of The Stonecutters and Creative Controle, where Messiah J and The Expert formed elements of larger collectives, the rapper/producer duo have been beating the drum for Irish hop since their debut single in September 2003, the infectious ‘First Place’. Five years, two albums, a SXSW appearance and Steve Lamacq plaudits later, they’re back in the studio recording the fol-

mammoth of a record that is The Scary Era last year. It was notable that during performances to promote the LP, RíRá would often cite “the Barnstormers crew”.

The unique MC thinks back and adds, “I’m still in contact with people who were there. To be honest, whenever Barnstormers is mentioned, people make the sign of the cross, I’m not sure if they feel blessed or cursed? It’s kind of like they don’t need to swap stories, it’s a nod of the head, or a thumbs up. I’ve seen it recently: it’s some kind of arty jazz bar now I think…

I laugh when I pass it, you can still smell the chaos.”

low up to 2006’s criminally brilliant Now This I Have to Hear.

Captain Moonlight Anyone blessed enough to have heard Agroculture Parts 1 and 2 will be eagerly awaiting the third album from Kilkenny’s Captain Moonlight.

From hurling to Bertie Ahern, by way of drugs, drink and wasted lives in some of the country’s forgotten parts, Moonlight is the guy who many feel carries on the Scary Éire legacy, though it’s an easy and somewhat lazy comparison.

47

State

Lightspeed Champion

Twoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Company Words by Joe Crosby

48

State

When Gnarls Barkley’s debut, St. Elsewhere, dropped in 2006, the listening world scarcely knew what to do with itself. A swirling meld of soul, hiphop and rock, held together with fearless beats and in-your-face tempos, Gnarls’ brand of pop avant-garde caught audiences off guard. Critics applauded its 21st-century twist on retro rhythms (or possibly the other way around), and fans bought the album in record numbers. Just ask the UK, where the ubiquitous single ‘Crazy’ topped the charts for a record-equalling (at the time) nine consecutive weeks.

The duo’s sophomore effort, The Odd Couple, is in many respects a reflection of that first spin. Musically, progressive exploration again meets historical reference. Released months before the album, the fast-paced first single, ‘Run’, like Elsewhere’s ‘Crazy’, has received familiar praise—confused as perpetually upbeat, despite its emotionally fraught lyrics. Even the album name once again offers a nod to a bygone American television show. By and large, the similarities end there, however. And that’s probably because producer Brian ‘Danger Mouse’ Burton and singer Cee-Lo Green’s relationship isn’t quite the same.

Their debut was a collaborative introduction, a handshake of sorts, that evolved sporadically over a couple of years. But this time around “we spent a full year together,” Burton says, noting that Gnarls put in more man-hours on this record, even though it was recorded during a shorter period of time. “(We) got really close and understood all about each other,” he says. “So, when the music was written, it was about me and Cee-Lo, and those issues and those things that are personal to us, both musically and lyrically. He and I got to be more personal with each other.”

Indeed, The Odd Couple exposes a more personal, if not darker, side to the duo’s music. Some of the song titles alone (‘Who’s Gonna Save My Soul’, ‘Open Book’) suggest a transition Cee-Lo describes as “natural as the setting sun, in that it does get dark at some point in the day … every day.”

The album name itself, a playful reference to their partnership, hints at the etching away of getting-to-know-you frivolity to reveal a more intimate affinity. Ostensibly, an odd couple is what they are. But the interplay between this couple, both on their records and in person, is so cohesive that it’s difficult to fathom as odd.

“People call us that all the time,” Burton says. “We’re seemingly an odd couple. We could have put a question mark after it.”

“And we are committed to each other,” Cee-Lo adds. “As much as we possibly could be committed.”

Still, Gnarls Barkley are pegged as disparate cohorts in an industry whose elements increasingly need to fit a form.

Gnarls Barkley

Broadly speaking, popular music has fallen victim to the cookiecutter syndrome. Sounds rarely deviate from an assigned genre, and artists themselves often mould a “look”, based on what they and their label feel the general public wants to see. It’s the difference between defining something for an audience and allowing an audience to define it for themselves.

For that reason, Gnarls Barkley’s popularity has been as much attributable to the ‘what is that?’ knee-jerk reaction to their alien sound as it has been to the sound itself. But if audiences feel they’ve adequately embraced the surprise of Team Gnarls’ first record, they shouldn’t get too comfortable just yet.

Cee-Lo’s songwriting and delivery on The Odd Couple explores the reaches of his vocal folds, from an early ‘60s soul canary on ‘Neighbors’ to mimicking a whiny child on ‘Whatever’. He’s virtually abandoned any straightforward hip-hop that might have been found on a few tracks from their debut.

And Burton’s musical experimentation has extended its breadth too. He’s quick to point out that this time around, much of the actual music was composed first, while the drums and tempos were incorporated later, an approach which is quickly apparent.

The Odd Couple is heavy on instrumental, at times summoning ‘60s rock to accompany Cee-Lo’s soul, with shades of The Kinks and The Beatles surfacing momentarily, before morphing into more contemporary basslines.

“We listened to a lot of stuff from that era,” Burton admits.

“Music back then wasn’t as compartmentalised. It had a lot of different elements in it. Nowadays, people don’t really do that.

They’re too afraid that it’s not going to fit into whatever formula the record label needs to sell it in. And we don’t do that.”

“So, it is reminiscent,” he adds. “Psychedelic music, in general, is just melodic experimentation. The music we make is very melodic, but it’s also us trying to do different things, including a bunch of different elements and influences.”

Cee-Lo explains further. “Maybe the sentiment is what we have in common [with that era]. The spirit and the sentiment. We want to contribute. We’re inspired by what’s been done and what hasn’t.”

You get the feeling that when he utters that last bit about inspiration, he could easily be talking about Gnarls Barkley and not an era of music with which they relate. Because, while the group’s sophomore album certainly has the Gnarls Barkley stamp of eccentricity, it isn’t the exclamatory statement that their debut was. It’s something they haven’t done: it digs and pleads. It’s more revealing, not only of their inquisitive music, but of the duo themselves.

“You never get that second chance to make a first impression,” Cee-Lo says. But The Odd Couple might just prove him wrong.

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Moby

The Bald Facts Words by Kara Manning.

It’s a raw, rain-soaked winter day in New York and as grey late afternoon light segues to darkness, an affable Moby wanders around his whitebricked Mott Street loft, helpfully flipping on table lamps and apologising for the indiscreet rumble of his stomach.

He’s been enduring an all-press, no-lunch day, apparently. It’s strangely intimate, but not unusual, for the multi-platinum selling musician – who earlier bemoaned the sinister-looking water damage spreading across his front hallway’s ceiling and wall – to invite total strangers to his NoHo flat and studio.

Especially strangers bearing notebooks and recorders, given the contentious relationship Moby is convinced exists between him and journalists, many of whom he believes “just hate my guts” and will ravage his latest release, Last Night, in reviews. “[It’s] a whole other phenomenon of being hated by people you’ve never met,” he says with an uneasy chuckle, “especially when I think of myself as being a relatively innocuous person.”

But according to the self-described alcohol-loving, dive bar fan, if anyone – Moby-dissing scribe or otherwise - were to spend a hedonistic night out on the town with him - a real Last Night as per his ebullient, disco-kissed new dance album – that sojourn below Houston Street would likely begin at his home with a half-dozen friends meeting for drinks. Moby’s flat is disarmingly modest, despite a hallway crowded with framed gold and platinum albums. His living room shares space with his spare kitchen and is furnished with a not-very-pristine white couch, on which sits a goofy Andy Warhol-inspired banana pillow, bookshelves lined with everything from Carson McCullers to Tim Powers’ novels, and a cherry Epiphone guitar is displayed on a stand.

Once leaving home, fortified with beverages, Moby and pals would then embark on a tipsy, dusk-to-dawn sojourn of lower Manhattan’s loft parties, rundown bars and clubs, wrapping in the wee hours at Max Fish or Motor City on Ludlow Street. His

preferred soundtrack would skitter across genres, from Roxy Music to explosive, piano-driven rave classics. While Moby says that he didn’t intend to make a “concept” album, the flow and conceit of Last Night came together as an unabashed paean to New York nightlife and the city’s club culture of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

“The trajectory was sort of unintentional,” explains Moby. “But I guess that I structured it with a narrative arc of a long, crazy night in New York, where it starts out innocent and naïve, gets a little more energetic, goes to some darker places and then reflective – being on a rooftop as the sun is coming up.”

It could fairly be argued that Moby’s sixth studio album, which shimmers with gleefully retro tracks like the sexy Odysseymeets-Sugarhill Gang anthem ‘I Love To Move In Here’ (featuring the legendary Grandmaster Caz of ‘Rappers Delight’ fame) and the grimy hip hop thrust of ‘Alice’, is more closely related to 1999’s nearly 10-million worldwide seller Play than Moby’s lessenthusiastically received, more rock-centric 18 (2002) or Hotel (2005). But for Moby, it was getting off the festival circuit and returning to the intimacy of the DJ booth that was the catalyst for the sultry, after-hours journey that became Last Night.

“In the nineties, I sort of stopped DJing so much and stared focusing on performing,” says Moby. “It got to the point that [by 2004] we had three tour buses, three big trucks, this huge stage setup and there were seven musicians on stage, if not more. It really got out of hand. And I was going out on these long tours and became this weird road warrior. I stopped enjoying it – playing the same set every night, living on a tour bus and waking up in parking lots. It stopped being fun. DJing was the exact opposite.

DJing means you show up, the music is different every night, you can see the people you’re playing for and when it’s done, you get

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“I was going out on these long tours and became this weird road warrior. I stopped enjoying it – playing the same set every night, living on a tour bus and waking up in parking lots”

in a taxi and go home.”

Moby says that the 14 tracks on Last Night are “dance music, not club music” and while songs like the propulsive, Giorgio Moroder-inspired ‘I’m In Love’ or the glittering house of ‘Disco Lies’ are ripe for remix meddling (Zurich’s Dub Spencer and Trance Hill have taken on ‘Disco Lies’, while Dutch drum and bass trio Noisia did a remix of ‘Alice’ that Moby is particularly cheery about), Last Night is more a contemplative back-to-mine disk than a banging club record.

In line with the unpredictable, nocturnal wanderings that shaped the project, Moby rounded up eccentric denizens of New York nightlife as collaborators. He encountered Algerian singer Nabeelah, featured on ‘Hyenas’, during an otherwise depressing karaoke night at Cipriani’s in Soho, when she belted out a James Brown tune. Singer Sylvia Gordon of the jazz-meets-funk techno outfit Kudu, the house band for one of Moby’s favourite hangouts, Nublu, on the Lower East Side (“I love DJing there, it’s tiny and dangerously crowded”), was recruited to lay down vocals for what would become the languidly apocalyptic, bleary-eyed title track.

“She came over and I think she’d been up for two days,” recalls Moby. “She was kind of out of it. I played her the instrumental and she liked it, she’d just written lyrics on the subway. We went into the studio and in one take she sang those lyrics and I thought it was perfect. Of course she wanted to come back and redo it and we re-did it, but it was never as good as that first take – the spontaneity of it, the hesitancy, that weird state when you’re not drunk, but you’re not hung-over. She was in that odd purgatory between the two.”

Moby is in an odd place himself, nearly a decade after the

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release of Play, straddling both the nostalgia of the ecstatic rave and electronica scene in the ‘90s and the genre’s energetic resurgence thanks to bands like Hot Chip, Justice, Daft Punk and Simian Mobile Disco. While the 42-year old musician, who frequently laments being a middle-aged geezer, might not be touring as anything but a DJ, as he did at Austin’s SXSW in March – “no more parking lots” is his 2008 mantra – he is also re-energised by the renewed vigour of contemporary dance music.

“That was also an inspiration behind the record,” he says.

“What’s been really exciting is seeing a lot of kids, who in another time would have been picking up guitars and starting rock bands, who suddenly get software on their laptop and decide they’re going to make dance music. And I find that quite inspiring.”

Unfortunately, Moby carries a different kind of hot chip on his shoulder when it comes to the press. In February he jokingly – maybe - offered “cash/drugs/hookers” on his website journal to critics who could be bribed to give Last Night a good review.

“Some journalists have this perception that I’m a rigid, didactic idealogue, kind of intolerant and joyless,” Moby says, maybe a bit too brightly. “If I am any of those things, that would be really depressing, because I aspire to be the exact opposite.”

But where would that widespread misperception come from?

“When I stared to make records, I was more militant in my beliefs,” he acquiesces. “I was a militant vegan, a rigid Christian and a militant environmentalist. As time has passed, I’ve just relaxed a lot. Militancy tends to annoy people. I realised that if you want to make the world a better place, annoying people is not a good place to start.”

He shakes his head and smiles, maybe a little sadly. “But I’d much rather be misunderstood and allowed to make records rather than understood and not able to make records.”

The Greatest…

Just when you thought you had it all

...Little Film Festival in Texas

Hosted at the same time as the interactive part of SXSW, the film festival crosses topics with music a number of times. Musical highlights included Joy Division, a documentary on the extraordinary Manchester band and the perfect companion to Anton Corbijn’s Control, with contributions from almost all the contemporaries that you would wish for.

Daniel Lanois’ extraordinary career couldn’t possibly be captured in a documentary, so instead Adam Samuels and Adam Vollick take us behind the scenes for the recording of his new album Here Is What Is for a movie of the same name. Shot mostly in grainy B&W, it’s a journey into the heart of Lanois recording process. Despite the presence of various collaborators, it doesn’t feel like an attempt to cash in on Lanois’s heaving CV (the brand new U2 footage in Morocco almost seems like an interruption), instead concentrating on his soulful original music, where it becomes obvious how much he has brought to the likes of Emmylou Harris’s Wrecking Ball, Robbie Robertson’s solo debut, Dylan’s Oh Mercy and most of U2’s better moments. Brian Eno provides the comedy.

Lee Scratch Perry’s career is barely captured in The Upsetter. The narrative here is scattered and psychedelic (much

as one imagines Lee’s inner workings are) and the movie is laden with a deep scene of paranoia and threats of violence. A vague and often confusing tale of a fascinating character, it’s crowned by a random but brilliantly witty encounter between Perry and a tourist in a souvenir shop.

…Science Fiction Writer Coming into the life of many a young fella through his BBC TV show Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World, little did State know of this science fiction writer ‘til we noted his recent passing in Sri Lanka, aged 90.

Once nailing the idea that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, he wrote of futures that became a bit more science and a bit less fiction. During the Second World War, he wrote a paper pretty accurately describing (and arguably inventing) geo-stationary satellites, whose by-product now sits in

the GPS Sat-Nav which taxi-drivers always have on but never use. His short story, The Senitel, was rejected at first but only ended up being the basis for possibly the greatest sci-fi movie ever, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Thanks to Clarke’s musings, NASA (and presumably Bruce Willis and Aerosmith) now scan the skies for earth-bound asteroids under his title ‘Spaceguard’ while other predictions; ‘Space Elevator’, cryogenics and brain backup have many believers, despite not being match-fit ideas just yet. On his 90th birthday, he left a message for the world which, if you can strike up Also Sprach Zarathustra, is as epic as the life behind it. Daaannn, “If I have given you delight by aught that I have done...”, daaaaaaaannnn, “…let me lie quiet in that night…,” DAAAAAAAANNNN, “…which shall be yours anon.” DAAANAAAAA boom boom, boom boom…”

...Grime/Dubstep Fanzine Although grime and dubstep started as London-centric scenes, gathering fragmented titbits on such genres can be as daunting as reading Ulysses.

A few websites offer columns and interviews but for State’s money, the best source for info in print is Woofah, a fanzine dedicated to grime, dubstep, dancehall and reggae.

Offering a cohesive look at major players, with interviews, features and reviews, Woofah is a lovingly-created and educative magazine, aiming to spread knowledge of these fragmented and much-maligned genres. With a host of contributors from across the world, including writers and photographers from London, Sweden, Canada, the US and Ireland (Droid from Dublin record label The Fear), Woofah is an operation after State’s heart. Available now from woofahmag.com with a limited number of copies available from All City Records, City Discs and Spindizzy in Dublin.

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trek tanzania

In aid of Irish charity Fighting Blindness

28th June – 7th July 2008 For more information please visit our website: www.trek.ie or text ‘TANZANIA’ and your contact details to: 087 9060219 54

T. + 353 1 7093050

Reg Charity No: CHY6784 Reg Charity No: C

Blog Standard The tracks and artists being noticed online this month

by Niall Byrne

vinyl collector Matt Vinyl’s recent hip-hop podcast featuring the local talents of Captain Moonlight, Scary Éire siding up to The Pointer Sister’s classic ‘Pinball Number Count’ and the Banana Splits theme tune. Ah...brings us back.. http://mattvinyl.blogspot.com/2008/02/lost-irish-hip-hop-podcast.html

Hot Chip Cover Snoop Snoop Dogg’s ‘Sexual Seduction’ caused a mini-stir late last year when the superb ’80s inspired video popped up online. So what happens when nerd-heavy dancefloor fillers Hot Chip cover the song? Exactly what it sounds like: uncomfortable nerdy white boy funk that raises a smile. The cover version was originally recorded for an XFM session in London.

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http://www.thefader.com/articles/2008/3/18/audio-hot-chip-sensual-

Indie Folk Songs Remixed Purists can run to the hills because nothing is safe from remixing these days, including dearly beloved indie-folk music.

With that in mind, Tambourine Dream, from 2 Brooklyn DJs, Cousin Cole and Pocketknife, is a restrained oddity. Starting from scratch with songs from Feist (above), Joanna Newsom, Iron & Wine, Beirut, Nico, Panda Bear, Springsteen, Neil Young and more, the duo have created subtle danceable reworkings of the originals for the indie boys and girls who are too apprehensive to rub sweat on a dancefloor.

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seduction-snoop-dogg-cover

blog of the month Awesome Tapes from Africa http://awesometapesfromafrica.blogspot.com/ Continuing the cassette theme from last month, Awesome Tapes from Africa offers tapes which Brian Shimkovitz collected while living and travelling in West Africa.

http://touchexplode.com/?p=1060

Kevin Shields Video Interview Shields made a rare appearance recently for this strange 30minute video interview on VBS.TV, Vice Magazine’s online video channel offshoot. Slighty eccentric musician Ian Svenonius talks to Kevin about what the new and still forthcoming My Bloody Valentine album will sound like (Hint: it’ll sound like the old stuff), how he makes the MBV signature sound, growing up in Ireland, why he thinks “carbon neutrality” is a scam and how The Ramones inspired him. Choice quote: “I don’t know about revolution anymore...”

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http://www.vbs.tv/shows.php?show=1091

Joe Gibbs Tribute Mix A short 22 minute tribute to legendary Jamaican producer Joe Gibbs, who sadly passed away in late February. In 1967, Gibbs began recording reggae / rocksteady artists in the back of his TV repair shop with a two-track tape machine and grew from there.

Artists like The Pioneers, Culture, Trinity, The Ethiopians, Prince Mohammed and Barrington Levy all passed through his studio, earning chart success in the process. If you like what you hear, seek out the Soul Jazz Records compilation Joe Gibbs Productions : Roots, Culture, DJs And the Birth of Dancehall.

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http://www.theheatwave.co.uk/blog/item/joe-gibbs-tribute/

Matt Vinyl’s Hip-Hop Podcast In honour of this issue’s look back at Scary Éire’s 1992 Barnstormers residency, have a listen to Dublin music blogger and

4

When Brian Shimkovitz arrived in Ghana on the back of a student grant in 2002, he began to wonder why highlife music was no longer as popular on the continent and set about finding as many fine examples of a largely forgotten genre left behind by the arrival of computer software and rap music. The result is a blog-based document of rarelyheard African highlife and beyond, most of which never left the continent or even the countries in which they were recorded.

