First Impressions: Okkervil River - The Stand Ins

All good things, they say, must come to an end. And Okkervil River have had a pretty good run. From 2002 to 2007 the Austinites released 4 albums which varied in quality from at a bare minimum very good (last year's The Stage Names) to exceptional (Black Sheep Boy and Don't Fall In Love With Everyone You See). The Stand Ins however is their first genuine misstep.

The album is comprised mainly of off cut from last year's record with a few newer songs thrown in for good measure. It's not the first time that the band have put out the leftovers from an album, The Black Sheep Boy Appendix EP was sandwiched in between albums 3 and 4 and worked really well as both a creative exercise and as a housekeeping one. Listening to The Stand Ins it strikes me that the band might have been better off once again going with the EP route. There's only a couple of songs on the album, "Blue Tulip" and "On Tour With Zykos" that stack up to what they've done before and the rest, for the most part, feel like filler. M.O.R. filler at that. In fact the best thing about the album could be the short instrumental breaks that crop up throughout the record, and that's quite disheartening considering how good a songwriter Will Sheff usually is.

MP3: Okkervil River - Blue Tulip from The Stand Ins

Okkervil River play in the Acadamy, Dublin on November 7th.

I very much enjoyed My Bloody Valentine on Friday night.

I did a guest review of it over on the Analogue site.

Michael Knight - I'm not entirely clear how I ended up like this.

At some point in the past 12 months Richie Murphy decamped from Ireland and set up shop in Berlin. It seems a good fit considering Germany's endless un-ironic ardour for all things Hasselhoffian and that the fact that Murphy is the star around which everything Michael Knight (the band, rather than the TV character) related orbits. He's hardly the first musician to do make a similar move. Bowie, Lou Reed and U2 are all notable names that have produced some of their most acclaimed work in the German capital and the city is the current home of Liars, who since moving there a few years ago have made the two best albums of their career.

I'm not entirely clear how I ended up like this, Michael Knight's second album was mostly recorded in Ireland so any suggestion that the quality of this album has anything to do with some mystical musical talent that all visitors to the Brandenburg Gate are somehow blessed with rather than with Murphy's natural gifts as a songwriter can bugger right off. At his best Murphy trades in the sort of lushly arranged sophisticated yet slightly archaic pop that brings to mind an entirely devoid of smugness Neil Hannon or a not utterly in love with himself Rufus Wainwright. That's assuming that either such thing actually exists in nature, based on recent reports those particular anthropological quests continue unabated.

It would be easy to say that there's a timeless quality to this record but I don't think that that would be entirely accurate. For me it conjures up very evocative images of a specific time and place. England between the wars, there's women wearing those silly sparkly hats and they're all discussing this spiffing new dance from America called the Charleston. Hugh Laurie hasn't yet gone to med school and picked up a bad approximation of an American accent. Nor has Stephen Fry become an international treasure thanks to his mocking of a not as dumb as he pretends to be Aston Villa supporter. In the corner sits Murphy at a piano, accompanied by a string section he sings his wryly cynical songs to a crowd unaware of how much he's scoffing at them. As to why he's got an electric guitar and a delay pedal, which drags my daydream into the present, with him? Everyone should be allowed the odd anachronistic goof in their flights of fancy.

MP3: Michael Knight - Coronation St. from I'm not enitrely clear how I ended up like this.

The Dodos - Crawdaddy

The way things are going in Dublin these days it's hard to predict what gigs are going to sell and what aren't. Yeasayer in Whelan's a few weeks ago was pretty packed yet Evangelicals last week was almost a ghost gig.

Looking back from the front on Friday night it seemed to me that The Dodos got a pretty healthy crowd into Crawdaddy on Friday which is pretty good going considering that I don't think they've had a great deal written about them here aside from the occasional blog post, though their appearance on the last Nialler 9 podcast and positive mentions on On The Record can't have hurt.

Visiter, the duo's second album is luscious mix of African rhythms, acoustic guitars and rich harmonies but live the band (now a trio thanks to the addition of vibraphonist/percussionist) sacrificed some of the album's subtlety for unadulterated psyche-folk intensity and for an hour or so Meric Long bashed away at his guitar as he fingered complex series's of cramp-inducing-to-mere-mortals chords and looped his voice into giant soundscapes and Logan Kroeber drove things forward with his atypical snare plus three floor toms drum setup.

It was all very full on and it's nearly crass to complain considering how much I enjoyed it but at times things got to be slightly samey. Perhaps the set would have benefited from breaking things up and playing some of the more reserved tunes on the record, or maybe I'm just bitching because they didn't play personal favourite "Park Song" and that would have fitted the "quiet moment" bill perfectly.

As I noted yesterday they'll be back at the Electric Picnic in late August and such is their profile one would imagine that they'll have a very early slot when they do play. Definitely worth waking up early for.

