A review of the album Monsters by Herm Review Snapshot: Monsters is an excellent album whose only fault is that it contains so many disparate song styles that it sometimes sounds more like a ...

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The IMRO Showcase Tour 2009 (The Sugar Club, Dublin)

Review Snapshot: The IMRO gig at The Sugar Club showcased a number of talented new musicians who gained full audience appreciation with their varied sounds. 

The Cluas Verdict? 7 out of 10

Full Review:

There’s something about venues. With its tiered seating, shining disco ball, velvet curtain and candle-lit tables, The Sugar Club set up a serene and relaxed feeling the minute you took a seat. There was a real sense of 1950s nostalgia about the set-up. I almost felt like a member of the Back to the Future audience, awaiting Marty McFly’s inappropriate Johnny B. Goode guitar solo. The IMRO gig was full of band members, mates of mates, and mates of mates of mates, who showed up to give them support.

Dublin alt-rockers I Phoenix were first up. Their solos were not as insane as Johnny B. Goodness, but with a powerful and intense sound they acted as a refreshing break from effects-heavy laptop bands. With gutsy climaxes and well-developed endings, the band appeared to be a tight and well-practiced group. The vocals were a little hard to hear, but technical details aside, they proved to be a talented little rock outfit.

More characters streamed into the glow of the old theatre – the man with the handlebar mustache, the girl with massive glasses and wide belt, lots of Topman clothed boys. (Quick digression - Am I the only one who is a little bored with uber-trendiness at gigs? Or maybe I’m just jealous…) Strolling to the bar, I discovered my biggest disappointment of the evening – emptying Six Euro onto the countertop for a bottle of Tiger. After just seven months of living in the UK I seemed to have acquired an exaggerated culture shock when buying any form of drink back at home.

The second biggest disappointment of the evening was also the second band, five-piece Harrows. Their early tracks showed them to be poppy, radio-friendly and almost too good to be true, with catchy riffs, a Kings of Leon soundalike as lead vocalist who rasped in all the right places. But as the tunes wore on, I realized there was far too much repetition in the lyrics and the sound. Having previously won the 2FM Battle of the Bands Dublin heats, I could see them being successful because they seem to fit into the young rock scene quite well, even if they weren’t to my taste.

Third band House of Dolls were also quite fashionable – with Johnny Two Belts on guitar and banging on a single drum – but their music seemed a little more mature. With influences like Joy Division and My Bloody Valentine, their music had a moody 90s sound that rocked The Sugar Club. There was a little too much reverb on the vocals but the full sound of the band made up for that minor tick. The audience seemed to really enjoy the band, and there was a great atmosphere of appreciation for all of the bands during the evening.

The Revellions, a band who looked and sounded like The Doors, were the final act to take the stage. Tight pants? Yep. Straight hair? Yep. A faraway gaze? Yep. The five-piece were immediately tagged for me as Monkees. With mic-swinging and leaping around, they gave an energetic performance and show promise for any fans of a heavy 1960s sound.

This evening’s IMRO Showcase proved to be a classic night of talented regional bands that have the potential to become more widely known. Showcase acts from 2008 such as Robotnik, Codes, The Kinetiks and Halves have garnered more fans and a greater reputation with the launch pad that such a showcase gig can supply.

Niamh Madden

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Your correspondent took a rare trip out of the French capital recently. We went to Lyon, the second-largest city in France and only two hours south-east of Paris by high-speed train.
 
Outside of France, most people probably know Lyon for the recent success of its football team. But the city is renowned as a centre of gastronomy. This demanded rigorous investigation, so your blogger duly ate his own body weight in fantastic local food. (We recommend boudin noir, the Lyon equivalent of black pudding but a zillion times nicer. Next time we'll have the andouillette, a kind of sausage.)
 
The centre of Lyon is a commercial strip of concrete slabs and the usual high street stores. The old part of town, Vieux Lyon, leads uphill to two uncanny reminders of Paris - a kitsch, oversized white church like Sacre Coeur atop Montmartre and a replica of the top half of the Eiffel Tower. But apart from that Lyon has its charm. We stayed in Croix Rousse, a quarter that's home to artists and small bars still defying the smoking ban.

As usual in a new town, we looked for record shops. There's a local branch of Gibert Joseph near Bellecour as well as large stores like Virgin and FNAC - but for small independent music dealers in Lyon you should head for the streets around the town hall, where there are a handful. Our favourite was Sofa on the rue d'Algerie, which stocks mainly vinyl and non-rock sounds such as hip-hop and electronica. (To our joy, in the world music section we found 'I Am Brazil' by the Redneck Manifesto. We prefer to believe that it wasn't misfiled because of the title and that Irishness is fiercely exotic to the Lyonnais.)