All sorts of styles are covered, from the Ethiopian funk of Tilahun Gessesse and Walias Band to the Burkina Faso trad of Ouedraogo Issaka or the mid-90s Ghanaian “warped Prince protegé from Africa by way of 1986 Chicago” Ata Kak and his bizarro synth-rap love songs. These tapes have juju in spades.

C

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Giveamanakick

Kicking Against The Pricks Words by Jennifer Gannon ~ Photography by Liam Sweeney.

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It’s tough to find comfort in chaos. Who wants to cuddle up to their stereo of an evening with The Boredoms’ sonic bad breath rattling ‘round your brain-box? Where the listener’s love affair usually begins is the live arena, where bands and audience can collide through a wall of feedback. Where the squall of white noise becomes tangible and patterns and shapes emerge.

Where addictions can be formed.

Limerick noise-merchants Giveamanakick know all too well the difficulties of attempting to create records that on one hand capture the power and force of their live shows but also produce something lasting and enduring. On their third album Welcome To The Cusp, they seem to have perfected this balancing act.

“The way we see it is our first album was madness, the second is what we wanted to sound like but this new one is who we are,” explains Stephen Ryan, guitars and vocals. “We know exactly what we sound like now. It’s taken us three albums but we’ve got there.

There’s a lot of different things going on throughout the new album and we’re really happy with it.”

This new album sees the band stepping up their game after 2005’s critically acclaimed We Are The Way Forward. The duo (Steve and drummer extraordinarie Keith Lawlor) have become more experienced and more focused on introducing GAMAK to a wider audience. Even the album artwork, which features drummer Keith doing his best Karate Kid crane moves on a suited and booted prostrate Stephen, is stunning.

“We are really excited about the thoughts of people seeing it,” laughs Stephen. “It was done by M&E Design, who we approached after we saw the work they did on the Jape and Redneck Manifesto albums so we’re dead impressed with the results.”

With all this change around, it’s reassuring to know that GAMAK have not ditched their trademark frantic style for a more commercial set-up. You are not going to find a razorblade cheekboned, be-fringed lady bass player joining the duo any time soon. Rather, they’ve grown more comfortable in the studio and have developed more confidence in themselves as a band. This new self-assurance is evident on the heroic ‘Horses For Courses’, which the band had been reluctant to commit to record until the time was right.

“It’s our six minute opus that didn’t make it on to our first or second album,” jokes the frontman. “We felt that we finally had the balls to record it!”

With wry lyrics about the bloated, smug nature of the Irish music scene, sung over pounding beats, chugging guitar and peppered with infectious keyboard doodles, it’s the album’s lynchpin, displaying not only their ability to spit out barbed, witty couplets but also their willingness to experiment musically.

The album is riddled with arresting hooks and blips, hiccups, clangs and time-changes to keep even the most distracted listener amused. Opener ‘Spring Break’ is reminiscent of Queens Of The

Giveamanakick

Stone Age’s lighter moments, albeit in a skuzzed-up disjointed way, while in general, Welcome To The Cusp sees GAMAK incorporating their broader influences(from Springsteen to Dinosaur Jr.) and embracing their subconscious melodic elements.

“In our minds, we’ve always been a pop band anyway,” notes Stephen. “When we’re playing at an excessively high volume in our practice space, we always say this one is the ‘pop’ song, this one has the little hook and then when we actually record them, it’s like ‘woah, okay so that’s what they really sound like’.”

The band’s melodically skewed, awkward idea of “pop” works well in a climate where the mangled trashmash of Battles is adored by both Pitchfork devotees and dadrockers alike. Could Welcome To The Cusp be GAMAK’s time to head over-ground?

“You do think, how the hell did a band like Battles get really popular?” wonders Stephen. “People would generally think they’re weird! But between me and Keith, we’d just be deadly happy if as many people as possible knew we existed: that’s our ultimate aim.

They can make up their minds whether they like us or not but as long as they can’t avoid knowing we exist, that’s grand.”

One way in which GAMAK cement themselves in the public consciousness is through their anarchic live performances, as anyone who witnessed their Sunday Mass-time slot at the 2006 Electric Picnic will testify. A show that Stephen refers to as a “kerfuffle”, they filled the stage with friends dressed in creepy rubber masks, engaging the audience with literal ear-bashing (asking them to pat their heads whilst cupping their ears) “That was nuts,” grins Stephen. “We had all our friends on stage with the masks and it was just a great experience for us. We were blown away by the reaction: loads of people left their tents early to come out to ‘worship’.”

The band seized the opportunity to try something unique, to utilise the stage to its full capacity, something that is not expected from a hard-edged gritty guitar band but it’s all part of the GAMAK aural and visual assault.

Welcome To The Cusp continues this innovation, with the assurance that although the band have developed and advanced sonically, their live shows will not reduce them to noodling, monitor-facing humourless nerd-boys.

“I don’t want complacency,” stresses Stephen. “At the same time, we want it to be fun. If we started taking ourselves too seriously, that would be the end of us.”

But are they worried that this bold leap forward displayed on Welcome To The Cusp might attract a legion of po-faced Math rock musos to their shows?

“Not at all!” Stephen laughs, “Sure you wouldn’t have much time to stroke your chin at our gigs.”

Welcome To The Cusp is released on Monkey Heart Recordings on April 18.

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MUSE

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UFO spotters. Insect phobias. Poker with Clooney.

Going to War on NestlĂŠ. A short history of everything.

Words by John Walshe

The journey from playing to one man and his dog in rural Devon to selling out Wembley Stadium may appear an impossible dream for most, but for Muse, the transition seems next 59

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more organic and natural.

After all, music this big wasn’t supposed to be housed in thousand-seater venues.

Two sell-out shows in Wembley last year were the highlight of a mammoth world tour which saw the three-piece of Matt Bellamy (vocals, guitar), Dominic Howard (drums) and Chris Wolstenholme (bass) play everywhere from Kuala Lumpur to Oxegen. But why release their third live DVD, HAARP, (following 2001’s Hullaballoo and 2004’s Glastonbury headliner)?

“Because it’s Wembley Stadium,” laughs Dom. “There was no way we were going to go into that venue and not film it. It was our biggest gig to date and it was such an overwhelming experience and an honour to have the privilege to play at the venue, that we felt we had to film it and get as much footage as we can. It’s something that’s going to be with us for the rest of our lives.”

Initially, they only planned to document it for their own use but months after the gigs, they started to look at the footage and realised it was worthy of a wider audience. They still, however, have the grace and modesty to feel uncomfortable watching themselves on film. “You do cringe a bit every now and then, get a bit embarrassed and self-conscious,” admits Dom. “But after seeing it, we thought it was great. It had a good vibe and it seemed to capture the electricity that was in the venue those two nights.”

Of the three band members, only Chris is a big football fan, so playing there must have been really special for him. When he returned to the venue, months later, to see England play Switzerland, Dom asked him how it felt going back inside the massive arena. “He said, ‘It’s still fucking massive’,” laughs the drummer. “I still can’t believe we sold it out. It seems like a venue you never get used to, no matter how many times you go there.”

The two-night sojourn at Wembley was their biggest homecoming ever, but this tour, in support of the multi-million selling Black Holes & Revelations, took them further than ever before, from dodgy Indonesian bars to being attacked by beetles in Japan, which the sticksmith describes as the most disgusting experience he’s ever had during a gig.

“I was literally covered in beetles that big [makes a sizable hole between his index finger and thumb],” Dom recalls, horrified at the memory. “Fuji Rock is a festival in a forest in the mountains, so once a year, this huge production comes in with loads of flashing lights and all the insects are like, ‘what the fuck’s going on here?’ so they just flock onto the stage. This is Japanese forest insect life, and they were all over the stage, crawling down my pants, up my shirt, and I can’t fucking stand insects.

“I had so many insects on my back that I was freaking out, reaching around to try to get them off and I totally pulled my shoulder out of its socket, ‘cos I wanted to get it out so bad,” he continues. “I fucked my shoulder up by stressing about this beetle.

I couldn’t play the next song: I could barely hold my drumstick.”

Eventually, however, after a protracted gap, the band were able to continue.

Being covered in insects of unusual size wasn’t the only bizarre experience the band had on the road. There were reports that they witnessed a UFO in Tucson, Arizona.

“On my own, I’ve seen all sorts of things but I’d never describe them, ‘cos it just sounds like madness,” frontman Matt Bellamy laughs. “The only time it’s worth talking about is when

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everyone sees it. This time, all the band saw it, as well as a couple of our crew guys and our tour manager. Not only that, but we were in separate locations. They were at the venue and we were at the hotel, which are a few miles apart.”

So what was it?

“We saw what at first looked like a silver ball, which was moving quite fast, then stopping, before moving on to another place,” explains Matt. “This was in broad daylight. We were arguing about what it was. Someone else thought it might be a weather balloon but then another silver sphere appeared and they both started moving in a way that, to be moving so fast, they would have had to be really close but from what we could see, they were really far away. I don’t know whether it was aliens or not: I don’t think so. But it was definitely an unidentified object to us all.”

After dealing with UFOs and enormous beetles on the 18month world tour, which took them “around the world a few times”, surely, the return to normal domesticity after such a long period away must prove difficult? Not so, according to bassist Chris.

“I’ve got three kids and wife, and I spend so much time away, so it’s nice to slot back into daddy mode,” he laughs.

Dom certainly finds it tougher: “I’m still adjusting and it’s been a couple of months. The tour was 19 months in total, with no break longer than three weeks, so it was really full-on. It’s kind of weird to suddenly stop moving and just sit down on the couch at home, looking at the wall, wondering what to do now. There’s always bits of trivial domestics that you need to deal with, whether it’s dealing with relationships or sorting out communication with people you haven’t spoke to in a long time.

Or just fiddling around, trying to live, just doing basics. It’s a weird experience to suddenly stop moving and not feel like you’ve a gig to play or something really important to do.

“There were a few days when I was sitting there and accidentally some daytime TV came on and you start to feel like you’re skiving off school, pretending to be sick when you’re not.”

It must be weird to do ordinary stuff, like going to Tesco for the shopping?

“It’s almost like it’s a big deal,” Dom laughs. “It’s like, ‘Oh fuck, I’ve got to go to the supermarket. How does that work?’ You almost end up calling your tour manager and hanging up when you realise what the hell is going on.”

These days, when he’s not touring the world, Matt resides in Northern Italy, where he can count George Clooney as one of his neighbours. So does he pop around to borrow a cup of sugar of an evening?

“Not yet, but I’m working on it,” he grins. “I’m going to try to get a poker game with George. I’m good at poker and I know that he plays so I’m going to try to take him on.”

Perhaps one of the reasons Muse find it difficult to adjust to domesticity when they come off the road is because the trio have garnered quite a reputation for wild partying on tour, certainly in their early days. State wondered if that still goes or if they’ve calmed with age?

“That kind of thing goes on,” Dom smirks. “I guess it seemed wilder back then, ‘cos we were young and everything was new. We were just starting to get known and have a fanbase of some kind

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Muse

“If people just knew how much power we really had, we could change anything. Like the Iraq war, for example. A million people protesting is not really enough but maybe five million people, with a few bricks being thrown at Parliament, that probably would change things.”

all around the world. But it was on a small scale, so it was easy to socialise without feeling funny about it. You could socialise in a very relaxed way, it seemed, back in those days. We’d do a gig, walk off stage and go straight to the bar. It was much more casual, and I think that in turn lent itself to what seemed like real wild days. Things change slightly when you get older and bigger.

“But it always seems the same for us,” he grins. “Normally, when you release an album, you start the whole thing very focused, trying to keep yourself clean and off anything that’s bad for you. By the end of a tour, you’re generally quite tired but you don’t realise you are. That’s when things start to get loose: you start partying more, probably drinking too much and going out.

That’s how it felt on the last part of this tour. There was a bit of excessive behaviour happening all around the world. You start to feel like that is something you need to do to feel like it’s all fun or feel like you’re not tired, to keep you going for the next few weeks.

You end up on a weird snowball of getting a bit wasted or pushing the boat out a lot, and trying to find different areas of fun. But y’know, you can do whatever you want, in some ways,” he laughs.

“You can feel very free when you’re on the road to find whatever you’d like to do.”

Seeing as Chris is the only family man in the band, is he more sensible on the road?

“I dunno, probably. But I think everyone has their nonsensible moments on tour,” he admits. “You’ve got to, now and again.”

18-month world tours, number one albums, playing to 150,000 people at Wembley Stadium, it’s been a long road from their early gigs in and around Devon.

“Sometimes, those gigs were great,” Dom recalls. “When

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you felt like you had a few people who actually liked your music, they could be really good. Eventually, we got to the point where we could get 200 people to turn up to a gig, which was about five years after we started, and that felt really great, ‘cos you really feel like things are happening.”

It’s been well documented that their first gig as Muse was a school battle of the bands, where they played a pure punk set, smashed their instruments on stage and promptly won. Was that where it all went right?

“We all played in cover bands before Muse and we used to trash the gear back in those days, in kind of Nirvana style,” laughs Dom. “That battle of the bands was full of funk bands, who were tight and clean, and we were loose, shabby and shit. We only had six songs and we played all of ‘em, so at the end we said ‘bollocks to this’, played some punk song and smashed up the stage. And then we won.”

Surely for a fledgling outfit, destroying their gear was kind of expensive?

“Yeah, but a lot of it was the school’s so we didn’t care,” the drummer grins. “Trash the school drum kit? That’s fine.”

Dom recalls the band’s first gig in London, when they rented a coach and brought all their mates from Devon up to the capital.

“We went around college, selling tickets for two quid to come up for the coach. We lost loads of money and basically ended up paying for our mates to come up to London. But the gig went really well and the guy re-booked us,” he remembers. “We went back months later without all our mates from college, and there was actually one man and a dog there. That can make you feel quite despondent.”

The despondency didn’t last that long, however, as soon Muse were garnering some serious press and radio attention, most notably from BBC DJ Steve Lamacq.

They recorded their earliest work at the Sawmills Studio in Cornwall, as studio owner Denis Smith was a big fan of their material “so he let us use the studio for free,” remembers Matt.

“During that time, we made a couple of EPs, including songs from the first album like ‘Muscle Museum’ and ‘Unintended’. Denis liked it so much that put up a few hundred quid to print up a bunch of CDs, which we started selling at our gigs, splitting the money half-and-half.”

When they sold a few hundred CDs in one week, Muse suddenly found themselves in NME’s indie chart. “Steve Lamacq saw that, played it on the radio, and all the other CDs sold out really quickly,” Matt notes.

The band were subsequently invited by a couple of record companies to play In The City in Manchester, where Maverick, the new independent label co-owned by Madonna, took an interest.

“We were working in day jobs at that point,” explains Matt.

“I was a painter and decorator and Dom was packing Spice Girls t-shirts. So we weren’t in any way making a living from music. The next thing, we got a call and we were flown first class to the States and were brought around in these limos: the whole bullshit that took place in New York and LA. We spent a couple of weeks out there, basically being schmoozed by record companies.”

Muse promptly signed a deal for America with Maverick, started recording their debut album, and for the first time began to attract interest from European labels. The band then signed distribution deals with a number of different record companies throughout Europe, which Matt feels was instrumental in their

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subsequent success.

“It was a bit chaotic,” the frontman admits, “but what was good was that we felt more known outside England than at home.

When we went to France, the first couple of gigs we did there were to a few thousand people. At the time, that was massive, because we were still playing the toilet circuit in England. We became really good friends with the people [at the labels]. Every country we went to, we’d be met by someone who wasn’t part of some corporation – they genuinely chose to work with us.”

In their early years, Muse suffered a number of unfair Radiohead comparisons, but as the albums mounted, they certainly developed their own sound. State wondered if Matt downloaded In Rainbows.

“Dom sent it to me,” he admits. “It’s alright but I haven’t listened to all of it.”

As Muse established their own sound and voice, each album became more grandiose. Here, State takes on the role of court cross-examiner. The charge is that they are singlehandedly responsible for making prog rock trendy again. How do they plead?

“Not guilty,” laughs Chris. “I can understand why people say prog rock, because I think we’ve always been experimental in what we do. It’s never been straight ahead rock. But prog rock is such a broad term: it covers so much.”

Matt, having finally stopped laughing, is more circumspect, admitting to a fear of putting his eggs in one basket, stylistically.

“I’m not sure why that is,” he admits. “I think it’s just part of my character or part of the band’s character.” While he acknowledges that some of their songs could be described as prog, others “like ‘Time Is Running Out’ or ‘Starlight’ are not really prog at all”.

“For as long as I can remember, I don’t really listen to CDs in their entirety: I just listen to songs that I like,” Matt confesses.

“The digital world means you can take what songs you like off an album. I think that’s helped a band like us, who have a pluralistic style. I think that certain people who like poppy stuff will download a few songs and they will become a fan of the band based on that. Whereas, I think other people see us as a much more progressive band and will probably just listen to the songs that are more experimental, like ‘Take A Bow’ or ‘Butterflies And Hurricanes’.

“I’ve always made an effort to have multiple styles, so I think you can say we’re a progressive band, and we are a pop-rock band and maybe in other places, we’re something else. It’s difficult to tell which of those is the one that caused us to be known: I think it’s bits of every one.”

The canvas they paint on has certainly got bigger with each album, to the point where they have the proggy ‘Knights Of Cydonia’ and the 21st Century disco stomp of ‘Supermassive Black Hole’ on the same album. Normal wisdom would dictate that you can’t do that. Why is it different for Muse?

“Maybe not so much for our first album, but I think the second album is the first time that we looked outside the world of rock in terms of influences for music,” ponders Chris. “Since then, there have been so many influences within the music that we’ve almost got away with it. When people hear that kind of difference in tracks within one album, it doesn’t come as such a shock any more. With Origin Of Symmetry, we have songs like

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‘Plug In Baby’, and then there’s something like ‘Megalomania’, which is drastically different. I think as long as you do that early on, and don’t pigeonhole yourself from the start, you can do what you want. The way we are as musicians, we wouldn’t be happy if we were just playing rock all the time, or just doing one particular type of thing.”

Aside from their refusal to be pigeonholed musically, what continues to set Muse apart is the subject matter of the lyrics. As each album has been released, they (particularly Matt) have gone on the record saying they want the next one to be more optimistic, but then they arrive with enough postmodern misery for a George Orwell compendium. It seems that Matt, as the lyricist, is fascinated/obsessed with science, science fiction and conspiracy theories.

“It’s difficult to work out what caused that to happen,” he avows, “but I think anyone who’s involved in the media or the arts, in communicating things to a wider audience in any way, naturally thinks about the impact the thing they’re creating is having. That’s something I think about.

“I think the first album was a very cathartic, personal album.

The second one was a bit of a transition away from that. For the third and fourth album, I tended to be aware of what people might think and that maybe I want to say something that might mean something to them: not just something about me. So, I started to become more interested in that possibility, that I might say something. Then, you start questioning what is your opinion on things politically, I suppose. I think a little bit of politics has crept into the albums, not a lot, but a little bit.”

Their third album, Absolution, was recorded when the second Iraq War was becoming prime time television. As a response, Muse seemed to embrace their political edge more than ever before.

Some of the songs are very fucking angry.

“If you’re asking where that comes from, I did an A Level in Media and I think that got me interested in the amount of power the media has,” muses Matt. “Later in life, you learn to what extent the media is controlled and used by other parties, for other reasons. As soon as anyone becomes aware of that kind of thing, you start to see how the general public tend to sometimes get moved around or manipulated and turned into certain things that are simply for the benefit of some corporation or some government, which is making the media do something that’s for their gain.

“I think a lot of people go through this, but from my point of view, when I first went through or realised that, the first thing you feel is anger and a little bit of frustration. You also feel a sense of optimism that maybe it can be changed. A combination of those things is reflected in the songs. What I’m trying to avoid, which is starting to creep in now, is cynicism,” he laughs. “I think that’s where we all end up, unfortunately.