Weekend roundup: Radiohead and Evangelicals.

Radiohead: Main set; good, encore; gold, probably because the sun went down more than for any other factor. It's a little odd to me how when Kid A was first released it had such a mixed reaction but on Saturday night it was the material from that album that seemed to light a fire under the crowd more than anything else. Perhaps it's because of the 3 Radiohead albums that generally get talked about as their finest (albums #2-4, Karl likes Amnesiac but I think he smokes crack) it was that album that they unleashed the big hitters from whereas aside from "Airbag" their Bends and Ok Computer selections were pitched towards that most intangible grouping of people, "the fans", as opposed to the folks who bitched about the fact that "The Bends" didn't get an airing. Apparently still thinking, 13 years on that "Street Spirit" is the best thing they ever did makes you not a fan.

I dunno, I went to see Springsteen and was pretty glad he didn't play "Born In The USA" but I get how people might be disappointed that the overblown 80's monstrosity didn't get an airing. But at the same time if you're a Radiohead fan and all you can do is bitch about not hearing a couple of tunes after the band played for 2 hours then I really have to question what you were doing shelling out €80 in the first place if your prospective enjoyment was dependent on such narrow crtieria.

As for the Evangelicals, there was maybe 30 people there. And maybe 4 of them could lay claim to the title of world's biggest Evangelicals fans. "I think we're in the presence of greatness," proclaimed one of them at the bar afterwards. Unless Kaka' or someone of that ilk wondered in during the set I'm not so sure about that. They are a good band though and certainly know how to put on a show, it's just a shame there weren't more people there to see Josh Jones' Morrissey aping stage moves. Hopefully when they come back around November there will be.

MP3: The Evangelicals - Skeleton Man from The Evening Descends

Bon Iver - Tripod

Meh.

Well not meh. It was very good.

But ...

Let's say you're a kid. A spoiled little fucker with a sense of entitlement who throws a tantrum if things don't go all your own way. And it's coming up to Christmas. And you're getting an X-Box 360. And you're really, really looking forward to it. Some of your friends already have one, and you've gone over to their house and played it with them, and it's great fun, and you long for one of your own so you can play it whenever you want. But you'll still be able to play with your mates because of online play so you won't have to go out into the light and walk over to their house (or insist that your mother drive you). And if your friends can't play well than you can play with people all over the world. Wow, it's going to be so fucking awesome. Because as fun as playing it on your own will be, fragging* real people in multiplayer, that's the shit right there. You're even going to be able to freely use the word "faggot" because in online play, thanks to 4-Chan everyone else does, that's just the way they roll. Imagine that, being able to be casually homophobic in a guilt free environment?

And it gets closer and closer to Christmas. December 8th passes and you know that it's in the house now because your mother is a culchie some habits are hard to break so that morning off to Dublin she trudged and when she came home that evening she was knackered because Cleary's was rammed to the gills with people up for the day. December 15th, nearly there. The 21st, you're off school and have been practically living in your friend that has one's bedroom. Christmas Eve, one more sleep.

Christmas day. It's here.

YAY. Bring it on bitches.

And your parents, the mean, tight-fisted assholes (disregarding the expense and effort that they've already gone to to get your new toy), won't sign you up to X-Box live. It's still really good. But in your selfish little mind, where everything needs to be at least as good for you as it is for everyone else, that's not enough.

I don't know if this X-Box metaphor works, I own a WII and online play is free for that.

Anyway, last night Justin Vernon forgot the X-Box live subscription.

So I'm reposting this link to an NPR recording of a gig in DC a few months back.

* Do people still use the word frag for killing people in first person shooters? I've not played one in multiplayer mode since Quake in my first year of college.

First Impressions: Broken Social Scene Presents: Brendan Canning - Something For All Of Us.

Based entirely on the impressions of them that I've garnered from seeing them on stage of the core duo in Broken Social Scene I've always found Brendan Canning to be a bit more appealing. Kevin Drew seems really full on in a earnest but probably a likeable and decent guy sort've way, like a tolerable Bono. His buddy Canning on the other hand, he's always appeared to be a lot more laid back. But more importantly he resembles a faun; his curly mop of hair, goatee and slightly odd speaking voice all remind me of watching the TV serial of The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe as a kid. If I ever see him playing panpipes I might have to kidnap him and keep him as a pet. Or I might try to defy the laws of God and man in an attempt to splice his genes with a goat (apparently staging a teleportation "accident" would also get the job done but the technology isn't there yet. Nope, it's gene splicing all the way).

