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CLUAS was one of 15 sites longlisted last week for the 'best music site' category at the Irish Web Awards. The short list of six sites was published yesterday and CLUAS was not among them. The sites that made the grade were:

• Muzu TV
  
• Kilkenny Music
• Enda Reilly
• 2tone
• Drop-d
• State Magazine

The shortlist represents a cross-cutting list of different types of sites: there are two music magazines (Drop-d and State), one musician's site (Enda Reilly), one local music blog (Kilkenny music), one label fansite (2tone) and one video hosting platform (the impressive Muzu TV).

So who will win? I think it is between Muzu TV and State, and that State in the end will bag it.

Although I like to think Drop-d could be a surprise on the night.  Their site is very impressive with its clean design, fast loading pages and depth of content. It certainly deserves to get more traffic than it appears to get. See the to-be-taken-with-a-grain-of-salt Alexa traffic chart to the right which shows their 'reach' (the red line running along the bottom) compared to that of CLUAS (the blue line) or State.ie (the gold line). Making the shortlist - and maybe even winning the award outright! - will at least help them get more visibility and traffic. 

Anyways, congrats to the all the shortlisted sites and best of luck on the night!

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You might remember that we told you last year about the floating music venues of Paris - boats docked on the Seine by the quay near the Bibliotheque François Mitterand. Being at a gig in the hold of a boat is a strange experience, but one we definitely recommend. (One of these boats, the Batofar, is actually an old Irish lightship still painted fire-engine red.)

The most popular of these venues was the Guinguette Pirate (right), more recently known as the Cabaret Pirate. As the name suggests, the boat had a pirate theme to it, although the music could be anything from electro beats to salsa rhythms.

As the more astute of our readers will have guessed from our use of the past tense, the Guinguette Pirate is no more. The boat still exists and will continue to host a busy programme of concerts and clubs. It's just that the owners have decided to change the name back to that of when it was a fully-functioning boat. So, from this day forth it's La Dame de Canton.

The Oriental flavour to its name is due to the fact that the boat is actually a Chinese junk. (The South China Sea was, and still is, a popular spot for pirates.)

Of the upcoming events on board, the one that catches our ear is the Spectaculaire festival this Sunday 28 September. We hear that one of the performers on the bill is The Mighty Stef (left, on a previous Paris trip). Stef's MySpace confirms the gig, but the venue's programme doesn't mention him.

(We also believed that French singer PacoVolume was on the bill. Again, the venue doesn't list him.)

Your blogger will head along on Sunday to find out, safe in the knowledge that he will not now risk having to walk the plank.

With a tenuous link to walking the plank, here's the video for "Death Threats" by The Mighty Stef, where he finds himself beside the sea:

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PutoMayo in Onda, a cafe in Sofia

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A review of the album 'Limbo, Panto' by Wild Beasts

Review Snapshot: 'Limbo, Panto', the debut album from British band, Wild Beasts, a theatrically over the top record about sex, sin and struggling soccer teams. A genuinely strong and enjoyable debut.

The Cluas Verdict? 7.5 out of 10

Full Review:
At first listen, you would be forgiven for thinking that Wild Beasts were a satirical cover band of The Smiths spliced with 18th century opera. Lead singer Hayden Thorpe has a camper singing style than Morrissey. Just think about that for a moment. Camper then flower flinging, blouse wearing, falsetto singing Morrissey. At times Thorpe’s voice is comically operatic and on other occasions it is a guttural growl, wandering where it pleases, without consideration for the taut bass lines and energetic guitar strumming, hopelessly trying to keep up. There is a raw charm to his voice, but one that will not be to everyone’s liking. It is so incomparable and alien it will have the effect of polarising opinion on the band. You’ll love it or hate it, but definitely won’t be indifferent.

There is certainly a novelty aspect to this offering from Wild Beasts, in the way the record is presented, sung and indeed the topics sung about. But there is a whole lot more to it besides. It is an unobtrusive album, that doesn’t aim to blow the listener away, but instead coaxes you in with every listen you afford it. And after awhile the rewards come in the form of initially misunderstood lyrics, where you had mistaken wit for pretentiousness.

What is remarkable about Wild Beasts is their ability to transform the mundane into the epic, or at least bravely attempt to do so. The most notable example of this coveted skill comes four tracks in with 'Woebegone Wanderers' a song about the plight of a non-league football team. It sees Thorpe at his most flamboyant and in spite of this, or maybe as a result of it, the song actually works. Proof again that fantastically unnecessary sentimental lyrics alongside great pop rock music can work.

There is a lot to admire about this unusual album. It offers ambiguous lyrics and disjointed musical pieces yet has the potential to appeal to a wide audience. 'The Devil’s Crayon' is the track that showcases Wild Beasts ability to take on a pop song and master it with clever lyrics and catchy guitar work. It’s loud and epic with contrasting singing styles from Thorpe.

At times, Wild Beasts' debut sounds like it was produced with the view to soundtracking a Tim Burton animation. It is eerie and theatrical, particularly 'Please Sir', and 'His Grinning Skull'. The latter is the probable highlight of the album as it saunters along at its own pace with delicate guitar strumming.