“I think young people, from their teenage years through to their late twenties, go through those first three emotions. But I think when you start getting into your later years, you start to become cynical and you start to think that it doesn’t matter who’s in the government: it’s always going to be crap. Well, not that it’s always going to be crap, but we’re all going to be used like pawns.”

He describes it as the “top-down and the down-up relationship”: the notion that countries’ governments (the ‘top’)

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will introduce concepts, ideas and laws that are for positive change. “But it doesn’t really happen until the mainstream public want it to happen,” argues Matt. “That’s when change really happens, when the bottom goes up. But the problem is that the bottom doesn’t realise how much power it actually has, that nothing changes unless the bottom wants it to change. I think the media has created such a control that the ‘top’, in some ways, is able to actually control what’s happening.”

According to Matt, “Songs like ‘Invincible’ explore the more optimistic side, in that if people just knew how much power we really had, we could change anything. Like the Iraq war, for example. A million people protesting is not really enough but maybe five million people, with a few bricks being thrown at Parliament, that probably would change things. I think the optimistic side is coming through, I suppose, through the idea that if people could see what’s happening without being led all the time, then change would be easy to take place.”

State wonders if there’s ever come a time when the other two band members take Matt aside over his lyrical themes?

“I think lyrics are such a personal thing,” Chris opines. “If anyone’s got the guts to (a) write lyrics and (b) get up on stage and sing ‘em, then it’s got to be something personal and it’s got to be something that’s close to your heart. I don’t think it’s anyone’s right to tell someone what they should be singing about. I’m not saying I necessarily agree with absolutely everything that he sings about – I’m not saying I necessarily disagree with them either, ‘cos it’s just opinions and ideas, suggestions sometimes. I don’t think Matt’s trying to preach about what people should think: it’s just a suggestion that maybe you shouldn’t take everything at face value.

“For a long time, maybe up to six, seven, eight years ago, a lot of people were quite happy to go along with everyday life and think, there’s the prime minister, there’s the queen, there’s the president, and they’re all looking after us. Everything’s brilliant and we’re all fine. Then all of a sudden, stuff happened, and no-one thinks like that any more. Everyone thinks, ‘bunch of cunts’. Noone trusts anybody anymore. I think a lot of people think about conspiracies, things that are out of our control or things that are going on that we don’t know about. I think that’s just something that Matt has read about that he’s felt close to or has touched him in a certain way and that’s what he’s singing about. That’s fine.”

So are people starting to think they can change things, maybe with the forthcoming US elections, for example?

“Maybe, but I think it’s going to take a long time,” Chris muses. “Everyone says that just one voice can make a difference and that’s true. I think over the next 10 or 20 years, maybe we can start to make a difference, but I guess there are a lot of world events that have happened in the last eight years, which isn’t a lot of time, and there are still people who are willing to go along with everything and believe that everything is OK. Until 80 percent of the population turn around and say, ‘we’re being fucked over here’, then it’s going to be difficult. But I think over the course of time, people will make a difference. I hope so.”

It’s all very well writing songs about empowerment of the proletariat, even catchy ones, but if you’re then going to sell your soul to the highest bidder, you could be in for a pile of welldeserved criticism. Muse, however, wear their heart on their sleeve when it comes to commerciality. 2003 saw the band successfully

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Muse

Front Of House [

Dundalk-born Marc Carolan, Muse’s front-of-house live sound engineer, on working with one of the biggest bands in the world.

]

When did you start working with Muse?

In 2001, during Origin of Symmetry. I was mixing JJ72 at the time, who supported Muse on a European tour. Muse liked what they heard and offered me the job.

How did you feel about working with the band?

Muse are a fantastic band to work with. Not only are they, as individuals, hugely talented musicians, but as a combined unit, they develop a massive sound. Add to that their unique vision of what concerts should be, their consistency at pulling off incredible shows day in, day out across a two-year tour: then I’d have to say I’m very proud to work with them.

How does the Muse live experience compare to some of the other bands you’ve worked with, like The Cure?

The Cure was a real blast to mix. I’d grown up listening (and dancing badly at teenage discos) to their music, so it was very cool to work with them. Their shows can span up to four hours, though, so it did require an amount of prolonged concentration.

Muse are known for their epic live shows: what does this mean for you?

Mix an epic sound for an epic live show! Because of the reputation of the band’s live show, you have to be on your game every single night.

The band have a reputation for partying hard on the road. Is this deserved?

I can only speak from the crew’s point of view on this one! In the earlier days, when I first started working with them, there may have been an element of partying. These days, the shows are too big to fuck about.

They also tend to smash up their gear on occasion. Does this make your life hell?

No, but it did make the backline crew’s life a little more, shall we say, interesting, what with the one off nature of a lot of the gear. You can’t exactly walk into a shop and buy one of Matthew’s guitars. They don’t tend to do that as much anymore. However, when they do, they’re peerless in their dedication to the task.

Working with Muse has taken you all over the world. What are the strangest places you’ve played?

Hmmm, there’s a couple. A football stadium in Taipei, Taiwan, which was right under the landing zone for the airport next door. Mexico City during an earthquake. Jakarta, which was just plain mental. And Wembley Stadium, just for the ‘fuckin hell!!, how did this happen?’ factor.

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“By the end of a tour, you’re generally quite tired but you don’t realise you are. That’s when things start to get loose: you start partying more, probably drinking too much and going out. That’s how it felt on the last part of this tour. There was a bit of excessive behaviour happening all around the world.”

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sue Nestlé, who used their cover of Nina Simone’s ‘Feeling Good’ on an advert for Nescafé without the band’s permission.

One of the main reasons why Muse were so incensed was due to Nestlé’s allegedly dubious reputation when it came the promotion of powdered milk to new mothers in the third world.

Chris, in particular, was totally against the global super-company using their music: “It was close to my heart because I had a newborn baby at the time.”

Muse subsequently donated the compensation money to Oxfam. “Oxfam are one of the associations that were fighting against Nestlé, so we felt that was appropriate,” states Chris.

The band have also donated songs to various charity projects, most recently the Energy Action Coalition (a youthdriven movement for clean energy in North America) and the Eden Project, whose aim is to build an eco-friendly sustainability building in Cornwall.

“You have to be careful with the whole charity thing because I think a lot of people abuse it for their own good,” warns Chris.

“We’ve never blurted out about what we support and what we don’t. If you do charity, you should not do it for the sake of making your band massive: it’s never been about that. There are things that we’ve all got close to our own hearts, things that we’d like to do and things that we contribute to, but it’s not something we should shout about.”

So what’s next for Muse? Well, they’ve a few massive gigs pencilled in this summer, including a date at Marlay Park on August 13. “It doesn’t feel like we’ve been to Ireland anywhere near enough,” notes Chris. “Usually, with each album we just play one festival and one gig, and it’s a shame. I really like Dublin as a city: I’ve had many good times here. And I think Ireland is somewhere we should play more often.”

Before that, however, the trio are going back into the studio to work on their fifth album. Rumours abound that the follow-up to Black Holes And Revelations is going to be a fully electronic opus, a classically-driven collection and a full-on prog fest. According to Matt, it’ll probably be a combination of all three.

“Now that I feel much more comfortable with being honest that we are actually quite pluralistic, I think the next album will have a lot of variation on it, in the same way the last album did.

The variations will be different ones, though,” he states. “There will be one or two songs which may be much more electronic than anything we’ve done before. There’ll probably be a couple of things that explore the area we opened up with ‘Supermassive Black Hole’ and maybe push them out a bit further. But at the same time, there’s other things which are gonna be probably more pure in the classical realm.

“Whether or not those things can exist on the same album or not, we don’t know yet,” he concludes, “but based on what’s happened in the past, we’ve always surprised ourselves how people seem to like the idea that we’re putting quite different things on the same album. So I think, based on that, we’ll probably take that idea further. You might have a very pure classical piano piece with orchestration, followed by a more dance/disco track, followed by a more hard rock track. I can say that I think we’re going to keep working on these different areas and keep pushing them further into more extremes.”

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[

Dublin-based Future Kings Of Spain were special guests on Muse’s 2004 European tour. Frontman Joey Wilson talks about life on the road with Muse.

]

“We did two nights with them in the Olympia, and after that, Dom, the drummer, went into their agent himself and asked for us to be added to the tour. It was nice to hear that it wasn’t just an agent: it came from the band themselves. It was great that someone in a band as big as Muse would go to the trouble of picking a band to tour with them.

That’s a sign of how hands-on they are and how genuine they are.

“The smallest venue we played in was 7,000 capacity. People in Europe seem to go to see the support bands: I’d say every gig was 90% full when we played, which was great. It was strange for us playing as Future Kings Of Spain in a bullring in Madrid, with ten thousand people there. It was at the time of the Madrid bombings so we weren’t allowed to put up our backdrop, but we were more worried about going up to San Sebastian, to the Basque country, called Future Kings Of Spain. But when they found out we were Irish, it was all cool.

“While I liked some of their songs, I wasn’t such a massive Muse fan before we toured with them, but it just makes so much sense in a live context. They’re incredible musicians. The amount of production that goes into their shows, apart from physically playing guitar or hitting the drums, is amazing. They’re more concerned about the spectacle than making money from their shows. That’s the standard they set for themselves. That was really inspiring for us. We realised that, in whatever small way, we had to put a lot more into our shows, like bringing a lighting engineer to all of our shows.”

And what about their reputation for living it large on the road?

“Honestly, they were on something of a health kick on that tour.

They had overdone it. We were planning to go to some club in Madrid but they were too exhausted after the show, so we ended up just playing poker. They’re big poker buffs. The last night in Italy, we had a bit of a blow-out, but other than that, we kept up the partying for them. We drank their share. But the Muse lads are super-sound. I remember playing a bit of football with Chris, the bass player, and all the crew, in the gigantic car parks before the gigs.”

Muse play Marlay Park, Dublin on August 13 and tickets go on sale Friday May 11.

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Holidays By Mistake Fake being a local around the world

Buenos Aires

[

Futbol fanatics, the widest street in the world and fine dining. State tangoes in Argentina’s capital.

The first thing State felt was the warmth: a flash of heat across our face. And no, it wasn’t the sunshine. influences all vying for supremacy, you Turning around slowly, we got the full view of the man urinating on us, cackling with spiteful laughter from the comfort of his seat five rows above. State suddenly realised the fatal error we’d made.

Trying (unsuccessfully) to fob ourselves off as a true football fan in Buenos Aires had clearly backfired. Sitting in the River Plate supporters seats wearing the opposition’s jersey (the most hated rival, Boca Juniors), was not something the highly passionate Buenos Aireans would ever condone, even if you were a silly tourist who didn’t know the difference, or in State’s case, a greedy one wanting a better view at the warring football rivals in the flesh.

Scrambling out of the seats, just missing the eggs that were being flung at us, we vowed to never deviate from the plan again: and that was to be in the Argentine capital for a good time, not a pissy one.

Look Around Buenos Aires is impossibly grand. With its European cultural and architectural

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will be surrounded by towering crumbling facades, quaint cobble-stoned streets and hugely spacious parks slammed into the middle of the city.

With 13 million people, Buenos Aires is definitely a big place but navigating your way around is easy, with the underground system, and the fact that the streets are arranged in a New York grid style means it would be hard for even the most spacially challenged amongst us to get lost.

The main attractions in BA are in four distinct precincts: La Boca, the colourful neighbourhood where national hero Diego Maradona spent the early years of his fledging football career; Recoleta, the famous upmarket suburb with antiquated European- style crumbling facades where Argentina’s national goddess Eva Peron lived and died; San Telmo, the ornate barrio (neighbourhood) where you can’t help but fall in love with the country’s national pastime, tango; and Palermo, the hip epicentre of all that is quirky and trendy, from shopping to live music, fantastic outdoor cafes and wonderful Argentine cuisine.

]

First things first. Step out onto Avenue 9 de Julio, the main boulevard in Buenos Aires, and take in the fact that you’re standing in the widest street in the world.

Head for La Boca to take in a real taste of South America. Caminito in the centre has provided inspiration for poets and artists over the decades and it’s just a 10-minute bus ride on the number 68 from the city centre.

Get organised so you don’t miss a futbol game, preferably between River Plate and Boca Juniors (Maradona’s team).

Don’t bring cameras, money or flaunt anything you value. Hooliganism is rampant and muggings are commonplace.

Just remember not to rub the locals up the wrong way and sit in the proper seats.

Sitting on the fence will not be tolerated by either side: you have been warned!

For a break from the hustle and bustle, head to Puerto de Frutos in El Tigre, a 30-minute train ride away through neighbourhoods and coastal areas, an uncommon journey even for those who live in the capital. At Puerto de Frutos, rent out a canoe on the lake and laze the day away downstream, stopping off in quayside bars and restaurants as you fancy.

Back in the city, nip in to Cafe Tortoni, on the huge Avenida de Mayo. Established in 1858, it’s the oldest cafe in Argentina that’s still standing. With its dark woodlined walls, marble floors, dim lighting and waiters dressed in black tie at eleven in the morning, it becomes a hub for live jazz and tango and should not to be missed.

Shopping in BA is ridiculously cheap so make sure to visit the Galerias Pacifico, which, as well as 200 shops, includes the Centro Cultural Borges (set up in memory of the famous Argentinian writer Jorges Luis Borges), Julio Bocca’s ballet school, an elegant dining area including tea rooms and its centre piece, the 450 square metre dome adorned with spectacular murals.

To see how the other half live, stroll down to upper-crust Recoleta for a lazy evening. Bring a picnic of cheeses and red wines from the nearby Recoleta market (on Sundays), bask in the sunshine and doze off to the sound of impromptu recitals by local classical quartets or groups sitting around

Making time Get in the mood or simply be an armchair traveller

to El Diamante in Palermo and sit on the rooftop terrace of this converted house for a mix of four courses and wine that costs about €15.

mlenny (opposite page); james kelleher (this page)

with guitars and tambourines, jamming the afternoon away.

Eva Peron, national heroine and wife of 1940s president Juan Peron, is buried in the nearby Cementerio de la Recoleta, which is worth taking a visit to see where generations of Argentina’s elite rest in splendour.

Cruise over to San Telmo on a Sunday evening and catch a glimpse of tango at its best, with dancers casually performing outside cafe bars from late afternoon into the night.

Eat Buenos Aires is a food lover’s paradise.

Fine dining here is not just a luxury but an absolute necessity. Argentina is famous for its steaks and no better place than the capital to try out a parrilla (barbeque restaurant) and devour some of South America’s most succulent cutlets: so cheap you’ll be be ordering seconds just because it would be rude not to.

Caballeriza on Calle Dardo Rocha is popular with the locals for two reasons.

There are no bookings allowed, so first come first served (Argentinians dine usually late at night and sometimes for up to five hours), and secondly because of its famous steaks and delicious red wines. Try their signature dishes of bife de chorizo (sirlion), morcilla (blood sausage) and chinchulines (tripe) slathered with either chimichurri (parsley, garlic, olive oil and lemon) or salsa criolla ( tomatoes and onion) in a €15 set menu.

For delicious seafood, head to Oviedo in Recoleta, with truly Spanish cuisine. A three course prix fixe with wine will set you back about €20.

For a chic tapas experience, drop in

Drink It’s all about the wine here and tipples are cheap. It will cost you just €9 for a good bottle of Famiglia Bianchi Cabernet Sauvignon at Caballeriza.

Listen There is a huge underground Tango scene in the capital, with clubs operating under the radar from milonga (dance halls), the best in run-down warehouses in dodgy parts of the city. One of the most popular at weekends is La Virula, where you can also eat, sip wine and watch as the new age raunchy tango dancers show you how it’s really done.

Party Party State doesn’t generally indulge in celeb spotting, but when you’re in a hip city on the other side of the world... we won’t judge: Diego Maradona, can be seen at weekends hanging out at Sunset, the upmarket Latin salsa club he owns. For those who want to party until the sun comes up, there’s Opera Bay. Set on the Puerto Madero river and known for its architecture (which resembles Sydney Opera House), this place is usually spinning electric music on at least one dancefloor, along with Hip-Hop, R&B, 80’s and rock in other rooms.

Mid-week, head to Museum in San Telmo, a hip bar full of the hippest Buenos Aireans and designed by none other than Gustav Eiffel, creator of the famous eyesore in Paris.

There is so much to see and do in Buenos Aires, you may get flummoxed by it all, so we recommend you do a few things and do them well.

Argentina’s most famous writer Jorge Luis Borges, who lived for years in Switzerland, said he returned home to his country every night in his dreams. It’s easy to see why.

Get this album Los Fabulosos Cadillac’s Greatest Hits.

This alternative Latin rock band are most famous for their 1998 Grammy award single ‘Matador’.

Watch this music video Charly Garcia, the original ‘Asesiname’ shot in Buenos Aires.

Download this single Carlos Gardel’s ‘Mi Buenos Aires querido’ A true classic. Gardel popularised the tango as music and dance and his music is regarded as something of an institution in Argentina.

Rent this film The Official Story, directed by Luis Puenzo.

Read this book Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig Also great on film directed by Hector Babenco Drink this Mate A traditional Argentinian drink, mate is an infusion of dried leaves and twigs, which is sipped through a metal or cane straw called a bombilla. Argentinians don’t leave home without carrying around flasks of this stuff.

Eat this Dulce de leche.

Love it or hate it, it’s everywhere. The sweet paste is another national obsession, used to fill cakes and pancakes, spread over toasted bread for breakfast or as an ice cream flavour.

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We Are Scientists

Lab Cats Words by Saoirse Patterson Photography by James Goulden

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Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, applause, applause, applause, action… and with those words, the music kicks into life, the band start to strum along, the cameras whirr and whizz around the studio and the TV magic begins to happen.

In the bowels of RTE studios, telly folk are gearing up for Tubridy Tonight by fastidiously rehearsing the live show’s closing number, We Are Scientists’ current single, ‘After Hours’. After the fourth take, a fellow hack leans over to State and observes, “Wouldn’t you get so bored being in a band, having to do this stuff all day?”

The run up to the release of the Brooklyn duo’s new album, Brain Thrust Mastery, has certainly been gruelling. They’ve spent just over a month on the publicity circuit in the UK, and a European tour is imminent.

After getting an hour’s kip the night before and arising at 5am, singer Keith Murray says he’s looking forward to starting the shows “to get some proper sleep! We’re already wiped out. We’ve been in the UK for five weeks doing press, with two days off. And on one of those days, I did some peripheral press. I’ve had seven hours sleep in four nights. I feel great!”

Quick-witted and imaginative, Keith and the other half of WAS, bassist Chris Cain, embrace our interview by providing answers tipped in acid – while always earnest, the likelihood that their tales are considerably embellished is almost certain.

When asked why long time drummer Michael Tapper left the band last October, Keith replies: “He left because he’s afraid of big cats. He just had a crippling fear of tigers, lions, pumas, them all.”

Chris deadpans: “It became obvious that we were at a stage in our careers where we were going to start to work with a lot of big cats.”

While there may not be packs of furry felines on the horizon, there will be plenty of fat cat music execs in the duo’s future, as the brilliance of Brain… has the potential to catapult them into indie’s major leagues. Its ambition, emotion and depth provide shades of the finer elements of Interpol, Arcade Fire and The Romantics. These songs should set arenas on fire – without veering near stadium rock territory.

Largely recorded in 2007 before Tapper’s departure, the gently paced Brain… is a mammoth leap forward from the frantic post-punk of their 2005 major label debut, With Love And Squalor.

Keith explains: “We started to think our first record was too fast, so we began playing the songs a lot slower and we thought they sounded better. But our fans were like, ‘Why are you playing the songs so much slower? Come on jerk, pick up the pace’. So this time, we made it slower so that when we play it faster live, they’ll all love it.”

We Are Scientists

As well as the change in pace, WAS broadened their soundscape of instrumentation. There are glimmers of new wave stardust on the next single, ‘Chick Lit’ and the record’s highlight, ‘Lethal Enforcer’, while album closer ‘That’s What Counts’ even features twinkling saxophones.