Following on from Kevin Drew's Spirit If Canning's Something For All Of Us is the second installment in the "Broken Social Scene Presents:" series, which, depending on how you look at it, is possibly a cynical way of getting extra publicity for various members of the collective's solo ventures by tacking the BSS label onto the name, or a way of taking the pressure off of themselves by saying that it's not a proper Broken Social Scene record (despite the fact that most of the people who played on it have featured on full BSS recordings). Setting aside my own cynicism and habit of making snide comments about people whose talents I do admire though I must say that this is the best album since You Forgot It In People to have the Broken Social Scene named attached to it. I've found the 2 other records they've made since YFIIP to be really frustrating listens. There's some good (occasionally brilliant) songs to be found on Broken Social Scene and Spirit If but those records at times seemed a little unfocused and sloppy, more seriously some of the songs from those records should have been culled outright on quality control grounds.

Canning's record doesn't suffer from those problems. This is an album comprised mostly of the type of song that Broken Social Scene do really well. It's a consistent sounding album, unapologetically lo-fi, there's only 2 songs "Spectacles And Icicles" which sounds a little like Jim O'Rourke circa Eureka and disco workout "Love Is New", which is a vast departure from anything that the band has done before, that deviate from the fuzzy template. The latter song by the way is the only truly weak song on the album and as ever (I feel somewhat that I've been hammering on this point a lot of late, ever since I started my most recent Guided By Voices inspired "I don't care about clean production" kick in fact) that's the important thing.

MP3: Brendan Canning - Possible Grenade from Broken Social Scene Presents: Brendan Canning - Something For All Of Us.

Rapid fire May is loco yo gig reviews 8: Jens Lekman - The Village.

You know when you're confronted with a giant cake? And it looks really delicious? There was probably loads of chocolate involved in making it, fudge too. Or strawberrys and cream if you're into some a little lighter and summery. And you eat the whole thing? Then you feel a little sick afterwards?

No?

Well congrats on never having issues with your weight.

I reckon that since the 7th of this month I've seen at least 32 different acts in 9 venues and 2 countries. I'd say that I need a break but June sees Bon Iver and Dan Deacon hit Dublin which are pretty much unmissable as far as I'm concerned as well and Evangelicals, The Dodos, Radiohead, Low, Bonnie Prince Billie and probably a whole bunch more that I've not mentioned. Can someone get sick of live music? In my case it appears not. That being said if the European Championships turn out to be good and mean that I stay in a few more evenings in June I won't be complaining too much.

Last December Jens Lekman played Whelan's pretty much solo save for occasional contributions from a percussionist and violins from Alex Turner's string arranger. But mainly the night was all about Lekman's songs and his voice. There was some strange, intangible thing in the air that night and as the gig went on you couldn't help but feel that the Swede was drawing you in and making a very real personal connection with you through his music. And it's not just me that felt that way, a friend of mine said to me last week "that night the whole room fell in love with Jens." I can't say I disagree, I'm still into chicks otherwise but.

Last night he returned to Dublin to play The Village with a full band. And it just felt like a guy with some great songs and a supertight band playing a gig. It was fine, actually to be fair, it was good. But it lacked the charm of his last appearance here. Worse though was that parts of it felt utterly contrived; like his storytelling during "A Postcard To Nina" or when he requested that no one put any videos from the gig up on YouTube because it wanted the night to be special and unique, just for him, the band and those in attendance. Oh Jens, I bet you say that to all the crowds.

I was told afterwards that there's a good chance that Lekman won't tour again for a number of years and in recent times he's said to the Swedish press that he's unlikely to ever put out a full album again. That'd be a shame because I do think that when he's at his best he's a remarkable, enthralling talent. But if there's a Jens Lekman gig that lives long in my memory it won't be the one last night.

Autumn Owls.

I got my first review copy of something yesterday. It was kinda odd getting an envelope and above my name was written "Thrill Pier". What Pete (my postman) thinks of the situation I have no idea. But free stuff is good so I'm happy enough for Pete to be befuddled (by all means send me free shit, CD's ... concert tickets, I'm looking at you Aiken promotions, I'd fancy a lie in on Tuesday morning, that's all I'm saying.)

I don't write much about Irish music here, I'm not quite sure why. I just generally don't have the time to do so I guess so generally focus on things I really like or stuff that might be of interest (this of course is the serial problem with blogs, there does tend to be a hooray for everything aspect to them but my reasoning is that if it's not your job, and you only have a limited amount of free time to write about things then why waste your time on something you hate when it means you might not be able to spread the word on something that you're really into) and if I'm being perfectly honest there's not a whole lot of local stuff that really, truly excites me. That being said I do think that this year has been quite strong for Irish albums and I have been meaning to get around to writing about how much I've been enjoying the sparse coldness of the new Waiting Room album or how Spectre And Crown by the Jimmy Cake is far more than simply the tour de force that is lead-single-of-sorts "Jetta's Palace" or how I think the first single off of Crayonsmith's record is a super pop tune (though they generally are disqualified from critical mention here under the "people I know I don't mention at length because I want to like their stuff and I'm not objective about them" rule I have in place here). Oh, I guess I just did.