Anyway, we survived away from Paris and it gives us the opportunity to tell you about an upcoming festival in Lyon. Nuits Sonores takes place on 20-24 May in venues around the city.

Now in its seventh year, Nuits Sonores is a popular and well-respected electronica and indie gathering. This year's programme features established acts like Carl Craig, Laurent Garnier, Miss Kittin, Holly Golightly and Dan Le Sac. The hipper-than-thee festival-goer will note the presence of Tiga, the Montreal-born DJ whose name is being dropped by other electronica acts the world over.

Miss Kittin is from Grenoble, so she won't have far to go for her Nuits Sonores show with The Hacker on 24 May. The pair have collaborated on a new album called 'Two' (their second long-player together, you see) and it's a superior set of melodic electro-clash floorfillers.

Before Lyon, Miss Kittin and The Hacker will be in Dublin on 3 May. Because they're French, this inevitably means their Dublin show is on at the ALT, the little Gallic musical enclave in Ireland. And, says Miss Kittin's MySpace giglist, later this summer they'll be in Paris, Madrid and... Naas! Of course, this is for Oxegen but at least they won't be shouting "'Allo, Dublin!"

(We feel bound to tell you that 'Naas' resembles a French word pronounced 'nazz' and which means 'very uncool'. If at Oxegen they tell you "You're Nazz!" and start giggling, now you're in on the joke and you can tell them to f**k off. It'll be gas.)

Miss Kittin and The Hacker are definitely not 'nazz'. Check out some of those 'Two' tracks on Miss Kittin's MySpace page, including '1000 Dreams', presented below in homemade video. Thanks to the Scottish community in Lyon:

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John Shelly and the Creatures are on the crest of a wave, garnering much momentum, having an Ireland- and UK-wide TV add use one of their fine tunes and having just sold out Whelans on the day of rest...

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  Padraig Rushe, formerly of the Dublin Gospel Choir, has just released his debut album Greyworld on Loud Child Records. Currently touring Ireland with his band, his music features ...

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Larry Beau, or Declan Burke as he is known to some, is a singer/songwriter from Galway. A singular and unique talent on the Irish music scene he is a man of many guises. A wandering minstrel with baro...

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A review of the album Grammatics by Grammatics Review Snapshot: Grammatics’ mishmash debut album can sometimes be embarrassing in its attempt to cover a lot of ground, leaving you thinking t...

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Maximo Park (live in The Academy, Dublin) Review Snapshot: The Geordies return to Dublin to play new material and their old familiar songs to a packed Academy. As always they provide an energetic ...

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In this line of work (and Key Notes uses the term work very loosely!), one of the easiest things to do is box bands off; compare them with like sounding bands, to help readers decide if they would like the band or not.  Indeed, many bands wear their influences so proudly that it almost seems as if they wish to turn their particular little box into a coffin.  Sometimes though, you encounter bands that operate, if not quite in a vacum, then at least at a level far above that achieveable by your run of the mill indie band.

Sometimes, these bands can be so good and so unique, that they completely escape your attention until their discovery only comes about by happy coincidence or, as is the case with Groom, the band taking the initiative and making this blog aware of its existence.

Groom have been on the Irish scene since 2004 and yet this blog first became aware of the band when contacted by Mike Stevens, Groom's driving force, about the release of the bands new mini-album, At The Natural History Museum.  It took about 30 seconds to realise that Groom were a very rare band indeed, further compounding Key Notes regret that he'd not been aware of them sooner.

At The Natural History Mueseum is, essentially, a mini-album about death and the transience of existence, seen through the eyes of a number of disperate characters.  The only thing they have in common is that they are all brought to life by the genius that is Mike Stevens through lyrics such as: Hold me close to your chest so I know your beating heart is true/And when zombies rip at my flesh, I'll turn to you (Mythical Creatures) or indeed, Ski never came back from the '80's/Disappeared, never to return/He was last seen out with his Honda 50 helmet/And his leather jacket with "Burn, Bay, Burn!" (Worst of Places, Worst of Times).  Stevens' vocal stylings and, indeed, lyrics, are best described as the result of Neil Young and Kate Bush's lovechild snorting the ashes of Elliott Smith.  In other words, it's pretty good.

It's not often this blog tells people to go out and spend money, especially on budget day, but At The Natural History Museum will be released on (US indie label) Tight Ship on April 24th and this blog thinks that your music collection will thank you for buying it.  Groom will be launching the album with a gig in Whelan's the same night, with support from Neosupervital. 

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By now you’ve probably heard the news that Choice-nominated indie-electro merchants Dry County have changed their name to something more distinctive and less country-rock. Ahead of the band&rsqu...

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