According to Keith, they finally unleashed long held influences; “I think we just let ourselves move beyond three instruments. We were a three-piece and we mostly performed as a live band, so it worked that way. I think if we had been as free with the arrangements on the first record, there would have been a lot more songs like that on it.”

The duo will be introducing Brain… to Irish audiences when they hit Dublin, Belfast, Galway and Derry this month [April], along with touring partners, Adam Aaronson (drums) and Max Hart (keyboards). Chris even has his eye on borrowing Arctic Monkeys sticksman, Matt Helders.

“We supported the Monkeys on their American tour and Matt got on stage with us a couple of times,” he explains. “We’ll be hoping to ‘bump’ into him during festival season – we’ve got T in the Park and Oxegen confirmed, so watch out.”

Alas, WAS won’t be repeating their infamous Brain Thrust Mastery seminars from last year’s UK tour on their upcoming dates. Before each night’s show, Keith and Chris gave lectures to fans on how to improve their lives.

Chris claims the idea behind the seminars was that “if we are living life up here, and other people are living life here, we want to bring them up.”

Touring means the bassist must leave behind his wife Elizabeth and two-year-old son, Dashel, in New York. With Keith’s bassist girlfriend of three years, Christian, along for the ride, it’s clear that the ‘nerd-pop’ duo have little interest in rock‘n’roll excess.

Keith was nominated for the sexiest vegetarian in the world title last year, and Chris says they both love to write plays on tour; “We have a collected works already essentially done. It’s our next career, after the music thing,” he deadpans.

While their public persona is built on being funny, geeky extroverts, out of the interview confines, they’re content to retreat into the bosom of their tour family. Over dinner before their TV performance, while Adam and Max regale the table with anecdotes, a near-silent Chris sips his “awesome” Guinness, while Keith picks at ravioli and catches up with his girlfriend.

As State exits, the group of friends are still enjoying the sanctuary of dinner together. A whoop of delight goes up as it’s discovered there’s enough time for a final round, before RTE beckons and the machine cranks into action once more.

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0XFO #SBEZ

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Free downloads and exclusive content at owenbrady.com 72

Input 75

State reviews & previews

albums The Raconteurs’ new album arrives with little time for fans or critics to prepare their cases for the defence: the definitive word on Jack White and Brendan Benson’s other band. Plus, the agit-pop of Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly, the return of The Breeders and the reinvention of REM and the career suicide of Richard Swift.

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digital Polyrhythmic acoustic folk from Africa, The Charlatans new album for free, Henry Stone’s Hidden Treasures and the State podcast number two.

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dvd From fertiliser to fallout: surviving a nuclear holocaust in smalltown Kansas may not seem the blueprint for quality drama, but can CBS’ Jericho hold its own or is there really no place like Home Box Office?

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tv Maia Dunphy on the return to our screens of distinctly non-politically correct television shows and the devices that somehow make it all acceptable, alongside the return of Larry David and award-winning drama from the US.

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books

The eldest son of Crowded House’s Neil, Liam Finn’s debut solo album, I’ll Be Lightning is wowing audiences around the globe. First heard round these parts with his dad on their cover of The Beatles’ ‘Two Of Us (I Am Sam sountrack), Finn’s band also includes Jimmy Barnes’ daughter Eliza-Jane.

Will Self ’s The Butt follows the blackly comic misadventures of Tom Brodzinski, when a carelessly tossed cigarette end lands him in all kinds of trouble, while Tony Jessen previews the month’s best new reads.

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games Frontlines: Fuel Of War takes the world’s oil addiction to new lows, as global conflict breaks out over the last fuel resources left on the planet: a grim prospect but a great shooter. God Of War: the greatest game ever on the PS2 makes its handheld debut.

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welcome to the cusp

the new album from giveamanakick 0ut April 18th w w w. m y s p a c e . c o m / g i v e a m a n a k i c k

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Cypress ave Cork Whelans Dublin Roisin Dubh Galway Dolans Limerick

April April April April

18th 19th 24th 25th

Albums

The Raconteurs

illustration by brenb

Consolers Of The Lonely

third man records

It seems that these days, how you release a record is just as important as what you release.

There we were, minding our own business, when bam... there’s suddenly a new Raconteurs album to talk about. Not only that but it’s coming the following week and no-one will get to hear it until the release date. And it will appear on all formats at the same time (although the band themselves suggest you listen to it on vinyl). In some ways, they seem to be attempting to have their cake and eat it – making a statement about the integrity of music but using the very latest techniques to spread that word.

Once you get to hear the record, however, it becomes clear that The Raconteurs consider themselves very much part of the old school and that, for them, music has not existed either post mid-seventies or in any part of the world outside of the US. It starts with the buzz of studio chatter before a giant guitar riff cuts through proceedings, followed by the batter of drums and a thick, dirty bass. It is the title track and it sounds huge. It also sounds a good deal like AC/DC and thereby introduces the album’s overwhelming impression – that it reminds you of an awful lot of other bands and mainly classic

American rock bands at that. If that sounds like it’d be a problem for you, then you’re best looking elsewhere. If not, well then dive in...

The suggestion is that Consolers Of The Lonely has been put together in double quick time, rushed from the studio to the outside world, and while there are a few rough edges here and there, there are also enough flourishes to ensure the repeat listening experience is a worthwhile one.

‘You Don’t Understand Me’ starts off with a piano intro that could well be a fuzzed up Coldplay before crashing into a chorus that the American FM Rock radio stations will adore. ‘Old Enough’, meanwhile, is as Southern a rock tune as Lynard Skynard ever came up with, even down to the darting fiddle. It’s a motif continued on ‘The Switch And The Spur’, the trumpet-led theme from an imaginary Western.

Of course, for Jack White, this plundering of the American archives is all in a day’s work but it’s arguably the presence of Brendan Benson that ensures that The Raconteurs have emerged to stand head and shoulders above The White Stripes’ increasingly dull output. For every attempt by White to drag the band into the world of authentic folk and blues, Benson is on hand with a hook appropriated from a Cars album. On the banjo driven ‘Top Yourself’ and the brassy pop of ‘Many Shades Of Black’, each get their

respective ways but The Raconteurs are at their most interesting when the two worlds collide. The effect is a band that sound like Aerosmith in their heyday more than anything else, none more so when the pair share the vocal lead.

Having built up an impressive head of steam over its first half, Consolers Of The Lonely lets the standard drop slightly with ‘Five On The Five’ and ‘Attention’, with the second-hand riffs becoming just a touch derivative for comfort.

‘Pull This Blanket Off’ manages to restore the balance by turning down the guitars, allowing the record space for its impressive finale. ‘Rich Kid Blues’ is a terrible title but a great tune, maybe the best of the bunch, building on a funky Hammond organ into a chorus that carries just a hint of Queen, while ‘These Stones Will Shout’ is a rich acoustic number that blossoms into a Led Zepp tribute. ‘Carolina Drama’ brings matters to a stark close, White’s tale of “a junk house in South Carolina” indulging his Dylan fantasies in the extreme.

So there you have it. Despite all the ballyhoo, this is just another album by another band. But it is a hell of an album and a real, proper record with a beginning, middle and an end. And that, my friends, may just well make Consolers Of The Lonely one of the most radical things you’ll hear all year. ~ Phil Udell

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Albums The Young Knives Superabundance

transgressive

This is the third album by English geek indie rockers, whereby they find themselves having achieved critical acclaim but don’t appear happy with said success. Singer, Henry Dartnall (which, let’s face it, sounds more like a member of the English landed gentry than a rock star) redefines his previous convictions, as showcased on ‘Terra Firma’: “I took a long hard look at everything I thought/ There was a lot to see but still I wanted more’. He reaches the hopeless conclusion “What’s the point?”

The frantic ‘Up All Night’ is laudable indie rock by numbers and the lyrics reek of yet more desperation and disillusionment. By song four (‘On Counters’), poor old Henry’s contemplating suicide: “Sitting on the front seat/ Turning on the motor/ Sucking on the hosepipe/ Keep it turning over”. If a band are going to depress us, why can’t they do it with a bit more imagination, like Radiohead.

The rest of the album plods along inconsequently, with more of the same ‘la la la’ choruses and obligatory handclaps, with the exception of the darkly brooding ‘I Can Hardly See Them’, all distortion-laden guitars and pounding drum beats.

The Young Knives are, we suspect, part of the new wave of ‘English Eccentrics’ (their bassist goes by the moniker ‘House of Lords’) but they don’t pull it off with either the style or wit of contemporaries like British Sea Power.

In conclusion, their stop-start clichés are fine to shake your fringe to at the latest indie disco while posturing, but don’t really go past that. But then again, maybe that’s all you were looking for. ~ Tia Clarke

Gnarls Barkley The Odd Couple

warner music

Cee-Lo and Dangermouse’s second LP begins with the sound of a humming movie projector, suggesting widescreen delights to follow. Sadly, the pair never really peak past satisfied when they should be aiming for sublime.

Debut St. Elsewhere contained enough peaks to ignore the baggage of troughs but on The Odd Couple, the situation is more intermediary. The mood of the record is one informed by gospel – Motown soul and ‘60s pop – an archaic record produced with modern cut and paste techniques.

Second single ‘Who’s Gonna Save My Soul’ benefits from the soulful production of Dangermouse with a relaxed mid-’90s BristolEra trip-hop vibe akin to a forgotten out-take from Massive Attack’s Blue Lines. ‘Going on’ is bombastic organ-led handclap soul, while ‘Run’ is a galloping slice of horn-soaked drama, complete with a shouty kids na-na-na background chorus (”Hurry little children / Run this way / I have got a beast at bay”). ‘Open Book’ is a similar highlight,

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marrying an impressive choir and reaching strings to Cee-Lo’s inimitable voice, until he overpowers the rest of the tune.

Sandwiched in-between is the languid, forgettable blues jam of ‘Would Be Killer’ and subsequently, little amuses save for the hook in ‘Surprise’ and the twinkly flute/bass/drum combination of ‘She Knows’. Credit goes to Dangermouse’s always compelling production but ultimately, while it successfully addresses St. Elsewhere’s bletcherous lows, The Odd Couple never scales the same edifying heights. ~ Niall Byrne

Mark Geary Opium

independent records

Four years in the making, Opium is the third album from Dublin-born, New York-based Mark Geary and it’s the furthest he’s travelled from the traditional singer-songwriter suit. This is not one man and a guitar: here, Geary’s tunes are fleshed out by a full band and occasional strings, a method which suits this bunch of songs remarkably well.

Despite the darkness of the subject matter – addiction, fear, money, sex, religion, war – the playing is light and deft. Indeed, Geary’s strongest songwriting to date benefits from the relative delicacy of the musicianship. That’s not to say the production is minimalist: quite the opposite. But producer Karl Odlum has managed to coax the best out of Geary and his band without overdoing things. Lush rather than slush.

Geary is not one for grand gestures, preferring the quieter, understated approach. Thus, while there’s plenty of anger present (‘Not On Your Life’, ‘Always’, ‘The King Of Swords’), you’re not likely to hear him rocking out any time soon (although he comes close on the former). But there are some beautiful love songs, with ‘Angel’ seeping under your skin and forcing its way into your subconscious, while the heartmelting ‘Facin’ The Fall’ is a delectable duet with Ann Scott, and the glorious ‘Maid Of Gold’ is amongst his finest work to date.

Mark Geary has struggled to reproduce the warmth of his live performances on record. Until now. That said, this is not an album that’s going to grab you by the lapels on first listen but give it a chance and Opium will lull its way into your

bloodstream. And stay there. ~ John Walshe

Thrice The Alchemy Index Vols III & IV – vagrant/hassle Air/Earth Forget everything you think you know about Orange County rockers Thrice, because with their mammoth Alchemy Index project, they have very much resigned their past to, er, the past. The third and fourth volumes Air and Earth (following last year’s Fire and Water sets) further distance the maturing Californians from their self-conscious, emo history. The sheer magnitude of attempting to capture the essence of the four natural elements is to be applauded if nothing else, despite any misguided prog-rock flashbacks the concept may conjure up for folk of a certain age.

Thankfully, you’ll find no keyboard solos, wizards or giant mechanical monstrosities here.

Sure, the idea is almost a straight rip from the prog-rock rulebook but the only progression here is in how Thrice have suddenly become an interesting, worthwhile proposition.

Naturally enough, the Air songs appropriate the volatile character of its subject, from the forceful, rushing waft of ‘Daedalus’ to the light and breezy, plush folk of ‘As The Crow Flies’. Earth proves the least effective of all four volumes at evoking a sense of the element but of the songs within, there is little criticism. ‘Digging My Own Grave’ for example, is a late night, slouchy jazz-tinged musing; the kind Tom Waits specialised in years ago.

If it’s pounding slabs of confessional hardcore you’re after, you’ll be sorely disappointed and long time fans will no doubt leave them in droves.

But if those of more discerning inclinations can ditch their preconceptions, they will find much to cherish here. ~ David McLaughlin

Why? Alopecia

anticon

Listening to Alopecia is like being drawn into a dark movie theatre to witness a lone protagonist dispense profoundly personal and poignant confessions: you leave the theatre with a renewed sense of appreciation for art, and with a wonderful soundtrack ringing in your ears.

Oakland, California’s Why? have burrowed in the field of abstract hip-hop/indie-rock mash for the last five years and on their third album, they have produced a crossover record of epic proportions. Alopecia is sharp, focused, vivid and full of character; a musical black comedy. Like labelmate and collaborator Doseone (Subtle), Joni Wolf is fond of a seemingly stream-ofconsciousness flow, yet the language is tender, open and hook-laden (“If I’m sinking and laughing at something sunken in I am” - ‘Good Friday’) delivered in a whiny timbre which

Albums

[

Despite some lavish production tricks, there’s not too much creativity left in the old Dogg.

]

Snoop Dogg Ego Trippin’

doggystyle/geffen

“School is cool” exclaim the liner notes to The Doggfather’s latest exercise in aural posturing, a maxim indicative of just how safe this once incendiary performer has become. A long-time parody of himself, Snoop’s pimp persona has become so diluted by reality TV shows and appearances in Frat Pack comedies that it is difficult to attach credibility to his gangsta shtick, and one can’t escape the feeling whilst listening to Ego Trippin, his ninth album, that he is simply dusting off the clichés for one more go-round.

If the album is lyrically unconvincing, it’s rescued by Snoop’s ability to put an enormous production budget to good use in the studio. Produced

by QDT, a trio of Snoop, former Blackstreet frontman Teddy Riley and DJ Quik, the sound throughout is never less that catchy and is often downright funky. Marrying ’80s-style vocorders and Prince-like synths to the rapper’s quietly twitchy vocal style on tracks such as ‘SD is Out’ and ‘Gangsta like Me’ shakes Snoop out of his sonic comfort zone and proves his willingness to adapt to current musical trends: vital, if he’s to remain relevant to the fickle hip-hop scene.

The most astonishing two minutes arrive in the shape of ‘My Medicine’, a genuine country track dedicated to “my main man Johnny Cash, a real American gangsta”, which manages to succeed by virtue of its own absurdity.

The law of diminishing returns is, however, a factor and Snoop’s adherence to hip-hop’s ‘more is more’ philosophy sees the album clock in at a wearying 80 minutes, clogged with incidental tracks and filler material: The Dogg’s ability to edit is clearly not as refined as his wardrobe. Why is it that rappers feel compelled to fill every ounce of space available to them on a CD? ~ David O Mahony

admittedly, may annoy some listeners.

Musically, Why? have upped the ante with tight perfectly formed songs, that exceed hip-hop backing tracks and are vital to how damn good this album is: think TV on the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain. It perfectly underpins the mood, responding to Wolf’s lyrical pleas, a rich fabric of emotive guitar, bass and synths, weaving threads around the mournful narrative.

It’s a testament to Why?’s enigmatic vision that there hasn’t been such an intelligent and allquestioning album released in a long long time.

Truly a release of character. ~ Niall Byrne

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks Real Emotional Trash

domino

For a man recording his first album since turning 40, and a father of two to boot, one could be forgiven for expecting Stephen Malkmus to have morphed into some breed of mature elder statesman for the alt-rock fraternity. While Real Emotional Trash sees Malkmus and Co. dig deep into sixties and seventies guitar rock for influence, it’s hardly the work of a combo endeared to the pipe-and-slippers life just yet.

Instead, Malkmus’ trademark quirkiness

remains to the fore on his fourth solo record since Pavement’s dissolution. While 2005’s predecessor, Face The Truth, had him flirting with a more untried basement sound, this is very much a band-record, with The Jicks back on board, including new member and former Sleater Kinney skins-woman Janet Weiss.

The result is a free-flowing album, which sometimes feels like a prolonged live jam: six of the album’s 10 tracks weigh in over the fiveminute mark, proving that Malkmus has hardly got a penchant for strong self-editing, and yet, it rarely grates. The psych-rock infused ‘Hopscotch Willie’ still shows that he can write a beguiling pop tune, ‘Baltimore’ has a delicious rolling AOR sound, while the 10-minute title-track’s fine midway breakdown skewers into a weird hybrid of Television and Belle and Sebastian. Closing track, the captivating ‘Wicked Wanda’, may have a Beatles-esque feel to it, but there are no fears of a mid-life creative crisis yet chez Malkmus. ~Ciarán Ryan

Naphta Long Time Burning

the fear

If ever there was a musical genre that polarised the sonically adventurous, it’s drum ‘n’ bass. One

man’s pioneering pulsating soundtrack to intense modern urban living is another man’s awkward, claustrophobic smoke-infested hell. Angular, irregular throbbing basslines and aggressive sizzling attitude does not always make for accessible listening. This is why its down-tempo style failed to cross-over permanently into public consciousness. No matter how many midnineties style bibles gushed over LTJ Bukem’s genius or Goldie- soundtracked car ads tried to convince you otherwise, the fact was and remains that drum ‘n’ bass attracts a mostly serious, dedicated, almost cloistered audience. The parttime listener need not apply.

So how relevant is Naphta’s Long Time Burning in a world where the less detached dancehall flavoured fun of dubstep has captured and seduced the young and intense? It isn’t.

This album is neither forging new ground nor attempting to woo potential listeners. Instead, it’s firmly rooted in the sample-loaded jungle tracks of the early ‘90s. Restless beats jostle with dark echoes on tracks such as the standout ‘Soundclash 1’ and the restlessly hyper chaotic sting of ‘I Need U’. But these are brief flashes of virtuosity in a relatively mundane album, which mostly mooches through the motions on the repetitive ‘My Heart Beating’ and the deep pulsating but ultimately empty ‘Copy Rider’.

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Albums

[

Back after a five year hiatus, Tindersticks sound just as elegantly wasted as ever.

]

Tindersticks The Hungry Saw

beggar’s banquet

When bands like Tindersticks take a long break, the assumption is to fear the worst. In the five years that have passed since Waiting For The Moon, the various members have amassed six solo releases while the band themselves were left languishing. So, does the world really need another Tindersticks album? Having created such a niche for themselves, there has never been the chance of a rapid change of direction and lo, The Hungry Saw is yet another collection of elegant instrumentation, topped off by Stuart Staples’ half-spoken vocals. It is, at times, a beautiful experience.

If ever a band were born to play with an orchestral backing it was this one and the album is constantly embellished with strings, brass and rumbling percussion. There’s an authentically old-fashioned feel running through the record, recalling the unlikely spectre of classic era soul music (albeit played very slowly) as well as those more familiar influences. It shimmers, it seduces and it soothes but haven’t they always? For the result of a five year wait, The Hungry Saw feels a little underwhelming.