Anyway a band called Autumn Owls sent me their EP this week. It hit me from right the off when I listened to it that these guys really, really like Wilco circa Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born. No bad thing that, and it's certainly a damn site better than really liking whatever it is that's resulted is there being so many dreadfully painful to listen to garage-rock and punk influenced bands stinking up the stages around Dublin.

There's 5 songs on the Insomnia Lodge EP. Good ones at that. At their core they're acoustic based americana tunes and come with all the accoutrements attached to that label; harmonicas, the sound of plectrums being dragged along guitar strings, and whatnot but what really makes them work for me is how they're wrapped up in droney synths, melodicas and ambient guitar noise. It's all very relaxed and meditative, perfect for late nights spent on the couch when you're not ready to go to bed yet or Sunday mornings when you're trying to get your head straight. Or at least I think they might be, I'll have to try them out tomorrow if I'm up before noon.

MP3: Autumn Owls - Overcoat Smile from Insomnia Lodge EP

Autumn Owls on Myspace.

First Impressions: The Hold Steady - Stay Positive

Oh man, the poor Hold Steady. Their new album leaks the same day that I go see Springsteen live and my first chance to listen to the record is overshadowed by memories of The E-Street band being amazing at pretty much the same sorta schtick they trade on (OK this is a really lazy stereotype to bring up when discussing The Hold Steady, they’ve really toned down the Bruce stuff since Separation Sunday, nothing they’ve done since comes as close to aping the boss as the frankly brilliant line “Tramps Like Us and We Like Tramps”, but hey I’m lazy and I’m gonna run with it, for a couple of paragraphs at least).

It’s not a problem though; Craig, Tad and the boys hold up pretty well under the extra scrutiny that they’re placed under this morning. Maybe it’s because I’m just in the mood for this sort of thing right now or maybe because it’s actually a really good album.

You pretty much know what you’re gonna get from any Hold Steady release. The band unashamedly plays classic bar-room American rock and one of the best (if perhaps a little one track minded) lyricists of his generation sings songs about drinking, getting high, screwing, college kids (often doing the previous 3 things), Catholic guilt and there’s usually a truck load of references to the St.Paul/Minneapolis area, Ybor City, Fl. as well as to songs that he’s previously written. And if you’re not a fan at this point Stay Positive isn’t going to win you over now.

Basically this is just another Hold Steady album.

But that’s fine with me, because I really like Hold Steady albums.

And this song fuses the things that I most liked about each of their previous 2 records into just under 3 marvellous minutes.

MP3: The Hold Steady - Stay Positive from Stay Positive. Removed as requested. There's material from the album up on the band's MySpace.

Rapid fire May is loco yo gig reviews 7: Bruce Springsteen - RDS

Traffic was pretty terrible in Dublin this evening. That’s why I spent the first 4 songs of Bruce Springsteen’s set tonight standing outside the gate of the R.D.S. on Simmonscourt Rd. waiting for my gig buddy for the night to fight his way through traffic. Nonetheless even from that exterior position I could hear the boss perfectly and I suspected from the opening salvo of “The Promised Land” and “Radio Nowhere” that the gig just might be something special. As things turned out, ticketless as I am, standing in the same spot on Friday and Sunday nights Mister that sounds pretty tempting at this point.

The night was, for me, an odd mix of being thrilled by what is possibly the best Rock n’ Roll band anyone has ever put together kicking out jam after jam after jam and a vaguely sad sort of nostalgia. If the greatest gift that my father ever gave me was a love of music thanks to his picking of folk and country tunes on his guitar as I listened on as a child the musician who left the most lasting impression on me from that period is Springsteen, from the ages of 7-11 I barely listened to anything else, and if I did then I certainly don’t remember it. Tonight was the third time that I’ve seen him at the RDS over the past 15 years and the first time that my old man, thanks to a recent shoulder operation, hasn’t been along for the ride and at numerous points during the gig I thought of how much he’d have enjoyed it and wished he was there with me.

Moments like during “The River” when Bruce deviated from the recorded melody of the song while underneath I could hear the crowd sing it like on the album. Or when “Reason To Believe”, so quiet and meditative on Nebraska was transformed into a gigantic blues-rock workout complete with screaming harmonica and snarling vocals. Or just the general brilliance of “Darkness On The Edge Of Town.”

But it was the encore that was the killer. Emerging after a few minutes break having already performed for the best part of 2 hours Springsteen went straight into “Thunder Road”, then “Born To Run” which segued into “Bobby Jean” (i.e. one of the few songs on Born In The USA that I love on record). Next came “10th Avenue Freezeout”, at that point I was thinking that the only way to make the run of songs more perfect would be if “Street Of Fire” or anything else from Nebraska made it onto the setlist. Though in order to save my head from exploding the night ended instead with a much drawn out take on “American Land” from the Seeger Sessions album, which I guess was for the best.