The bawdy side of Wild Beasts rears its head on a number of occasions, the best xample being 'She purred, while I grrred'. You can really get away with unmannerly sexual talk if you put it cleverly. It sees Wild Beasts try and nail the mystery of life with the line:
“I die every day, to live every night, under the industry of her want for me in our fusty foundry”.

This is a cracking album from a young group doing their own thing in a British scene clustered with indistinguishable bands. It may take a while to grow on you, but what they do they do with style. 

A genuinely strong and enjoyable debut.

Kevin Boyle

More ...

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The CLUAS Discussion board has been active now for almost 7 years. In that time there has been almost 10,000 topics discussed (to be precise: 9467 topics, and counting). Among this number there have been some real classic threads, but a problem is they risk becoming difficult to reach in the depths of CLUAS.com's constantly growing database of discussion topics. Not wanting to 'lose' the best of our topics I last week created 7 new pages which list the top 75 topics (chosen on the basis of those topics with the most replies) from each year since the discussion board was launched. These new pages will make it easier for visitors to discover some great threads from our archives such as The Slow Death Of Certain Irish Bands (from 2006), Irish Bands To Get Excited About (from 2005), Best Piece Of Music Used In Film (from 2004),and Neil Young - 105 quid? (from 2003) and Smiths - most influential band of last 50 years? (from 2002). Find other great threads yourselves via the new pages which list the top topics for the last 7 years, links provided below:

Another advantage of this is that these new pages will help search engines index more quality content on CLUAS. Indeed, Google has already indexed these new pages and I expect more traffic - in due course - to be driven by search engines to these nuggets from our archive.

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CLUAS has been covering Irish music festivals since 2000 when we reviewed the first Witnness festival (which morphed into Oxegen). 2008 however saw CLUAS step up dramatically in terms of our coverage of the music festival season. For the first time CLUAS has provided comprehensive reviews of all the major festivals that took place this year in Ireland. Oxegen? Electric Picnic? Cois Fharraige? HWCH? CLUAS covered them all in 2008. And comprehensively so - we published a review of each day of the Oxegen, Electric Picnic and Cois Fharraige festivals, not to mention a whopping 9 reviews and 3 diaries of HWCH (delivered by the team of 4 CLUAS writers who were covering HWCH).

Within literally minutes of their publication all these articles appeared in Google News which helped ensure they were read by thousands of visitors. For example the Oxegen reviews were read by over 3000 people within a week of their publication - setting a new readership record for a CLUAS feature (the previous record having been set by Michael O'Hara's now-legendary review of REM in the Olympia which was linked to from the official REM website). The Electric Picnic and Cois Farraige reviews were read by just over 2000 and 1000 people respectively in their first week. As for the HWCH reviews, they have already been read by 974 readers and the festival ended only 3 days ago, I expect this figure will rise to 1500 by the end of the week.

A big thank goes to the CLUAS writers who covered the festivals - Christine Cooke for Cois Fharraige, Jan Ni Flanahagain at Electric Picnic, Steven O'Rourke who covered Oxegen and HWCH (where he was joined by Anna Murray, Niamh Madden and Ian Wright).

Steven O'Rourke deserves very special praise for securing the passes for all the festivals and badgering the writers to publish their reviews within 12 hours of leaving the venue! He was instrumental in ensuring this blanket coverage of the main festivals happened.

For those of you who missed some of our 2008 festival coverage first time around, links to all the various reviews are provided below:

Oxegen:

• Oxegen 2008 - Day 1
• Oxegen 2008 - Day 2
• Oxegen 2008 - Day 3

Electric Picnic:

• Electric Picnic 2008 - Day 1
• Electric Picnic 2008 - Day 2
• Electric Picnic 2008 - Day 3

Cois Fharraige:

• Cois Fharraige - Day 1
• Cois Fharraige - Day 2
• Cois Fharraige - Day 3 

HWCH Day 1:

• Chequerboard, Alphamono and Fiach
• Nakatomi Plaza, Half Cousin and Lines Drawing Circles
• Super Extra Bonus Party, Groom and The Dublin Duck Dispensery
• Diary of HWCH Day 1

HWCH Day 2:

• Foxface, Bats and Others
• Frightened Rabbit, The Vinny Club and Bats
• Crayonsmith, The Parks and A Lazarus Soul
• Diary of HWCH Day 2

HWCH Day 3:

• So Cow, New Amusement and others
• One Day International, Mackerel the Cat and Others
• Autamata, Sounds Of System Breakdown and Robotnik
• Diary of HWCH Day 3

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Yesterday the "long-listed" sites for the Irish Web Awards were published. I was pleased to see CLUAS has been long-listed for the 'Best Music Site' category. There are a total of 15 nominees longlisted for the best music site award (see them below) and at a quick glance you can see there are many excellent sites in with a shout. If CLUAS managed to make the short list it would be a serious achievement.

Any noticeable omissions from the list below? Well I note that neither Hot Press nor Muse.ie made the list.

The winner will be announced on October 11 in the Radisson SAS Royal Dublin.

Best Music Site, long listed sites

• Thumped
• State
• Goldenplec
• DownloadMusic
• Indie Limerick
• 2tone
• Dublin DJs
• Muzu TV
• Nialler9
• Drop-d
• Irish Beats
• Enda Reilly
• Cluas
• Album Archive
• Kilkenny Music

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