As Tindersticks albums go, it’s certainly one of the best but even on those terms you can’t help wondering if that is enough, if the template that the band set for themselves right from the start has simply been exhausted – perhaps why those solo projects proved so alluring to the musicians themselves. There will probably never be another band like Tindersticks, the question is whether Tindersticks themselves still want to keep that legacy alive. ~ Phil Udell

Long Time Burning is brimming with paranoid, moody minimalist reverberations that are so free from soul and warmth, it’s like a laughter-free journey into the not so distant past. ~ Jennifer Gannon

Giveamanakick Welcome To The Cusp

monkey heart recordings

Dismiss Limerick noiseniks as proto-punks at your peril. Sure, they’re loud as hell and at least half the tracks on their third album are delivered at a pace so frenetic, it’s hard to keep up, and with so much energy they could be sponsored

by Red Bull. But there’s also a skewed pop heart buried in these taut melodies, which for the first time in their recording career, vies with the ferocious musicianship for your attention.

‘Borrowed Time’ and ‘A Laugh’ are bursting at the seams with hooks so infectious they should carry a WHO warning.

It’s not as if they’ve compromised their fury, however: they’ve simply captured it properly, nowhere moreso than the pulsating powerhouse that is ‘I Dream Of Shavings’. This newfound understanding of dynamics is perfectly illustrated by ‘Brittle Bones’, one part pastoral interlude, the rest aural onslaught of Old Testament proportions.

Lyrically, GAMAK are head and shoulders above their punk peers, displaying a wit and sensitivity not generally associated with music

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this intense, like the hilarious title track or their assertion that not even Elton John can save them now (‘Giveamanakick Are Dead Meat’). Thematically, they cover everything from “Awkward fumble, the highlight of a teenage year” (‘Springbreak!’) to “the curse of a functional family” (‘The Day I Forgot My Mantra’) or musings on celebrity culture (‘Horses For Courses’).

Steve and Keith have always created a wonderful racket, but this time around they’ve married this glorious noise with stunning production that showcases both their raw musculature and innate sense of melody.

Stunningly good. ~ John Walshe

Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly Searching For The Highs And Whys

atlantic

Inspired as much by Billy Bragg as by At The Drive-In and fiercely committed to the political cause, Sam Duckworth’s position as the singer-songwriter for the emo generation left him open to brickbats from all sides. While debut Chronicles Of A Bohemian Teenager was brimming with passion and verve, his acoustic and laptop approach also left it sounding a tad repetitive. His response is to place his second record in the unexpected hands of Nitin Sawhney, who has responded with a sympathetic upping of the ante, without losing the original vision. Thus

Searching For The Highs And Whys is essentially more of the same, just with added whistles and bells.

At its epicentre, however, it still features the extraordinary Duckworth, audibly pouring his soul into every track. For one so given to high profile politicising, the record is surprisingly weighted towards the personal. As a lyricist, he is still finding his feet, however: for every deft one-liner, there is a crashing howler. He comes most unstuck when tackling the big issues, with the state of the world address that is ‘I Could Build You A Tower’ featuring the greatest faux pas, combined with the album’s only real musical low point. When he gets it right, though, as on the joyous ‘Find The Time’ and sweet-as-you-like ‘Young And Lovestruck’, the results are stunning.

And therein lies the rub. At the age of 22, Duckworth is only just beginning and we should indulge him the lows, if the highs are as good as these. Tellingly, hero Bragg makes the briefest of midway appearances to tell him, “keep singing out, keep singing loud”. Here’s hoping he’s listening. ~ Phil Udell

David Turpin The Sweet Used-To-Be

kabinet

As the bloated corpse of the Irish singersongwriter floats down the stream of popularity, leaving only its thesaurus behind, it’s time to crack a smile again and return to a musical

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Albums landscape that encompasses more than just an acoustic guitar and a pained expression.

David Turpin’s debut album may be a soloboy effort but thankfully, it is one rooted in the playfulness and creativity of the Pet Shop Boys, Final Fantasy and Patrick Wolf rather than a plastic-earnest, overwrought affair. This is a boy whose heart unashamedly beats pop.

The Sweet Used-To-Be is an album that glistens with whimsical electro-folk, as Turpin’s seductive half-whisper glides over the tinkling of keyboards and fuzzy beeps, unravelling dark tales of love and abandonment. Although minimalist and simplistic in its execution, it throws up some charming pop moments. Bursting into life on the captivating, Nico-sampling ‘Pony Tears’, complete with handclaps and finger snaps, Turpin manages to turn the dour German chanteuse’s vocals into a Jens Lekman style knees-up. The chiming, addictive late night blues of ‘Fly Away (A Poison Tree)’ is similarly impressive.

On occasion, Turpin’s can be the lightest of confections, with the overly saccharine female vocals, plucking strings and wearisome, rudimentary lyrics becoming grating: some grime and sweat are sorely needed to counterbalance the sweetness. Ultimately, this is a promising, thoughtful introduction to an intriguing musician who, given the time to delve deeper, could mature into an artist ready to explode from monochrome into Technicolor.

Crystal Castles pias

On paper, Crystal Castles could almost be described as fashionable to a fault. Hailing from Toronto and trading as a skinny jean-clad boy-girl duo, the electro outfit have many prejudices to rail against on their plate. Live appearances on Channel 4’s tiresome teen drama Skins don’t exactly help their case either.

So far, the two have been hailed as sonic pioneers who are - on stage at least - ambitious, brave and endearingly ballsy in spades. Certainly, a precursory listen to their debut album hints at a wicked sense of mischief and fun.

However, lots of witty glitches, smartarse effects and computer game noises do not a

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~ Tanya Sweeney

The Infomatics Kill Or Create

~ Jennifer Gannon

Crystal Castles

substantial album make. Strip away those obstinate samples, and Crystal Castles sound increasingly less like trendsetters and more like style followers.

‘Crimewave’ is a pin-thin, watery track, coasting on its own cleverness, while the multilayered ‘Alice Practice’ is too self-consciously fashionable for its own good (and downright annoying to boot). Many other tracks seem halfhearted and obstinate, with ‘Courtship Dating’, ‘Knights’ and ‘Vanished’ standing out as just three of Crystal Castles’ slightly more accessible offerings.

Cansei De Ser Sexy, Hot Chip or Klaxons may also weave smart samples into their electrodisco sound, but these acts possess an anthemic edge that saves their respective projects from drowning in self-indulgence. Sad to say, Crystal Castles is an album crying out for a bone fide crowd-pleaser.

Thurston Moore once famously proclaimed that “if it’s too loud, you’re too old”. Perhaps, if you’re seasoned enough to remember Crystal Castles as either an Atari game or as the refuge of She-Ra, the novelty of this album might wear off rather quickly and its abrasive, uncompromising attitude may prove a bridge too far.

q-niss records

Five years is a long time in the intimate Irish hip hop world, a span that’s seen promising duo Messiah J and the Expert blossom into scene luminaries, but the extra time spent by The Infomatics on perfecting their sound has proved a shrewd move. With their debut, Kill Or Create, released on Q-NISS (cúpla focal, innit?), they’ve earned the luxury to not always be mentioned in the same breath as MJEX. Whereas the latter delight with indie pop hooks and backpacker rhymes, The Infomatics invoke old-school vibes with tough, penetrating beats, lush electronics and well-chosen northern soul samples.

Twin highlights ‘Back To Front’ and ‘Copper Chopper,’ probably not coincidentally, are strongly reminiscent of early ’90s Bristol-Irish trip hop troupe Marxman. The lilting flute loops, recorded live by beat man/producer Boc, throw the similarity strongly into focus, as does lead single ‘Wake Up,’ a furious world-weary anthem that’s accompanied by an equally weighty video.

Despite the exceptionally hooky nature of the CD, Kill Or Create is a challenging listen, lyrically and emotionally dense. On ‘You’ll Get By,’ twin MCs Dero and Konchus Lingo tackle drugs and social deprivation in a thoughtful rather than a preachy way, while the marvelous Ann Doylesampling ‘Irish Times’ subtly examines media’s obsession with misery.

Kill Or Create may not be the record that breaks Irish rap out of its domestic bubble, but it’s yet another indication that this scene

is capable of measuring up to its overseas counterparts. ~ Dave Donnelly

79Cortinaz Hopioki

feck’d records

Any band who have a former member of The Damned as their producer start every day with a little bit of kudos, at the very least. Rat Scabies’ production on Carlow four-piece 79Cortinaz’s debut LP, however, is low on raucous and high on stagnant rhythms. The fact that lead singer ‘Gala Hutton’ sounds a little like Bobby Gillespie during the Give Out But Don’t Give Up era will be a selling point to many but oddly, those tones don’t sit well on tracks like the band’s commercial highlight of four years ago, ‘Deirdre’s Song’, where stop-start guitars actually work against them.

It’s not that this is a painful listen: there are certainly some good ideas but just not enough to keep you coming back. ‘Sea Time’, for instance, is a nice little blast of lunacy, but then there are moments like the bitter tones of ‘Nowhere to Go’ which lurch aimlessly into unbearable overindulgence.

Some songs should have been jettisoned from the start – ‘Raspberry Bon Bons’ for one - while others would benefit with being stripped down to their better elements. With this in mind, the plodding ‘Electric Hymn’ may have worked better with less attention to the overpowering bassline and affected vocals: there’s a good tune there but it’s buried under a rhythm section working too hard to be heard. Championed by some as being well crafted and radio friendly, 79Cortinaz may find a home as a singles band but all in all, whatever it is that has garnered them a loyal following will be a mystery to many. ~ John Joe Worrall

Keith Burke No One Wants To Move

keith burke

Screaming ‘summer album’ with every light, nippy tune, Keith Burke’s self-released debut album is the musical equivalent of a chick flick it’s okay to like. There’s nothing too offensive, you’ll get a few smiles and forget the whole thing ever happened about 10 minutes after it stops.

Considering this is a guy who has guested as the voice of Rafa Benitez on Today FM’s Gift Grub, you know there has to be some sense of humour behind the tracks that cover one night stands, office workers heading for pints on a Friday evening, the last bus home and people being suspicious of Northsiders.

The high points are some concise, well thought-out acoustic cuts like ‘Piazza Spagna’, ‘Love and Romans’ and ‘A Kind of Friend’, as well as lyrics such “she licked my face and kept on walking” or “did we really drink all that?” The low points are the nagging feeling that’s he’s ripped

Albums off ‘Piano Man’ on two occasions, firstly, and most obviously, on the still quite decent ‘For A Moment’ before repeating the trick once again on ‘The Last 33 Bus’.

Burke may be a street philosopher to some (especially any nine-to-five workers with a penchant for emptying their hearts on that old guitar at home), but one element that’s missing are some memorable melodies. It’s a very gentle, pleasant album, and taken one-by-one, the songs won’t make anyone turn the radio off in anger, but string the whole thing together and it becomes a bit inconsequential. ~ John Joe Worrall

Paul Hourican Let The Enemy In

hurricane

Releasing your debut album on your own label could be seen as a risky endeavour, but for Paul Hourican, the gamble has certainly paid off. Let The Enemy In could be described as the place where quirky meets commercial.

By far the lead track of the pack, ‘Alive’ reveals something exceptional within Hourican. With its

Digital

Overall, it works. Hourican is not going to reinvent the wheel with Let The Enemy In, but he may just make a few modifications along the way. ~ Elaine O’Neill

The Long Blondes Couples

rough trade

Blondie are dead, long live Blondie – they’ve married Pulp and rose again in the shape of The Long Blondes. The Sheffield five-piece may have hinted at their influences on their 2006 debut, Someone To Drive You Home, but they wear them on their sleeve on their sophomore effort.

Kate Jackson’s ethereal vocals and the driving, emotive synths on ‘Century’, along with the brooding indie-tronic ‘Round The Hairpin’, forge a new direction for the band. However, they neither match up to previous accomplishments, such as the classic ‘Giddy Stratospheres’, nor do they sit comfortably on the record, being the only two tracks to venture out of the guitar-bass-drums set-up. ‘Century’ is a particularly odd opening track, as it’s entirely different in style to the rest

~ Niall Byrne

Boubacar Diébaté The Upshot

Ah, the wonders of the interweb! While sitehopping one afternoon, State came across the joyous music of Colorado-based Senegalese Diébaté. A self-described oral historian, with a mastery of the kora and the drums, his voice is deeply emotive and much of the material is polyrhythmic acoustic folk in the vein of an African Chequerboard. By all accounts, his SXSW appearance was an unexpected highlight.

Available on iTunes

Henry Stone Henry Stone’s Hidden Treasures

liam sweeney

moody blues guitar and mellow melody, this is as close to a hot, sticky summer’s day as you can get. And just when you think you’re hot enough, Hourican pours an ice-cold beer down your throat with some high-energy riffs and unapologetically confident vocals.

Offering more than your average singer/ songwriter, ‘New York City Lights’, with its beatdriven feistiness, and the gospel choir-driven ‘Let It Go’ put Hourican on the map as he experiments with different genres.

Let The Enemy In offers a few crowd pleasers along the way, in the shape of ‘Don’t Know If I Do Know’ and the previously acclaimed David Kitt-esque ‘One Step Forward’. Catchy and commercial, both tracks are bound to be advertising wares between the Six One News and Fair City before long.

The only flaw amid the feast comes with ‘She’s Gotta Be’, as Hourican stretches his vocals to a higher register that doesn’t quite fit the song or his voice.

The Malahide native covers all bases with this debut album. Some of the tracks are undeniably safe, while others are arrogantly experimental.

Who the fuck is Henry Stone? Well, Stone, dubbed the godfather of Florida and Miami Soul, R&B, Blues, and Dance, is one of the handful of individuals who started the move into music business independence. In the early 1950s, he was one of the first to record Ray Charles. He found and recorded James Brown as early as 1955. The same year, he had his first million seller with The Charms’ ‘Hearts of Stone’. In the 1960s, Stone became the largest independent record distributor in Southeast USA, distributing for Atlantic, Warner Brothers, Motown, Stax and many more. Stone’s biggest label, TK Records, was founded in the 1970s and charted 23 gold and platinum records worldwide. He discovered KC & The Sunshine Band and countless other million-sellers. That’s who Henry Stone is. Now, enjoy a selection of his favourite songs from

1950 up to 1980, including the aforementioned artists.

Available on eMusic and Amazon MP3

The Charlatans Free album

We’re going to be seeing a lot more of this kind of thing now that a clutch of high-profile artists like Radiohead and Trent Reznor have set the benchmark (though of course, they were not the first to do so). In fairness to The Charlatans, who had this planned months ago, the album Cross My Path was downloaded 30,000 times in the first 3 days, which is a positive result, considering it’s been an eon since the band released anything of worth. Initial reports suggest it’s the best thing the band have done since Tellin’ Stories. What are you waiting for?

Find out for yourself.

Free download from www.xfm.co.uk and www. thecharlatans.net

Noble Society Live from the Frontline

Brooklyn’s Noble Society blend dancehall, reggae and hip-hop on this mixtape which ends up somewhere unique between the cracks of all these genres. Best of all, it sounds nothing like Sean Paul. Reggae singer Jah Dan leads proceedings backed by MC Delie, guitar maestro Diego Campo and drummer Deantoni Parks. It abides to classic reggae/dancehall rhythms but dips into the kind of frenetic energy Diplo is so

Super Extra Bonus Party – talking rubbish on the State Podcast

fond of appropriating. Being a mixtape, there are songs from 77 Klash, Norris Man and Rankin Scroo, yet Jah Dan’s input is far and above the highlight here.

Available from eMusic & iTunes

State Podcast State likes to talk as well as write, so that notion begat our regular series of informal roundtable discussions on the topics of the day. So far, we’ve had Ham Sandwich talking about their Meteor Awards ‘Hope for 2008’ win and Super Extra Bonus Party on their Choice Music Prize experience. Tune in to hear our team of contributors and special guests talking rubbish about rock star behaviour, trashing equipment, along with lots of other random thoughts on life, music, county rivalries and all in-between. http://www.state.ie/blog/category/podcast/

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Albums of the album.

With just 10 tracks, Couples doesn’t outstay its welcome and its relative brevity doesn’t necessarily lend itself to a better record. While Someone… boasted at least five A1 songs out of 13, nothing here matches the same calibre of songwriting.

With their second record, The Blondes expressed their wish to counterbalance criticisms of being too wordy and less focused on musicianship, and they’ve certainly defied the grumblers. Thanks in part to rockstar DJ Erol Alkan’s production, the sonic development and the band’s increased confidence in their skills is clear, with much more space in the tracks to enjoy Jackson’s witty observations with ease. The end result is that Couples is Someone…’s older, more experienced sister, but the younger sibling was a lot more fun. ~ Saoirse Patterson

The New Bloods The Secret Life

kill rock stars

The New Bloods’ debut is an odd one, enthralling and frustrating in equal measure. Their punk aesthetic presents them as a shambolic rag-tag band, but they’ve got a sweet melodic heart.

When this mix works, it works beautifully. The title track is how Electrelane might have sounded if they got drunk and began channelling their politics through their amplifiers: it’s a fine indicator of how good this album could have been.

Songs like ‘Oh, Deadly Nightshade!’ show the trio’s talent for making one idea work without complicating it, as they rally their anger around a single chord change, but it’s when they make things too messy that the album falters. Too often, it seems they’d rather pan for gold and keep playing the same plodding bassline in the hope of success, but there simply aren’t enough flashes of genius here to justify muddled efforts like ‘Tree, or ‘The Cycle Song’, where their scruffiness sounds teenage rather than authentic.

Likewise, Osa Otoe’s violin often sounds like it’s just standing in for the absent guitar: a shame, since it can make an otherwise simple song into something beautiful, as with the outstanding ‘Behind Mountains’. Only when the album ends, with the standout ‘The Sea Is Alive In Me’, do you realise that you’d forgotten you were listening to it. It’s a shame that 10 of its 23

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minutes are dull enough to be background music, because the rest of it’s so damn enjoyable. ~ Shane Culloty

Watcha Clan Diaspora Hi Fi (A Mediterranean vai la bott/piranha Caravan) Purveyors of electro dub, drum ‘n’ bass and jungle, drawn from the many cultures that exist along the Mediterranean rim, the Watcha Clan experience can be summed up in the voice of lead singer Sister K - herself a fusion of Jewish, Algerian & French cultures. With instrumentation that includes violin, oud, cello, trumpets and trombone, amongst the expected array of keyboards drums and laptops (and State is sure we heard a desert fiddle in there somewhere), the Mediterranean Caravan takes us on a whirlwind tour, moving swiftly from one style to another.

‘Goumari’ could be something that the much lauded Tinariwen would be proud to put their name to, while the gypsy knees-up of ‘Balkan Qoulou’ instantly transports the listener from the Sahara to the Carpathians. Continuing along the road much travelled, we’re also treated to French rap and even Flamenco in the mix, just to remind us where it originally came from, and that’s before we come to the Jamaican influences.

An eclectic list of guest artists contribute raps, vocals and some interesting instrumental ingredients to this album, which certainly trawls the current crop of desired world music flavours. With an overall production that sounds very reminiscent of classic era Transglobal Underground, it comes as no surprise to learn that TGU’s Tim Whelan is at the helm. ~ Phil Bergan

Soda Fountain Rag It’s Rag Time!

yesboyicecream

Soda Fountain Rag is the brain-child of Norwegian all-rounder Ragnhild Hogstad Jordahl, a graduate of the Belle & Sebastian school of songwriting.

Indie-kids used to dance to Belle & Sebastian as if they had no muscles in their arms, and it’s easy to imagine It’s Rag Time! eliciting a similar reaction.

It works in Jordahl’s favour, however, that her music is edgier than her Glaswegian forebears.

On ‘Angry Girl’ she warns “I must confess I’m more sinister than you can guess”, and true to promise, her lyrics have a playfully bitter undercurrent that offsets the album’s sugar-pop sound.

It’s Rag Time! has a couple of corking tracks on it, namely ‘Oh, Brother!’, a glorious slice of hookladen pop, and ‘Don’t Kill All The Clowns’. These two tracks contain Jordahl’s most astute melodies, proving that in her stride, she is capable of writing intelligent tunes that nestle in the memory.

Unfortunately, the remainder of the album fails to deliver moments of this quality.