Rapid fire May is loco yo gig reviews 6: No Age - Whelans (Upstairs)

I'll readily admit to knowing very little about No Age aside for the fact that yesterday morning I finally got around to listening to Nouns and for the first time this year found myself being knocked right on my arse by an album with an initial listen. A couple of other spins, well not spins exactly, I hit play on my Zen, we really need to come up with some new terminology to keep pace with the MP3 age, throughout the day convinced me to pull double duty and drop into Whelan's after Sunset Rubdown and catch their late gig upstairs. As it turns out I wasn't the only one in the same mindset as I spotted a couple of other faces in the crowd from the first gig and there were a few people that I spoke to later that had been at Broken Social Scene in Vicar Street earlier as well. I don't know if 2 gigs in a night is something that I'd regularly do or that I could justify during conversations with my wallet but late gigs in Dublin as a concept, they've got my full backing. More of this sort of thing please.

But back to No Age, like I said I don't know much about them. So the sight of 2 guys getting up on stage together to begin to play threw me a little. On record they sound so rich and full I was a little thrown that their live lineup was a drummer and a guitarist.

They make a hell of a racket though the pair of them. Samples filled out the noise that neither of them could produce on the fly and on top of and around those went ferociously pounding drums from Dean Spunt as Randy Randell wrung a mixture of Sonic Youth style dissonance and punk fury out of his guitar, and even managed a trip into the middle of the crowd towards the end of the set.

Not the best gig I've seen all year, actually it wasn't the best gig I saw last night but it was still quite the fun hour and knowing how much word of mouth counts when it comes to getting people to show up to see bands I doubt they'll be in so small a room next time they make a trip to these shores.

Rapid fire May is loco yo gig reviews 5: Sunset Rubdown - Crawdaddy

People should be allowed to have fun. I'm not a killjoy. If folks don't get in my way they can do whatever they want.

But sometimes I think folks should be breathalysed before being allowed into a gig. And I'm not talking about Spencer Krug here who played the gig at Crawdaddy last night completely plastered with seemingly no effect on his playing save for the second to last song where the tempo went to shit a couple of times. But enough talk of idiots who can't control their flailing elbows.

Save for the somewhat lengthy waits between songs, sometimes due to Krug scrambling around trying to find his beer, sometimes by the fact that the band had to climb around the really tight stage to get to whatever instrument they were playing at the time, I've no complaints about Sunset Rubdown's set. Unlike on Friday when their momentum was broken up a lot at the start by broken strings things went a lot more smoothly and save for "Snakes Got A Leg" and "3 Colours" I think they managed to squeeze pretty much every song I wanted to hear into their 80 minute set, including a completely sublime closing take on "The Empty Threats Of Little Lord" which featured Camilla Wynn Ingr using what appeared to be a pocket vibrator on her glockenspiel*. The new Wolf Parade (which has grown on me since I first heard it) is out soon and the band will be reconvening to tour the states to coincide with that and presumably they'll make it to Europe later in the year so god knows when Sunset Rubdown will be back. Not soon enough whenever it is.

By the way, support band Speck Mountain should brush up on their Geography. UK tour? 800 years, 800 YEARS GODAMNIT. Stupid Venezuelans.

* Glockenspiel is not a euphemism for anything.

Rapid fire May is loco yo gig reviews 4: All Tomorrow's Parties - Minehead

I really hate my car sometimes. Despite the hundred odd thousand miles of service that it's given me over the years it chooses the most inopportune moments to cause me problems.

This evening for example, driving out of the long stay car-park in Dublin Airport it decided to start vomiting oil all over the road, not good. One reversion to childhood and a stressed out phone-call to my folks later and along comes Daddy to save me, or at least to give me a lift. My car is currently abandoned in a car park somewhere in North Dublin, I'll sort it out in the morning but if some fucker decided to rob it, crash it, and burn it out at this point I wouldn't shed a tear.

But that's the reason why I'm not at Animal Collective and Atlas Sound tonight. As it happens they had their own transport problems on the way over here and by my reckoning AC are just about now hitting the stage in Whelan's for the impromptu late gig that they had to arrange after missing their ferry earlier today. I could have made it after all but I'm too pissed off over the car and too generally tired from the weekend to make it through a late gig. But if it's anything like they were in Minehead last night it'll be a hell of a gig, everything the last one in Tripod should have been.

Friday at ATP began with sitting around a car park till 4 in the increasingly worsening drizzle for a couple of hours waiting for the time when we could enter the chalets. My only previous ATP experience is with one of the Camber ones a couple of years ago and that's a pretty bleak looking place but in spite of its far more pristine appearance trudging through misty rain in Minehead is a far more miserable experience than anything that living in the set of Hi Di Hi is. On the upside things went pretty much stratospheric after that.

Anyway, bands n' shit:

The Good And Great:

-After brief stints checking out Papier Tigre and Mono the first band I properly caught during the weekend was Sunset Rubdown. Actually as that band was the one on that bill that I most like but hadn't previously seen they were the one was most anticipating seeing throughout the whole weekend. It did not start well. Actually it started, then it stopped, then it started again, a couple of times. 2 broken guitar strings in 3 songs meant that it took them a while to really hit their stride but when they did ... it was moider. In a good way, a really really good way.

- Curators Explosions In The Sky. They did their thing, I liked it, as usual the stuff they played in 6/8 did far more for me than the rest of their material. They're forever at their best when there's a little swing in what they do but having seen them a couple of months ago I wasn't overly anxious to see the full set.

- Since last Tuesday I've been regretting not seeing the Hold Steady and going instead to see Yeasayer that night (it's been an reasonably stress free week, ordinarily I have more important regrets). Turns out I was wrong on both counts. If Friday night was any indication The Sugar Club was the place to be because The Octopus Project rocked my face off, far and away the most enjoyable thing I saw all weekend.

- Okkervil River. Despite having seen them a couple of times already I seem to always forget how much Will Sheff throws himself into his performances. Rockin'. And I thought that The Wren's Charles Bissell added a really cool new dynamic to the material with his (guest) guitar playing.

- I really enjoyed Phosphorescent when I saw him play upstairs in Whelan's a few weeks ago but I suspect that his gig was somewhat overshadowed by how good Why? were later that night. But on Friday night he was on a whole different level. Hopefully back in Ireland, with a full band, in July or so. Not one to be missed.

- Animal Collective, but I already said that.

- I can usually take or leave Four Tet live but he was pretty good this time around. Rocking the Tenori-on.

- The National, not as good as Thursday, better than Wednesday. Having seen them twice this week I didn't feel the need to watch the whole set but for the 20 minutes I was around for them they were getting the job done and most of the people there who weren't suffering from a slight case of National fatigue seemed to be into it.

- A Hawk And A Hacksaw. Big noise considering their lineup, I'd have been tapping my toe were it not for the fact that I was lying down on the fake grass.

- Despite some odd comments about Ireland from Dave Berman The Silver Jews hit the spot perfectly midway through Sunday afternoon. Berman's a lucky dude, great songs and, as the ATP handbook for the weekend pointed out, he's got "a hot band and a hotter wife."

- Dinosaur Jr. ripping into "Freakscene" as soon as I walked into the venue.

The Not Good And Great:

- Adem, with a big band he sounded like Snow Patrol or Coldplay.

- Broken Social Scene, it just felt really jam-bandy and dull. This impression wasn't helped by J Mascis, EITS and one of The Constantines showing up together on stage for one song.

- Battles, not them but the insanely long queues to get in to see them. We didn't even bother the first night and only got in 15 minutes into the set on the second night. They were good but for me I think it's something of a law of diminishing returns every time I see them. The sight of one of my mates dancing to Atlas may well be the personal highlight of the whole weekend.

- How fucking sheepish indie bands are about selling merch. Making money isn't a crime dudes. They should all take lessons from the Wu Tang crew who were pushing their shit on people all weekend.

- Missing Jens Lekman because I couldn't drag my exhausted arse out of the chalets and away from the rasher sandwiches we were having for breakfast. This meant that the first band I saw on Sunday were Polvo, who I really liked but hardly the best way to ease your way into day 3 of any festival.

- The flight home. Not so much fun. I don't think there's ever been a short haul flight in history where so many of the passengers fell asleep during the 45 minute flight time.

- Meeting Scott Devendorf from the National on Saturday night when walking back to the chalets and embarrassing him when I said to him that 30 seconds into our chat the handshake that we were continuing all the way through the conversation had become uncomfortably long. I felt like such a dick afterwards. By the way, second wind award for the weekend goes to his brother Bryan who looked like hell when I saw him at the bar on Sunday morning but a few hours later was bounding around the place shooting hoops.

So that's it for another year at least, I don't do the Christmas ones as my noise tolerance isn't up to much. As awful as it sounds I've got my fingers crossed that Real Emotional Trash tanks, I've heard stories.

Rapid fire May is loco yo gig reviews 3: The National - The Olympia

A very wise puppet once repeatedly said, "That's the way to do it, That's the way to do it."

But he was a spouse abusing motherfucker so perhaps we should pay him no mind.

Nonetheless The National kicked my fucking ass tonight. The bass was still a little too low in the mix but otherwise all my previous problems were non-existent this time around.

Rapid fire May is loco yo gig reviews 2: The National - The Olympia

My National fanboy credentials are impeccable. At the very least I've got a great deal of affection for everything that they've ever put out and I adore their 3 most recent audio releases. I'll also explain at great length to anyone who will let me how 2 of the most profoundly moving musical experiences I've ever had involved seeing The National live.

They were bad tonight.