On top of this, the hectic arrangements betray the fact that all the instruments have been played by the same person. The parts don’t seem to be listening to each other, choosing instead to do constant battle for attention, not unlike a classroom full of kids with their hands-up, all desperate for the teacher to pick them. This is bedroom-pop in the truest of senses – fine for casual listening but lacking the scope to venture down the stairs and out the front door. ~ Chris Russell

REM Accelerate

warner bros

There are a lot of hopes pinned on Accelerate.

REM have had a mixed run with their recent albums, and even die-hard fans would be forgiven for approaching this release with a healthy dose of scepticism. In danger of being written off as rock and roll relics, the band needed something to convince fans that they were still worth listening to. The follow-up to 2004’s Around the Sun, Accelerate has been described as a return to form. It lives up to its hype.

The band’s fourteenth studio album, Accelerate clocks in at less than 34 minutes. The songs are short and snappy -- a deliberate choice by Stipe, Buck and Mills, who cut anything they felt didn’t work. The overall result is their best material in a number of years.

Kicking off with ‘Living Well Is The Best Revenge’, the tone is set from the very beginning, and it’s clear that Stipe & Co. mean business, with a fast-paced urgency that bleeds into the brilliant ‘Mansized Wreath’. Lead single ‘Supernatural Superserious is one of the album’s highlights, catchy and clever in all the right places.

That said, it makes a refreshing change to have difficulty picking the standout tracks. Deserving of special mention, however, are ‘Hollow Man’, which builds from a standing start into a hookladen pop gem, and ‘Houston’, REM’s Hurricane Katrina-inspired track, with Stipe memorably asserting “If the storm doesn’t kill me, the government will”, while album closer, ‘I’m Gonna DJ’, is a chaotic end to a record bursting with barely controlled anger. After a few mediocre releases, REM are back on top, and not before time. ~ Ciara O’Brien

Nozzle Empires

flowermountain

Singer Dave Blomberg spent over a decade performing with folk-hearted angry rock evergreens New Model Army, and this apprenticeship is apparent throughout Empires, without being an exact replica of his former band.

Opening track ‘Empires’ had State all excited, sounding like the intro to The Who’s ‘Pinball Wizard’. However, when the song kicks, in it doesn’t carry anything like the fire of that

Albums

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No ‘elder statesmen’ tag for Gaz Coombes’ mob, who release a career-best album.

]

Supergrass Diamond Hoo Ha

parlophone

Under our noses, Supergrass have become one of the most successful British rock bands of the last decade or so. Initially perceived as one hit wonders, they’ve somehow stumbled through six albums, lots of booze, as well as a Jude Law wife-swapping scandal and come out the other side with tunes so happy their peers wouldn’t dare put them out as b-sides for fear of being branded soft. No such worries for Gaz Coombes and Co. ‘Grace’, ‘Pumping on Your Stereo’ and ‘Richard III’ (surely the most underrated three chords and the truth rock song of the ‘90s) are just some of the more cohesive moments that have kept them in the public’s affection.

You see, it’s hard to hate Supergrass in the same way it’s easy to hate Stereophonics. Even the pomposity of playing some gigs while sitting onstage on a tatty old leather couch doesn’t disguise the bang you get for your buck.

Instant guilty pleasures may be lacking here, but Diamond Hoo Ha is still an infectious listen that bears repeated plays. Two standouts come right at the beginning with the dark stomp of ‘Diamond Hoo Ha Man’ and ‘Bad Blood’, though it’s in the latter stages that an air of experimentation kicks in and there the real fun is to be had. ‘Whiskey and Green Tea’ may be a little meandering, much like the album-closer ‘Butterfly’, but they’re never boring. As styles waver from Depeche Mode synths to faux Americana, in other hands this would be awkward: instead, with fine moments like ‘Rough Knuckles’ and ‘Outside’, Supergrass manage to make their best record yet. ~ John Joe Worrall

legendary slab of musical history and settles back into an armchair strategically placed well inside their comfort zone.

The sound is comfortably dated and nonoffensive, with some great guitar riffs and verbal hooks. Songs like ‘Choices’ are impressive, but the overall tone is so MOR, you want to attach road-painting white stripe apparatus to its underbelly.

You just can’t shake the feeling they are sitting on a fence: deciding whether to burn it down and rock out or spend the afternoon giving it a nice coat of creosote. The eloquent ‘Twisted Love’ does its best to talk the band down on one side with a piano pacemaker, whilst ‘Buried Alive’ screams at them to jump down on the other and get their burn on. Decisions definitely need to be made, but for now this seems like a reasonably worthwhile practice run. ~ Martin McIver

No Kids Come Into My House

tomlab

Admitting an affection for easy listening music will earn you as many kudos as wearing a spaceman’s suit at a nudist beach, but the delightful No Kids make the sacrifice worthwhile.

This Canadian trio of non-children formed from the ashes of the disbanded P:ano and a change in name and musical direction have earned them a spot on lauded label, TomLab. Chief songwriter Nick Krgovich certainly

couldn’t be accused of playing by the rulebook – merging the more saccharine elements of pop, modern R&B, be-bop, indie and soft rock should not a good record make. But what could have been a car crash of genres is instead an upbeat, warm and crisp debut. They expose classical roots by forming multi-layered songs, where each instrument is allowed its moment to shine and it never sounds cluttered.

Citing Amerie and Mariah Carey as his main vocal influences, Krgovich makes a satisfying stab at pale-faced soul, best executed on ‘Bluster In The Air’. They even manage an indie version of barbershop quartet on ‘Four Freshmen Locked Out As The Sun Goes Down’, which also serves as the album’s most bizarre moment.

A prominent jazz influence is evident in the syncopated rhythms, and while the record’s relentlessly sanguine innocence might start to grate, it will more than serve its purpose as a relaxing collection to chill out to.

It may be over intellectualised in much the same way as Hot Chip’s self-conscious electropop, but if this is the thinking man’s crumpet, who needs page three? ~ Saoirse Patterson

his band, Michael Knight, have to leave Dublin for Berlin to seek their fortune? Do people just not get their sense of humour here? Or is it simply that their elaborate, meticulously arranged pop and highly literate lyricism are just too cleverclever for mainstream tastes here?

Whatever, this state of affairs will surely be put right with their flamboyant second album, explanatorily subtitled ‘A Somewhat Disjointed Narrative in 11 Tableaux’. A loosely connected series of sharp, witty and acutely observed musings on the highs and lows of love and life, it’s set to a musical score that is, by turns, quaintly ramshackle and astonishingly accomplished. A fine ensemble cast of singers and musicians flow in and out of Murphy’s intricate missives, each song a joyful nugget in its own peculiar right.

From the post-modern sleaze of ‘Coronation Street’ to the ironic triumph of the title track, Murphy’s theatrical wit and daring sense of melody puts him on a footing with the likes of Stephen Merritt, Neil Hannon and even Noel Coward. A truly victorious album. ~ Johnnie Craig

Michael Knight

Richard Swift as Onasis

I’m Not Entirely Clear How I yesboyicecream records Ended Up Like This

I and II

I’m not entirely clear why Richie Murphy isn’t already a huge star in his own country. Why did

secretly canadian

Anyone expecting the kind of gorgeously delicate songwriting Richard Swift exhibited on 2007’s Dressed Up For The Letdown will be disappointed,

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]

From sublime harmonies to grating garage rock, Kim Deal’s other band make a welcome return.

The Breeders Mountain Battles

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It’s all very well being as cool as Kim Deal, but admittedly, her idea of what constitutes a prolific output leaves much to be desired. It’s been a full six years since the last installment from the Breeders’ camp; the side effect of both a lucrative, exhaustive world tour with The Pixies and Deal’s decision to move home to Ohio to look after ailing parents. Where her onetime band-mate Frank Black seemingly has few problems with being industrious (although regrettably, an apparent problem with quality control), it’s fast becoming evident that Deal’s decision to pace herself musically has served her well.

In short, Mountain Battles is an understated triumph. The album is, simply put, as confident and complete a work as you will hear all year. It’s habitual for bands to start second guessing their output, not least after a six-year hiatus, but Deal and her bandmates – twin sister Kelley, drummer Jose Medeles and bassist Mando Lopez – have clearly done away with such pretensions...and Mountain Battles is all the better for it.

Deal’s trademark vocals, by turns plaintive and directional, are not dissimilar to hearing from an old friend, while those familiar bony guitar licks are also a pleasantly welcome sound. ‘German Studies’ is propped up with sugary harmonies and angular garage-rock parts, while the sublime ‘We’re Gonna Rise’ is a prime slice of dreamy, wistful balladry. Elsewhere the bluesy ‘Istanbul’ and the ambitious opener ‘Overglazed’ are further proof of Deal’s versatility and sense of adventure.

Essentially, if you are expecting a sonic sequel to 1993’s opus Last Splash, you may be left disappointed. If, however, you were charmed by the early-era introspection that helped The Breeders see off contemporaries like Veruca Salt and Throwing Muses, you will find Mountain Battles a good Deal...better. ~Tanya Sweeney

as these two mostly instrumental EPs, recorded as a side project to his solo work proper, see the multi-instrumentalist songwriter (and short film maker) going all 1950s’ rock ‘n’ roll... and not in a good way.

Sounding like it was recorded in a grimy basement rather than in Sam Phillips’ Sun Studios, this is catchy but scuzzy, infectious in every sense of the word, as Swift lets his hair down for some raw runs through 12-bar blues.

The results were recorded on four-track cassette and, quite frankly, they sound like it: rough around the edges doesn’t even come close.

While ‘The German (Something Came Up)’ and ‘Whistle At The Bottom Of A Shoe’ display a welcome immediacy, and the piano-led ‘Dutch’ is short but very sweet, the grinding attrition of ‘Greaseball Blues’ is more in keeping with the mood here: low on lyrical content, high on attitude.

At first glance, 20 tracks seems like good value for money, but the quality control is conspicuous by its absence. While these two EPs were probably great fun to make, they’re extremely difficult to listen to. Indeed, short of Swift wilfully disengaging with the fan base built up by timeless tunes like ‘Kisses For The Misses’, State can’t really see the point in releasing them

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at all. The fact that one of the tracks is called ‘Ha Ha Suckers’ suggests that the joke is very much on us. ~ John Walshe

Reader’s Wives Reader’s Wives

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“I have more ideas in a rhyming couplet than most people have on their entire album,” writes Niall James Holohan, the acerbic voice behind Dublin act Reader’s Wives. An audacious claim, perhaps, but one he justifies with lyrics like “There’s nothing more attractive than a woman with no appetite – I mean, talk about a cheap date”.

Reader’s Wives’ eponymous debut resonates with a bohemian spirit and trades heavily on Holohan’s disdainful sense of humour. There are shades of Louis XIV in his razor-tongued lyrics, whilst his trademark snarl is half The Levellers’ Mark Chadwick and half a very pissed-off Jamie Cullum.

Signature track ‘Advertising Heroin’ is a kind of anti-pop song, in that it mines the most overused of chord sequences to tell the story of smackaddled band members and how “there’s nothing glamorous about dying face down in a pool

of your own vomit”. Add the darkly infectious chorus hook into the mix and you have an unlikely anthem on your hands.

The record doesn’t properly hit its stride until halfway through, but the peak in the middle is well worth the wait. ‘The Cat’s In The Bag & The Bag’s In The River’ is coarse and gutsy, whilst ‘One, Two’ is an irresistible, choppy dance number and no doubt a big live favourite.

The slightly puzzling cod-reggae of ‘Cavan Cola’ aside, these well-crafted songs have great depth and the album has a strange, creeping charm that increases with every listen. ~ Chris Russell

Van Morrison Keep It Simple

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With his first album of all new material in two years, Van Morrison has come up with a package of songs that could potentially become modern day classics for the legendary singer. Fittingly entitled Keep It Simple, Morrison shows a lot of versatility, covering genres from country through gospel and onto blues.

With ‘Song Of Home’, Van follows one of his biggest influences, the late Ray Charles, down the country road, but adds an Irish touch to it.

Albums ‘How Can A Poor Boy’ and ‘Don’t Go To Nightclubs Anymore’ are simply raw blues, whereas ‘That’s Entrainment’ features the funky guitar sound prominent in so many of Morrison’s greatest hits.

‘The End of The Land’ is very much influenced

by American gospel, with the prominent organ sound and the choir underlining Morrison’s lead vocals. The real gem here, however, is the title track, which is reminiscent of some of the early soul classics, but it still retains that unique Van Morrison sound.

With this album, the Belfast singer proves that he truly is a master of his craft, and is still capable of writing beautiful songs with meaningful lyrics. The whole album has a very laid-back feel to it, although it’s maybe missing that one uplifting track with the high energy sound that the Belfast singer is known for.

However, Morrison’s voice sounds as good as ever and Keep It Simple is a breath of fresh air for fans who have patiently waited for new material after a series of ‘best of’ album releases. ~ Seán P. Feeny

Does It Offend You, Yeah?

You Have No Idea What You’re Getting virgin Yourself Into….

By the sound of their debut album, Reading’s Does It Offend You, Yeah? are a bunch of lively, likely lads, desperate to be all things to all indie kids. Their hearts seem to lie in the dance scene but they’re still pop-savvy enough to steer clear of areas occupied by Daft Punk, Digitalism et al.

But while it may have sounded like an innovative plan to fuse buzzing electro-punk with breezy indie-guitar pop, ironically, they seem to have had no idea what they were getting themselves into. The result, while actually rather good, sounds as technically disjointed as one of your old mix-tapes.

Is it really the same band who canned the saccharine pop of ‘Dawn Of The Dead’, the B-52’s-like thrill-ride of ‘Attack Of The 60ft Lesbian Octopus’ and the pumping, cowbell-fest of ‘We Are Rockstars’, complete with Casualtytheme intro? Apparently so, but it only truly makes sense on ‘Let’s Make Out’, a highly addictive hip-grinding funk-fest, with singer Morgan Quaintance turning on the sleaze to wicked effect.

The only other problem? It doesn’t offend in the slightest, sorry. ~ Johnnie Craig

Future Loop Foundation The Fading Room

just music

Far removed from his mid-‘90s forays into drum ‘n’ bass, Mark Barrott’s fourth outing under the Future Loop Foundation moniker is a much more downtempo excursion for the Sheffield electronica producer.

Eschewing an over-reliance on musical

sampling, The Fading Room immerses itself in analogue synths. Yet, crucial to Barrott’s thematic objective, it is an album drenched in vocal samples taken from old family field recordings from the past three decades. While the sounds of child’s play, whispers, eerie murmurings, and general chit-chat allow a soothing disposition to creep into the record, it is occasionally overused, clouding Barrott’s Boards Of Canada-like soundscapes.

Elsewhere, the childlike jangling of ‘This Is Where We Live’ recalls Four Tet or Múm, while ‘Homegrown Dynamic’ and ‘Experimentation Begins At Home’ are like a more restrained Leftfield.

Nevertheless, Barrott is stylish enough to not be a mere copycat and The Fading Room certainly has its charms. It is when he deviates from the blueprint that the outcome is more effective. ‘Everything As It Should Be’ provides a nice change of pace, with its sweeping piano and orchestrated feel. Closing track ‘The Sea And The Sky’ is awash with epic crescendos, while album standout ‘Sunshine Philosophy’ contains a scintillating drum-beat that prohibits this collection from been filed under chill-out/lounge sections.

A fine second disc of remixes, featuring everything from glitchy IDM to electro-clash workouts, aids the cause further, ensuring that Barrott’s family legacy will grace many headphones, Sunday morning comedowns, and maybe the odd dinner party or two. ~ Ciarán Ryan

Liam Finn I’ll Be Lightning

independent records

It is often debated whether personal traits of character - such as musical talent - are genetic, epigenetic or accumulated. But arguments can be ended and scientific jargon rendered obsolete upon listening to the likes of Rolan Bolan, Julian Lennon and Joe Sumner. However, as a biological product of Crowded House’s Neil Finn, Liam Finn’s I’ll Be Lightning proves him to have been a far more rewarding emission than some of his own father’s musical output.

In fact, the meaty basslines, occasional falsettos and moments of pure pop on display here do more to draw similarities with Albert Hammond Jr.’s lovely Yours To Keep album of last

year. Despite his ‘singer-songwriter’ status and the associated burden of this tag, Finn generally strives to infuse plain three-chord songs with enough weirdness (backwards guitar riffs, lyrics like “mad man with a nervous twitch, he’ll find love in a cemetery”, an autoharp) to make them listenable, and occasionally fantastic. One such instance is the immediately addictive ‘Second Chance’, wherein an electronic beat gently morphs around the song’s delightful harmonies and summertime melody into a drumkitsmashing wig-out.

Alas, such moments of invention are intermittent, and several of the mid-tempo songs heard during these 53 minutes lack development.

But Finn occupies his own musical space somewhere between Ted Leo and Elliott Smith - which at 24 years old, he still has plenty of time to explore. Despite being bearded and scruffy, he doesn’t sound like Devendra Banhart. Despite being a one-man band using a loop pedal, he doesn’t sound like Owen Pallett. And despite having a famous parent, the boy’s evidently got talent. ~ Bobby Aherne

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin Pershing

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It’s a cold, dark heart that isn’t charmed by the gentle indie pop swoon of Springfield, Missouri’s Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. However you feel about the unwieldy, gimmicky moniker, it’s hard to fault these four preppy young chaps’ musical nous.

In 2005, fevered buzz among the backpack and blog brigade, following the band’s selfreleased debut Broom, piqued the interest of sterling US independent label, Polyvinyl (Of Montreal, Architecture In Helsinki) and Pershing represents the first fruits of the partnership’s labour.

Sounding like it’s been dipped in honey and sprinkled with hundreds and thousands, Pershing is music born from a Wonder Years outlook on life. As such, it may be a little saccharine for some tastes but with a clutch of stone cold classics like the acoustic sway of ‘Dead Right’ or the parping brass and jangle of ‘Boring Fountain’, dismiss them and it’s your loss.

SSLYBY may be for folks who find The Shins a little too abrasive and they will certainly test your twee threshold on occasion, but when Pershing is on point, music doesn’t come much more lush and soothing. The opening barely-there twinkle of ‘Modern Mystery’ is a case in point, ever so carefully weaving new sounds into the mix, building masterfully to a glorious, singalong crescendo.

A by no means faultless release (a little shade is all it needs) and nowhere near essential enough to recommend to everyone, Pershing might not change your life but it sure could brighten up your day. ~ David McLaughlin

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Reissues & Compilations

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The album of the TV show enjoys some stunning performances, but the line-up’s a little too safe.

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Various Artists Later… Live With Jools Holland

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Alongside our own Other Voices, Later remains one of the finest music shows left on television, as the former Squeeze-man curates some of the greatest musicians in the world, putting them through their paces in front of a studio audience. As you’d expect, this 39-track double-CD collection can’t really fail, gathering, as it does, the great and the good of modern musical talent, from Amy Winehouse to Seasick Steve.

Highlights include The White Stripes joining Jools for a deliciously ballsy run through ‘My Doorbell’, rhythm and blues as it was meant to sound, and Damon Albarn’s funereal coda to Kano’s ‘Feel Free’. Then there’s Gnarls Barkley’s slowed-down take on uber-hit ‘Crazy’, Editors’ masterful ‘Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors’ and a surprisingly haunting take on Razorlight’s ‘America’. Richard Hawley’s (pictured) heart-quaking ‘Valentine’ is glorious, while, The Strokes’ ‘Last Night’ sounds much better than the original album recording and Kasabian’s sweeping ‘Empire’ is a revelation.

Like every compilation of this sort, there’s something for everyone and also a couple of acts whose inclusion seems pointless (in State’s case, that would be Stereophonics, Scott Matthews, James Blunt and Paulo Nutini’s overwrought warbling).