I did not enjoy it at all.

Speaking to one of the people I was with who felt similarly let down afterwards he offered a number of possible reasons for the lacklustre nature of the gig. Phrases like "going through the motions" and "no attitude" were uttered and they may well be apt. But for me it comes down to a single sentence.

They sounded like shit.

The mix was an utter disaster. Perhaps it had something to do with where I was standing (directly in front of his amp) but Bryce Dessner's guitar was way too loud for most of the night but there were plenty of other problems that can't be explained away so easily; like how high Padma Newsome's vocals were in the mix, or how it was so difficult to hear the bass, and most unforgivably of all how low Bryan Devendorf's drumming (a.k.a. the thing that made Boxer brilliant more than any other contributing factor) was.

Oh and I get that they hired the 2 guys and want to get value out of paying their wages but if a song didn't need brass on the record it doesn't need it live either. I can happily live without the little added push that it gives the end of "Fake Empire" if it means I don't have to hear it on "Able".

In the interest of fairness I have no beef with Aaron Dessner's guitar volume.

Rapid fire May is loco yo gig reviews 1: Yeasayer - Whelan's

Wow Yeasayer are shockingly popular in Dublin. Well, I'm not shocked that they're popular because despite what I'm about to write I do think All Hour Cymbals is a good album but considering it's a Tuesday night, during one of the most insane run of gigs to ever hit Dublin and that there are 3 other bands that I've have been delighted to see play in town tonight the fact that they pulled as many people into Whelans as they did (however many it is to mean that it's so uncomfortably crowded that they had to open the upstairs, that many).

And they're a great band, that is to say, they're great musicians. I don't think I've ever seen a band so effortlessly tight in a long while. If there was a bum note played I didn't catch it. And yet, the whole thing felt a little soulless, too pristine. Aside from the sight of a punter clamboring up on the stage to try and lead a clapalong twice I could have been listening to a record.

I shoulda gone to The Hold Steady.

Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip - The Button Factory, Deerhunter - Whelan's, Jonathan Richman - ibid

Wow, 2 hip hop gigs in a couple of weeks is some sort of new record for me. Though when the MC's are a diminutive Jewish dude from Cincinnati and a guy from Essex with a gigantic beard
I must concede that I'm probably dipping my toe into safe waters. No angry black men for me, no sir (but my non-attendance at Saul Williams last night had more to do with the fact that from last Saturday until Tuesday week, the 20th, that night was the only one where I won't be at a gig and I think I'll need a night off at some point) and certainly none that focus on "guns, bitches and bling," which as Pip points out on his and Dan Le Sac's best known song, "were never part of the four elements, and never will be".

The pair of them can put on a show but; plenty of live laptop music types are conscious of the fact that 1 or 2 dudes hunched over computers for 30 minutes isn't much of a performance and bring video projections into the mix but Le Sac and Pip favour a much more low tech approach and deck the stage out like it's a grotty student flat. A ratty armchair, a shitty, flickering TV, the sort of carriage-clock you might expect to see sitting on your gran's mantelpiece and other similar paraphernalia make up a their stage set and the pair make copius use of their props throughout. During "Angles" Scroobius Pip dresses up as the various characters in his tale of diligent students, beaten kids and bastard security guards (sorry, hero security guards) and midway through the gig Le Sac slumps into the armchair for a rest as Pip goes back to his roots and recites a spoken word piece. It's something that I might have been interested in seeing more of but aside from that interlude and an encore featuring a cover of "Nightclub" by The Specials the pair stuck to material from Angles (which is out this week and which I like very much), every song off the album gets an airing with the room as expected going bananas for "Thou Shalt Always Kill," but I'm not quite sure about the logic of in one part of the song slamming call and response sections of songs and then throwing yourself right into it during the "Just A Band," part of the song.

Deerhunter on the other hand take a much different approach to setlist construction. They've got a brand new third album recorded and they're obviously really excited by it. So much so that they only play a couple of songs from Cryptograms in Whelan's on Thursday night. It's a risky strategy to dump so much completely fresh material on an audience and a tactic that apparently has already sent the hate mail flying when they tried it in the US recently. And one that for the first couple of songs I thought wasn't going to work out, the new material sees the band move away from the droney, looping stuff that featured so heavily on the band's last album and EP and towards more "proper" songs and it wasn't quite what I was expecting. However once I got used to the change of pace I came to realise that where the band was going was a really good place. There's one epicly long song that wasn't one of Bradford Cox's but was in fact written by bassist Josh Fauver that's astonishingly good. That being said nothing can match the behemoth that is the closing song, "Strange Lights" which culminates in 5-6 minutes of riotous noise, instrument swapping, piggybacks and disturbing bodily fluid exchanges. I can't wait to see them In Vicar street again next month.