Later... works as a succinct snapshot of some of the most talked-about acts of today, and the likes of King Creosote and the ridiculously talented Hawley will hopefully gain from their inclusion. Our major gripe, however, is the lack of more underground artists who could have benefited from the exposure. As it is, the rock ‘n’ roll and nu soul track listing is a little too safe to make for required listening. ~ John Walshe

Various Artists The Wire - Five Years Of Music From The Wire

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Distilling five series’ worth of music onto a single disc is no mean feat, so it’s inevitable perhaps that you’ll end up with the chalk and cheese pairing of Michael Franti’s laid-back funk blues with digi-crunk club rapper Rod Lee back-to-back.

As a TV show, The Wire utilises music soundtrack in a unique way; a term in the industry known as diegetic where all music must come from a source within the scene – a car stereo, a boombox, a club, a pub or a shop.

There is no underlying score and everything is incidental. The result is a musical genealogy of the city of Baltimore, taking in crunk, B-More club music, bar blues bands, old-school funk and Irish drinking music, featuring acts like The Pogues, The Nighthawks, Paul Weller, Masta Ace, Steve Earle and Solomon Burke.

It’s not always as riveting as its TV show counterpart, although the addition of spoken interludes from the show help somewhat – the opening dialogue of the very first episode (“This is America, man”) raises a smile and the four different versions of the Tom Waits theme song from each season are a pleasure to fans’ ears.

The accompanying booklet goes some way to explaining the reasoning behind the songs and the musical decisions in the show, but ultimately,

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the compilation is but a scattered strand in the genetic make-up of The Wire’s multi-faceted exploration of modern America. Buy season one to five on DVD instead. ~ Niall Byrne

Muse HAARP

warner bros

It’s hard to believe now that when Muse smashed into the charts with their debut album, Showbiz, nine years ago, they were written off by some as just a Radiohead rip-off. Over the course of the three albums since, the Devon trio have developed at an alarmingly fast rate into one of the UK’s most revered bands, and their iconic status is due in no small part to their skill at

playing almost every gig as if it’s their last.

Therefore, two years since their last album, Black Holes and Revelations, it’s fitting that this live record has been unleashed to whet the world’s appetite for its follow-up, due later this year.

And what a live album it is. Recorded on the first of two sold out shows at the new Wembley Stadium in London last June, the 14 songs chosen for HAARP beautifully capture the gale force drama and explosive energy of the Muse live experience.

The programming gives a near perfect flow, with frenzied numbers such as ‘New Born’ being sandwiched by their more introverted cousins.

The intro builds the anticipation slowly with classical strings teasing the feverish crowd, before the majestic ‘Knights of Cydonia’ whips everyone up into a lather. The thundering ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ takes it up to 11, before final track ‘Take A Bow’ eases the crowd home with its crescendo of fireworks.

Although included on the DVD version, it’s a shame room wasn’t made here for ‘Plug In Baby’ and ‘Feeling Good’. In contrast,‘Unintended’, which sits out like a sore thumb, would have been a welcome sacrifice.

Minor details aside, there’s little here for those turned off by the band’s pomp and bombast – but for the converted, HAARP is simply an audio feast. ~ Saoirse Patterson

Reissues & Compilations Joe Brown The Very Best of Joe Brown

universal

Those of a certain vintage may recall a time when Joe Brown was never off the telly; game shows, chat shows, you name it, there he was, the cheeky chappie with the hedgehog hair, about whom many of us knew very little. Those of a more mature vintage would tell us that he was amongst the finest guitarists Britain produced at the dawn of rock ’n’ roll, when he would back up legends like Johnny Cash, Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent: he was even supported by The Beatles.

Now generations old and new can marvel at his talents with this 50th anniversary celebration of a man who’s never stopped touring or genrehopping. Some new recordings of old favourites, many featuring his daughter, the soul singer Sam Brown, sound a little too pristine for this collection, but it’s the original oldies that will earn your buck. Savour the Cockney charms of ‘Henry the Eighth’, the close-harmony English folk of ‘Sally Ann’, the Bert Weedon-busting guitar twang of ‘Hava Naglia’ and the pop genius of ‘A Picture Of You’ - the greatest record the young Cliff Richard never made. As adored in 2008 as he was in 1959, this is a fine testament to a man, his hair and his music. ~ Johnnie Craig

Various Many Lessons

the album shows that it can easily turn its back on the misanthropic and make a virtue out of virtue without losing its cred. With lyrics voiced in a number of languages, you’d be hard pressed to know what they’re on about unless you have a decent handle on Wolof, French, Ngoni, Moroccan and so on, although there are, of course, some English lyrics scattered here and there.

Strangely, some of the region’s major acts are missing, such as Daara J and Positive Black Soul, but it doesn’t suffer from their absence: in fact, it’s easy to make out the influences passed on by those missing. With instruments such as balafon, djembe and calabash thrown in, as well the soaring vocal dexterity of the Manding, this is far from your average hip-hop album, but that just helps make it a breath of fresh air. ~ Phil Bergan

Reef Greatest Hits 2008

Bow Wow Wow piranha

Subtitled “Hip-hop, Islam, West Africa”, Many Lessons highlights the hip-hop acts that are currently big news across West Africa, although most of its emphasis is on Dakar, the hub of the rap scene. Starting off with a simple Juju rhythm then working its way through some old style P Funk and eventually joined by some very nicely placed Afrobeat horns, the title track by Bantu from Nigeria sums up the album’s overall message, that of peace, brotherhood and tolerance.

Although it is easy to hear references to styles from the US like 50 Cent, Tupac, Mary J Blige et al,

mischievous reworking of the Strangeloves’ original. Songs like ‘Chihuahua’ and ‘Love, Peace and Harmony’ are good enough to overcome the sheer repetitiveness of their aesthetic, but that’s a rare quality here.

It’s not the characteristic tribal drumming and chanting that sounds dated - not in the year of Yeasayer and Vampire Weekend - but the singer’s habit of abandoning melody in favour of shouting slogans. In ‘Elimination Dancing’, Lwin stops singing to exhort us to “Use your muscles!”, while tedious closer ‘Prince of Darkness’ serves as a reminder that any musical formula quickly grows tiresome when repeated 15 times.

This is not the first compilation of Bow Wow Wow’s hits, begging the question of whether or not it’s justified. Presumably, with pounding rhythms and exotic group vocals swinging back into fashion, some young enthusiasts will find themselves enthralled by it all, but there’s not really enough here to keep them beyond those hallmarks. Catchy, but forgettable. ~ Shane Culloty

Love, Peace and Harmony The Best Of

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Formed in 1980 by Malcolm McClaren from bits of Adam and the Ants and a scantily-clad teenage singer, it’s initially tempting to dismiss Bow Wow Wow as all attitude and outfits. But there are plenty of good ideas here. Their particular brand of pop is a wedding of tribal beats and chants with the dominant forces of the time - sounding like Blondie one moment (‘Cowboy’) and Boy George the next. Sadly, there’s very little variation on this theme over these 15 tracks.

Perhaps the best and most representative cut here is opener ‘I Want Candy’, an addictively

sony bmg

This is the second Reef Greatest Hits compilation to see the light of day, begging the question... why? The CD sleeve houses nothing but a track listing: no sleeve notes, no personal thanks to the fans, no apologies for “re-releasing” a greatest hits album.

Reef had their own niche for a time, a favourite of west country surfers and fans of The Black Crowes, the band’s growling vocals punctuated a solid and refreshing blues rock sound. For those of us of a certain age, their signature tune ‘Place Your Hands’ has been the soundtrack our alcohol inflated dancing crimes at some stage. But the question has to be asked, what constitutes a greatest hits compilation these days? There are 15 tracks here and six singles?

Buy this only if you feel sorry for major record labels or if your dog ate all of your Reef CDs, including 2003’s version of this very same record. ~ Martin McIver

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DVD

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It’s not as annoying as Lost, nor as hammy as Dexter, and it’s been cancelled in the US by CBS, but is there enough about Jericho to love?

Jericho: The First Season Starring: Skeet Ulrich, Ashley Scott, Gerald McRaney, Kenneth Mitchell.

Running Time: 911 minutes.

Extras: Commentaries, deleted scenes, Building Jericho documentary, What If? documentary.

The biggest nuclear attack of all time hits the United States, leaving the small, peaceful town of Jericho, Kansas, isolated from the rest of the world. They don’t know who’s behind it, what cities have been hit, if their loved ones are alive or if they’re the last survivors of what was America.

And that’s just the first episode.

What follows is a slick, beautifully shot exercise in scenario-building, all the time playing on the dichotomy of greed and lawlessness on one side and a sense of co-operation and the American way on the other. On occasion, the ‘we’re all in this together’ spirit is doled out a little heavily – barely a week goes by without some form of community kinship session – but thankfully, the flag-waving is kept to a minimum.

For the most part, it’s extremely well acted, featuring a large ensemble cast, led by Skeet Ulrich (Scream, The Craft, The Newton Boys) as Jake Green, the mayor’s son who left town five years ago when one of his best friends was killed. Where he’s been or what he’s done is unclear (he cites the army, the navy and minor

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league baseball in the pilot episode alone), but when his plan to leave again is aborted by giant mushroom clouds, road anarchy and nuclear fallout, Jake steps up to the plate as one of Jericho’s leaders.

The story unfolds oddly, part action drama, part soap opera, as the town struggles to cope in the aftermath of Armageddon. Any one episode can feature a combination of rogue mercenaries, marriage break-ups, cartoon villains and brotherly bonding. For the most part, it works, but at its clunkiest, it can feel like you’re flicking between The Gilmore Girls and Lost. That said, the direction is generally fast-paced enough to keep you watching and the soap-like wealth of stories ensures there’s something for the whole American family to enjoy. If Dad doesn’t really care whether Jake’s brother Eric leaves his pregnant wife to set up home with his mistress (who runs what’s seemingly the town’s only bar), he’ll be hooked by the mysterious Robert Hawkins (Lennie James), who knows far more about the attacks than he’s letting on. When Hawkins isn’t down in his basement on the only working laptop in middle America, he’s teaching his teenage daughter to shoot, using Vanilla Ice CDs as targets.

Jericho explores some very interesting terri-

tory, particularly in the wake of 9/11, and both writing and direction are generally taut enough to maintain your interest. OK, so it’s not going to rival The Wire or The West Wing as a critique of modern America, but it’ll slot neatly in between Dexter and Mad Men until the next great TV drama arrives.

For fans of: Lost, The Day After Tomorrow, Doctor Strangelove. ~ John Walshe

Black Gold Directors: Nick and Mark Francis Running Time: 78 mins Extras: Directors Q&A, Making of the Soundtrack, Updates, Trailer

The link between your morning cup of coffee and the appalling poverty experienced in some parts of Africa may appear tenuous but, as the Fair Trade movement has shown, everything is connected in some way by global trade. The Francis brothers have chosen to tell the story of Ethiopian coffee growers, although in truth they could have focused on any region (or indeed any product). The findings are not surprising – that the developed world is driving the third world further and further to the brink of disaster, while we sit in our comfortable cafés, drinking our

DVD skinny lattés. They tell the tale in episodic form, focusing on the individual stories of farmers, while painting every character from the West with the same grotesque, clichéd brush. With no narration to put matters into context, this approach quickly becomes repetitive and the film, well meaning though it undoubtedly is, lacks the power that the subject deserves.

For Fans Of: Michael Moore, Nick Broomfield ~ Phil Udell

Jackass 2.5 Director: Jeff Tremaine.

Starring: Bam Margera, Johnny Knoxville, Chris Pontius, Preston Lacy Running Time: 64 minutes.

Extras: Making of documentary, Bonus segments and stunts, photo gallery, Making of the game.

Any goodwill State had towards the deleterious men of Jackass quickly evaporated once it became clear that Jackass 2.5, was not an extended version of Jackass 2, but rather footage that didn’t make the cut. So we get a DVD extras feature dressed up with interviews to give the “film” some kind of contiguous feel, with various cast members talking about how a stunt didn’t work or why it was cut. How reassuring for the purchaser.

There are, of course, a few ridiculously inane and hilarious segments, such as large man Preston Lacy dressed as King Kong, lurching at remote-controlled airplanes atop a portaloo, dizzy boxing, and something called ‘The Poof’, but there is little else here to please even a heavily inebriated mind: most stunts are just crude and involve the Jackass boys retreading the same tricks on their bodily functions. They also offer ‘A making of’, so that means a behind the scenes look at the extras? Pointless. And if that wasn’t enough, there are bonus extra scenes of the making of. Please.

Jackass 2.5 made its debut on the internet and that’s where it should have stayed, such is the lack of cohesion and ambition on display.

“Straight to the DVD,” a cast member says at one point in the main feature. “Straight to the DVD.” For Fans of: Dull DVD Extras, Wild Boyz, Dirty Sanchez. ~ Niall Byrne

Home Director: Dawn Scibilia.

Written and Narrated by: Alan Cooke.

Running Time: 70 minutes.

Extras: Cast interviews.

Dubliner Alan Cooke moved to New York in 2001 and promptly fell in love with the city, and the hypnotic spell it casts over millions of people around the world, drawing them into the Big Apple’s urban core. Shot entirely in New York on digital video, in both colour and b&w, Home is a 70-minute homage to the city’s magnetism, as Cooke interviews a host of New Yorkers about what the city means to them.

The ‘cast’ includes well-known names, like Liam Neeson, Mike Myers, Frank McCourt and Susan Sarandon, as well as a myriad of ordinary New Yorkers, from rabbis to radio hosts, chefs to comedians, who provide a series of anecdotes, reminiscences and opinions about what works and what doesn’t in the city that never sleeps.

While some of the narration is a little arty for its own good, the real life grit and grime ensures that Home is rarely short of compelling.

“Trying to understand this city is like trying to hold water in your hand,” comments Cooke early on in the documentary, yet he manages to covey the essence of what makes this constantly shifting metropolis “home” to so many people from vastly different cultures in a poignant, moving and meaningful way.

For Fans Of: The Brothers McMullen, sociology, NYC.

ance; some effectively – Mark Williams (The Fast Show) as a goat-man, some not so – Ricky Gervais playing himself, as usual. De Niro’s turn as a secretly camp pirate only works part of the time, yet brings warmth to the screen. Danes too is impressive but the film’s real star is the world it occupies, with glittering landscapes and far from over-cooked special effects.

For Fans of: The Brothers Grimm, The Princess Bride, The Curse of Monkey Island game series. ~ Niall Byrne

The Adventures Of Young Indiana Jones Volume One Created by: George Lucas.

Starring: Sean Patrick Flannery, Corey Carrier, George Hall, Ronny Coutteure.

Running Time: 640 minutes (features only).

Extras: Almost 40 in-depth documentaries, interactive features etc.

~ John Walshe

Stardust Director: Matthew Vaughn.

Starring: Michelle Pfeiffer, Claire Danes, Robert de Niro, Charlie Cox, Sienna Miller, Ian McKellen, Peter O’ Toole.

Running Time: 122 minutes.

Extras: Director and Writer commentary

After his involvement in British gangster movies, producing Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch and directing Layer Cake, Matthew Vaughn turns his directorial attention to something a lot more whimsical. Stardust is an enchanting Victorian fantasy set in a small English village known as Wall, so-called because it’s the gate to a magical kingdom entitled Stormhold.

The film concerns Tristan (Cox) and his quest to catch a falling star for his object of affection (Miller). The star in question is actually a radiant and ethereal woman called Yvaine (Danes), and her fall results in a host of wicked characters vying with Tristan to to capture Danes for her magical powers.

Pfeiffer is dazzling as an ageing, decrepit witch, seeking to use Yvaine to restore her youth, in a hugely entertaining film, with some surprisingly comical heroics and a dark edge.

A host of great British actors make an appear-

Originally conceived by George Lucas as a semi-educational tool, The Adventures Of Young Indiana Jones covers a host of real life events, including the Mexican uprising of Pancho Villa, the outbreak of the first World War and the birth of psychology, as the young archaeologist crosses

paths with some of the most important figures in early 20th century history, including our own Sean O’Casey in the cringe-inducing Easter Rising episode. There are also more than three dozen documentaries included as extras, covering everything from Eastern spirituality to the rise of the Suffragettes: while these are hugely engaging, the series itself remains delightfully light.

Sometimes you don’t want to think about what you’re watching, safe in the knowledge that you can leave your brain outside the door and not miss much. As such, The Adventures Of Young Indiana Jones is perfect weekend afternoon fodder for nursing a hangover and indulging your couch potato side. While it’s not going to tax your grey matter too much, the production values are pretty good, the acting is top notch and there’s enough action to ensure that this is perfect visual popcorn.

For Fans Of: Spy Kids, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, National Treasure. ~ John Walshe

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TV If I’m Correct, That’s Politically Incorrect?

Has anyone else noticed that un-PC TV has made a sneaky comeback? rent to lads for a fiver a go). Nowadays, Quite under the radar, it has crept its way back in without any great ballyhoo. Shows which would previously have necessitated the regulator to install new phone lines are now in the listings, alongside The Angelus and quiz shows. So what has happened?

Have moral standards slipped? Do we just not care as much as we used to? Or is it the sophisticated post-Celtic Tiger European in us all who thinks new Ireland is far too modern to make a fuss about such matters?

Rewind to the early ‘90s when Playboy first arrived in Ireland: of course when I say ‘first’, I mean ‘legally’. Before that, everyone knew somebody who brought one back on the ferry after a trip somewhere (if it was the UK, it was Playboy or Penthouse, if it was further into Europe, it was something in a sealed plastic sleeve that you could

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the manifestations of being well travelled include indigenous tattoos and local herbal teas. In the early ’90s, girls brought back lip balm from Boots, and lads brought back adult mags.

But when Playboy finally made it to our shores and shelves, Irish people of all ages rallied in protest outside newsagents, garages, supermarkets and anywhere that deigned to sell this filth. We weren’t ready for it. We had morals back then, you see; down with this sort of thing. But then something changed. And these days the top shelf magazines available in Centra make Playboy look like Ireland’s Own, and nobody raises an eyebrow.

It was the same with our old friend the telly. Most of us remember when animals mating in a nature documentary would

Words by Maia Dunphy

generate a flurry of complaints to Mailbag - “Dear Arthur, my teenage son couldn’t finish his fish fingers after watching what those monkeys were up to. It’s a disgrace”.

Then almost overnight, RTE put a drag queen in charge of ball-handling on Telly Bingo and no one complained; mind you, considering 90% of the Telly Bingo audience is over 65, most viewers didn’t notice (My own granny thought she was a lovely girl but should ease up on the cigarettes).

However, it’s not all down to lapsed morals and broadening of minds. The PC-TV brigade is still out there, ready to complain at the first glimpse of nipple, but there seem to be acceptable ways to shoehorn previously unacceptable programming into the schedule. South Park is now being shown on TG4. No great problem there, I hear you shrug. Until

TV Five to Watch Living With Lucy Monday April 14, RTE 2.

Lucy Kennedy must be a sucker for punishment.

No sooner has she moved out of Ballydung Manor, then she’s moving straight into the spare rooms of six well-known faces in this new series.

Expect nosy questions and nosing in bathroom cabinets.

Curb Your Enthusiasm E4, Channel 6.

you hear it’s on at 6.30 in the evenings, in between My Super Sweet Sixteen and Nuacht. We used to have to stay up until midnight to watch it years ago. So there you have device number 1 - translate it into Irish. South Park is an over 18s show, but somehow “as Gaeilge”, it’s a veritable teat-time treat! I would love to see the Gaeilgeoirs in studio working on the voiceovers for that one, as they try and translate Cartman’s expletives and wonder when they might get the call to do the weather.

Device number 2 - go back in time.

Shows like Ashes to Ashes and the brilliant Mad Men (if you’ve missed the first few on BBC2 or BBC4, keep an eye out for it starting on RTE) simply use the past as an excuse. Mad Men, set in the maledominated world of advertising in the 1960s, is a caboodle box of everything that is unacceptable today. Arse slapping in the office, women remembering their place and everyone smoking. Everywhere.

All of the time. In one scene, early on in the series, the square-jawed star of the show, Dan Draper, asks his boss “What do women really want?” Quick as a flash, the answer comes back “Who cares?” But that’s OK - because hey, it was the 1960s!

Device number 3 - think outside the box. In the last couple of years, we’ve enjoyed the outrageously inappropriate

L-R, Mad Men and those nostalgic ’60s values; Telly Bingo’s Shirley Temple Bar; South Park

line of questioning from chat show hosts Podge & Rodge. From asking artist Kevin Sharkey what it was like being the “only black in the village growing up”, to congratulating Samantha Fox on her fantastic tits. If a human host such as Pat Kenny or Miriam O’Callaghan asked a guest a similar question, there would be a solicitor’s letter in the post by the end of the show.

Sure, we enjoyed the camaraderie of Friends for the hundred years it was on, yes we love the sweetness of Ugly Betty but maybe what we really wanted was a bit of bad taste, a hint of racism and a good dollop of sexism back on our screens. For the time being, we may need a device here and there to sneak them past those who have Joe Duffy’s number on speed-dial, but pretty soon, the new will become the norm – and then we’ll have the television the French have had for decades.

After a ridiculously unsatisfactory ending to series 5, it’s great to see Larry David back to his miserable best. It’s currently half-way through the series on E4, but keep an eye out for it starting on Channel 4 and Channel 6.

The TV Now Awards, Sunday April 13, TV3 Edited highlights of our very own UK-style TV awards. Tune in to see bemused UK soap stars wondering who the hell the Irish soap stars are, and see if this year’s hosts can cause as much controversy as the usually inoffensive Craig Doyle last year.

The Apprentice, BBC 1

Twelve all-new aspiring tycoons try to impress Sir Alan in the return of this entertaining series.

All but one will find out that a spoonful of Sugar doesn’t always help the medicine go down.

Chuck, from March Starting soon, Virgin 1 Another award-winning US import is heading our way. Chuck Bartowski is a computer nerd who suddenly finds himself as the government’s most important secret agent after accidentally downloading data to his brain. James Bond he ain’t.

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Books Self Immolation Words by Paula Shields ~ Photography by Phil Fisk

The Butt Will Self

bloomsbury

Nearing the end of a threeweek vacation with his family, Tom Brodzinski finishes his cigarette, vows to give the habit up and, “in a moment of utter unthinking”, tosses the butt off the balcony of their apartment.

Already feeling like a better man, he hears a howl of pain from the balcony below – an elderly man has been burned by the cigarette.

So begins Will Self’s latest fantastical caper, an epic satire on the white man adventuring abroad – in all its guises, from tourism to western foreign policy – triggered by the notion of just how much trouble kicking an addiction can get you into.

Of course The Butt takes the reader abroad too, via the linguistic gymnastics

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of the psycho-geographer Self, to an invented habitat at once robustly alien and strangely familiar – a hotch-potch of Australia, Iraq and Africa, among others – where European city twinning and recycling concerns pop up in rather unlikely places, say, in the middle of a counter insurgency.

Tom’s careless gesture brings him the ambiguous attention of the local authorities. He and the injured party, an Anglo called Reggie Lincoln, may have shaken hands on the matter, but his young wife, the beautiful Atalaya, is a member of the Tayswengo, a native desert tribe who don’t believe in accidents and whose codes are enshrined in law. The flicked butt has become “a projectile weapon with a toxic payload” and Tom, now on charges of

assault and attempted murder, has to make reparation to them, racing against the clock of Lincoln’s deteriorating condition.

He must deliver “two good hunting rifles, one complete set of cooking pots and $10,000” to the Intwennyfortee clan in their tribal homeland, necessitating a hazardous journey into the interior in the company of another foreign transgressor, Prentice, also making restitution for unnamed crimes.

The road trip, though it has great set pieces, is in some ways the least gripping section of an otherwise hilarious, provocative, unflinching narrative, perhaps because multiple descriptive passages of changing terrain don’t interest State as much as they do the author, and also because some of the most intriguing characters - the dodgy Honorary Consul Winthrop Adams and Gloria Swai-Phillips, impressive charity worker and unsettling lookalike of Tom’s wife - have been left behind.

But Self is in scintillating form in the main, whether it’s the smallest detail, like the island’s national symbol being “the mysteriously armed bird of prey”, or a witty phrase to turn a smile, “the riotous, colourful barbarism of the Cartoon Network”. As Tom journeys further into the heartlands, the comedy darkens amid stark images of the West’s imperialist abuse of the rest of the world, whether the under-reported grimness of the insurgency or the dangers of bauxite mining to locals forced to work there for a pittance - “the white man’s burden has become the Coke can”.

In its insistence on cause and effect, that good intentions aren’t a blank cheque for any kind of disastrous outcome, The Butt is a corrective for the phony, touchyfeely politics of Blairism from a master of the dark comic arts. In a staggering denouement under the sway of Erich Von Sasser, deranged social scientist making some terrifying sense, Self also makes clear that Tom’s original sin was inattention, compounded by inertia, a hint to us all perhaps…

Books

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A preview of the month’s more interesting releases.

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For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond bloomsbury

by Ben Macintyre Published to coincide with the London Imperial War Museum exhibition of the same name, this standalone book tries to reveal just where the world of Ian Fleming ends and the world of James Bond begins. Stylishly illustrated, this book feature a treasure-trove of gadgets, costumes and the Aston Martin DB5, including weaponry, as well as memorabilia from Ian Fleming’s personal life. A must-have for any fan of James Bond.

Gig: The Life and Times of a Rock-Star Fantasist viking australia

by Simon Armitage Acclaimed poet Simon Armitage’s new book Gig: The Life and Times of a Rock-Star Fantasist is a funny and deadpan memoir of a lifetime of gigs. It’s also about a place, the village of Marsden in Yorkshire, where he was able to find inspiration and influence from areas around him: Joy Division, The Fall and The Smiths to the west, Pulp to the south and Andrew Marvell and Larkin way out east. Gig is a delightful book about music, poetry and family

Generation Loss

by Elizabeth Hand

Words by Tony Jessen

destructive photographer who enjoyed her 15 minutes of fame snapping shots of the underbelly of the early years of the punk scene. 30 years later, she is a nobody, living in small-town USA, and finding herself on the remote Paswegas Island where life is not as rosy as it seems.

Fuelled by Jack Daniels and whatever prescription drugs she can lay her hands on, Cass tries to make sense of the world around her and answer a very real question: why am I here?

The Enchantress Of Florence jonathan cape

by Salman Rushdie Rushdie was the winner of the Booker Prize in 1981 for Midnight’s Children but is more famous for his work, The Satanic Verses, a book that forced him into hiding after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini offered a multimillion dollar reward for his assassination. The Enchantress Of Florence, a historical novel set in Renaissance Florence, tells the story of ‘Mogor dell’Amore’, the Mughal of Love, a young yellow haired European who arrives at the court of the Emperor Akbar claiming to be the child of a lost Mughal princess. At times, it can be rather difficult to get into but worth the effort in the long run.

Ian Fleming in his Jamaican home, Goldeneye, March 1962. Sure why WOULDN’T you be smiling?

latest novel, Burn has turned to some of the English news stories from the bleak summer of 2007: floods, Foot & Mouth, the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and the terror attacks in Glasgow, to name a few. He crafts them into a unique and fascinating novel about how the news is made, how it’s manipulated and plastered on the papers. Once read, you’ll have problems believing everything one reads in the papers.

Keep your eyes open!

The Man Who Ate the World: In Search of the Perfect Dinner headline review

by Jay Rayner The latest offering from the Observer’s restaurant critic Jay Rayner takes you on a culinary journey to some of the greatest restaurants around the world and the renowned chefs, restaurateurs and dinners that inhabit them. From meals of the babiest of baby lambs in rancid yoghurt in Dubai to a plate of blowfish sperm in Tokyo it’s an interesting and sometimes funny look at the Michelin-starred world of food.

Born Yesterday: The News as a Novel faber & faber

by Gordon Burn harvest books

Veteran novelist Elizabeth Hand’s latest novel is the engaging story of Cass Neary , a self-

Artist, journalist and true-crime writer Gordon Burn is well-known for his work with Damien Hirst on the book On the Way to Work. For his

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Games [

Words by John Walshe

2024 – the world is running out of oil. What to do? Why, pick up your AK47 and head to the Caspian Sea for some action at the Frontlines.

] spells the end for human and deity alike.

Thus begins another epic action adventure, which doesn’t differ greatly from either of the two God Of War games on the PS2, in that there’s the usual mixture of combat, magic, exploration and puzzle-solving, as Kratos makes his way through some of the most beautiful environments ever committed to PSP. Like its predecessors, Chains Of Olympus looks stunning – some of these vistas wouldn’t look out of place on a next gen. home console, as Kratos goes toe-to-toe with Basilisks, minotaurs, ogres and all manner of nasty mythical beasts. The sound too is delicious, from the familiar voice-overs to the noises of battle, as the blood continues to flow with reckless abandon – you really need earphones to appreciate the sound quality in all its fury.

Stunning visuals, cracking sound and the same gameplay we’ve grown to love from the God Of War series combine to make Chains Of Olympus the finest reason so far to own a PSP.

Frontlines: Fuel Of War Xbox 360, PC

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At first glance, Frontlines is just another in a long line of shooters, set in the near future, which pits the player as the good guy in a global conflict. Yawn. What sets it apart, however, is that the story behind this future war is actually semi-believable. “America is addicted to oil,” the game developers inform us, via a series of introductory cut-scenes namechecking everyone from Clinton to Roosevelt. No shit Sherlock! The world’s oil addiction, however, reaches fever pitch, beginning with queues at petrol pumps and ending in global famine. We join the action in 2024, as the world’s superpowers scrap over the last remaining oilfields around the Caspian Sea: China and Russia join forces, forming the massive Redstar army, against the soldiers of the West, unimaginatively titled the Coalition.

The Single Player game is pretty enjoyable, with plenty of variation in mission types, from rescuing hostages to securing the last working oil fields, destroying tank manufacturing plants and engaging in recon sorties behind enemy lines.

The action is relentless, the graphics are impressive and the sound features a nice mixture of things that go bang in the day and night, as well as some pretty decent voice acting, generally of the hard-boiled hero variety.

Where Frontlines really scores, though, is its online play, whereby both sides vie for control of some tactical sites along the battle line: control enough of the hotspots and you move the frontline towards your enemy, earning you a bigger slice of the map.

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The controls are simple enough to master, and the interface for swapping weapons on the fly is pretty user-friendly too (although you can expect to ship some bullets while trying to fire up a rocket-launcher mid-melee). While it’s not going to win awards for originality, Frontlines’ plot and action are solid enough to reward repeated plays, particularly online, and is a nice mixture of Battlefield and Black Hawk Down.

God Of War: Chains Of Olympus PSP

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The greatest game series ever on the PS2 makes its handheld debut, as Kratos, the seriously badass ‘Ghost Of Sparta’ is once again the go-toguy for the gods of Olympus, although the action here takes place before the original game (with the PS3 title that follows on from GOW2 still in development).

The sun god, Helios, has been torn from the sky by Atlas, the titan, allowing Morpheus, the god of dreams, to engulf the land in a fog of darkness. Unless our bald avenger can find the sun god and get him back into his rightful place, it

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas Two PS3, Xbox 360

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What would games development teams do without uber-author Tom Clancy to supply them with plot ideas? When the games are as good as the second instalment in the Rainbow Six Vegas series (actually the sixth game featuring the elite Rainbow team), the answer is probably ‘who cares?’ More high octane tension and thrills in Sin City, this time with a built-in tracker that notes your playing style and rewards you with weapons that suit the way you play. Incredible graphics and sound are the backdrop, but it’s the taut gameplay that ensures this will feature high in end-of-year best-ofs.

Army Of Two PS3, Xbox 360

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EA’s much-talked-about co-op shooter finally gets a release and the results are....not exactly ground-breaking. The story revolves around two former special ops agents, Salem and Rios, who decide to go mercenary for the financial rewards – not exactly going to win the developers many friends in the PC brigade – with much of the action taking place in modern day Iraq. The fact that it’s politically and ideologically suspect, aside, however, it’s the action and gameplay that State is more concerned with, and here it only partially succeeds.

It’s all based around co-op play, either with two human players or a single player with a computer-controlled ally. The Aggro mode is pretty good, whereby one player can attract the

Games enemy’s full attention, allowing their partner to outflank the bad guys and take them down. The back-to-back fighting, when our dogs of war go all slo-mo on a host of enemies, is a decent addition to the gameplay, as is the notion of snapping off a car-door to use as a shield when the bullets are flying thick and fast. Truth be told, however, other games like Gears Of War, Resistance: Fall Of Man and even Halo 3, have done co-op before and done it better. The graphics are only okay, which for a next gen. title is a cardinal sin, while the voice-acting is hammier than a Two Ronnies Christmas Special.

In short, Army Of Two is something of a disappointment. If you’re a shooter fanatic who’s counting down the days til the next big gun hits the shelves, this might just tide you over. For the rest of us, however, this is certainly one to try before you buy.

Euro 2008 PS2, PS3, PSP, Xbox 360

ea sports

Unfortunately, for most Irish footie fans, Euro 2008 will primarily serve as a reminder of the disastrous qualifying campaign which ensures

that, while 16 of Europe’s elite national teams will be battling it out on the fields of Switzerland this June, Robbie Keane & Co. will be nothing more than interested spectators. That said, the inclusion of the qualifying rounds gives the player the opportunity to step into the shoes of the departed Steve Staunton and turn the results around, before going on to the Finals themselves.

The game features the same slick presentation we’ve come to expect from EA footie titles,

down to the dream team of commentators Andy Townsend and Clive Tyldesley. The graphics are superb, with the virtual players moving like their real-life counterparts, down to Henry’s graceful glide. The gameplay is fast and free-flowing, so much so that at times you’ll have trouble following the ball, and the addition of the Kick Stick for frees and penalties (whereby you use the right analogue stick to determine power, direction and swerve) is a welcome addition. Enjoyable.

Six of the Best Gaming highlights of the coming weeks. can either rise through the ranks in single player mode or take on their friends in the ring. There are three different control systems, ranging from swing mode (ultra realistic) to classic controller mode, which is very easy to play.

The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific Grand Theft Auto IV

PS3, Xbox 360 It’s back to the mean streets of Liberty City for what is the most highly anticipated game of the year, bar none. From what State has seen, this looks absolutely incredible and early reports suggest that Rockstar Games have outdone themselves this time around. Sam Houser, Founder and Executive Producer of Rockstar, upping the ante even further, notes “We’ve pushed ourselves very hard to make something incredible and hope the game sets a new benchmark for interactive entertainment.”

Victorious Boxers Challenge

Wii When high school student Ippo Makunouchi is bullied by his classmates, he starts to learn how to box. Trying on Ippo’s gloves, the player

PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, PC Players relive famous conflicts fought on the intense battlefields of World War II through the eyes of an American GI. Historically accurate, this action title features real WWII weapons and actual documentary video footage, as the battle ranges through a variety of territories, including Guadalcanal, the Philippines and Iwo Jima.

Condemned 2: Bloodshot

PS3, Xbox 360 Utilising a combination of high tech forensic tools and multiple weapons (including combo chains), former serial crimes unit investigator Ethan Thomas is trying to track down his missing partner. A first person action thriller which promises plenty of gore and terror, players must use both deductive skills and brute force to locate some seriously sadistic serial killers.

The online deathmatch mode promises “to

deliver the most brutal hand-to-hand combat experience the first person genre has ever seen”.

Assassin’s Creed: Altair’s Chronicles

DS A prequel to the wonderful next gen. console title, Assassin’s Creed Altair’s Chronicles allows players to discover more about the protagonist Altair and his history. The game features a fully realised 3D world in which players will travel and battle through four cities of the medieval Middle East, using acrobatic moves and combo attacks that mix sword skills and high-flying kicks.

Mario Kart Wii

Wii Make sure the kids are in bed, the dog is fed and the your phone is turned off: but not before you get your mates around for the best fun you can have in a virtual car without sitting your driving test, as Mario Kart makes its Wii debut. It comes bundled with the Wii Wheel, which makes it one of the most accessible Mario Kart games to date and allows complete novices to compete with ease and comfort, ensuring no one is left in the dust on either Karts or bikes.

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Anger Management

Lights, Camera, Muppets Words & bile by John Joe Worrall Illustration by Christian Kirkegaard

“No, no wait my eyes were closed, take it again…”

Gobshites.

“No, no wait I look stupid…”

Keep calm, they’re just taking a photo.

“No, no you haven’t zoomed in enough…”

Stay cool. Serenity now, serenity now.

“Alright everyone in together…”

Ah it’s over…

“Wait, wait, your eyes were closed…”

Arghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

At this point, the story ended with State’s eyes turning white, our shirt ripping off and jeans disintegrating to discreet, yet quietly attractive, hot pants, all the while transforming into a huge great big green Hulk. Then we take the digital camera from the muppets beside us at the Band of Horses gig, insert it up each of their anuses one by one (taking pictures during each insertion and removal of course) and throwing them over the bar before chucking the camera into a Jager-bomber and watching it explode. Yipee-i-fucking-ay!

Okay that didn’t happen. But only because State, unlike the horde of tits that bring digital cameras on a night out, has got manners, baby. Principles, one might say.

Life is all documented in horrible detail these days by the ‘carriers’: those who feel that a digital camera somehow adds to a night out. They pretend to be involved in proceedings up to a point, but then after a while, much like a Muhammad Al-Fayed witness statement, no one is spared persecution. As with any other disease, if we weed out the ‘carriers’ and stick them on an island together, we can solve this crisis now. Let’s leave them stranded on the beach with low battery levels; trying to resist the urge to capture each other pretending to be characters from Lost. They’ll last 10 minutes.

Whatever happened to just having a drink and actually talking to people, or even going to a gig and enjoying the band, not concentrating on always having the ‘night-time photo’ setting switched on?

This has been how we lived for generations, but now we live in between snaps of ourselves: with our friends, with our workmates, and often with random bloody strangers. These photos are then sent around in group emails with titles like ‘Happy times’, ‘Alan, what were you thinking?’ or ‘Who’s the guy in all these photos?’.

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Undoubtedly, this whole portable photoshoot is a pleasurable experience for the orange-skin brigade that spend their evenings taking out their Canons, pushing their uniformly fucking enormous sunglasses above the bleached blonde hair and pretending they’re in the social section of certain Sunday newspapers. But is that what you want your Friday night reduced to? The level on which girls called ‘Sash’, ‘Babes’ and ‘Sweetie’ have a good time? Shove it up your Ugg boots, ye bunch of cackling divorcees-in-waiting. “He’s left me Sondra, he’s left me... no it’s the big button, press the big button...”

Here’s the thing, if you looked like a sweaty prat trying to prove you have friends and a social life in the first photo, chances are you’ll look like a progressively sweatier prat, still lacking a real friend, in the following 40. The Band of Horses sweaty head knows who he is, so do his Bebo friends too, as I’m assuming all the bloody pictures ended up there. There was the one where he placed his arm around his mate’s girlfriend; then some when he held his mate tight instead (maybe he just wants human contact?); and then when a fourth gimp, we’ll call him Tall Gimp, turned up, this brought infinite possibilities for more No-dak moments.

The clicking and incessant flashes go on for an hour. They get so distracted that when Tall Gimp shouts “play ‘The Funeral’, ya beardy bastards” it takes a flash-blinded patron to his right to point out they just did.

“Never mind,” Sweaty Gimp thinks and hugs Tall Gimp.

The smallest of the pair knows just how to cheer him up. So they stand there, backs to stage, take another shot of themselves, before examining the rest of the pictures from that night. Remembering way back when….

“Hey look, it’s us… again… it looks like that picture of us two minutes ago only with slightly emptier pints. “ “My eyes are closed.”

“Yeah, wow.”

Good times, good times.

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