Pride of gigging place however goes to Jonathan Richman. I'm not hugely familiar with his post-Modern Lovers work but my adoration for their first record is such that I had no compunction about taking a chance on him. With just a classical guitar in hand and a shit hot drummer backing him he had me, and most of the rest of the crowd in the palm of his hand from the off. Playing material mostly drawn from his latest album I couldn't give a damn that the only song I knew the whole night was "Pablo Picasso". He's just so incredibly charming and unendlessly charismatic, and there's a constant twinkle in his eye. People were giggling like kids in the back of a classroom at seemingly random points throughout the set and it was only midway through it did I realise that it was because he'd caught their eye and was giving them a funny luck. And boy can he dance.

Oh if anyone knows where that song about being 14 years old and walking through the New England winter with a girl a couple of years older than him might be found on record please let me know.

Housekeeping: Phosphorescent, Why?, Crayonsmith, Big Monster Love, So Cow and Derby County

It's been a busy week. I've shockingly been required to actually do stuff in work over the course of the past 7 days and my evenings have been split between watching Champions League semi-finals (about which I now officially don't give 2 fucks for the remainder of this season but I think it'd be hilarious after all he stick he's received this year if Grant masterminded a Chelsea victory) and practicing for what I'll be up to a week from tonight (atonal dirges FTW) so I've not had a chance to recap last weekend.

Saturday began upstairs in Whelan's for Phosphorescent's early gig. I've been talking up Matthew Houck a lot since a friend mentioned him to me a couple of months ago. The more I listen to his most recent album the more I've become enamoured with it. Live and solo Houck's songs become less ambient and spacey and take on a more folkish tinge and his haunting falsetto becomes something much more raw and seemed constantly on the verge of cracking in a really enticing way. Backed only by a loop pedal and his skills at doing overdubs Houck built his voice up into a choir on a couple of occasions to great effect. I enjoyed it a great deal but it was quite different from what I thought I'd be hearing. He's planning on returning to Ireland in July or August with a full band so hopefully when he does things will sound a little more similar to how they do on record.

Following that I headed down to Andrew's Lane Theatre (my first time there and a really nice venue, good sound if you're not right up the front and as such beyond the PA speakers but boo to toilet attendants) and arrived midway through Crayonsmith's set. I don't think I've ever, in all the many many times that I've seen them play (which is seemingly at at about 20% of every gig I've been at in the past year), enjoyed them as much as I did last Saturday. With the release of their new album they really seem to have upped their game and with an upcoming US tour with Islands in the coming months booked they could win some friends when they're over there.

But the main reason I was there ... Why?. Aside from the unsettling sight of Yoni Wolf playing drums whilst standing which is just entirely unnatural and wrong but something that I'll concede is more of a personal foible on my part pretty much the only complaint I have about the gig was the absence from the setlist of "Fatalist Palmestry" a.k.a. my favourite song of the year to date, everything else was brilliant. The set dipped pretty evenly into material from this year's Alopecia and earlier stuff which seemed to keep recent converts such as myself and long time devotees happy. Possibly the best gig I've been to this year but certainly the best crowd that I've been a part of in 2008. Quite different from the somewhat cowed audience at Sebadoh a few days earlier I doubt there was a moments silence the whole night. The band merely needed to stand around doing nothing for more than 10 seconds before the audience filled the void with cheers from all around the room.

Afterwards everyone I spoke to, be it other bloggers, promoters, ordinary Joe punters or band members remarked on how hot for Why? the audience had been. I think perhaps things have been a little subdued around Dublin of late because booking agents have figured out that they can book their bands in midweek slots in the city when they're on tour and they know that a crowd will show up. It occurs to me that I've not been to that many gigs by foreign bands on a Saturday recently and the fact that there was no work to go to for most attendees might have let them cut loose a little more. It certainly impressed the band as afterwards I heard Yoni Wolf say that thy were touring Europe again in October and would be telling their agent to make sure they're booked to play Ireland again when they are.

Sunday wasn't as music heavy with a much more manageable single gig to go to, the launch of So Cow's second album I'm Siding With My Captors in Anseo. Support was from Big Monster Love who at this point I've seen play about 8 times now. During his set I found myself considering and not for the first time just how good BML's songs are; funny, lovelorn with really nice but simple melodies and came to a conclusion about them. Brian Kelly then articulated the exact same thing that I'd concluded as he began his set which pisses me off a little as it makes me sound like I'm biting So Cow's shit but fuckit. No one in Ireland writes better songs than Big Monster Love does and anyone that has any sort of affection for the ultra lo-fi stylings of Daniel Johnson or Jeffrey Lewis really needs to make the effort to seek out his music. As for So Cow, Jesus does he like to talk, the gig seemed to me to be equal parts spoken word show incorporating a mid-set Q&A session and "nonsense punk". Despite how entertaining a racounteur Kelly is it's really when he plays his tunes that things take off. Using by an iPod for backing tracks he manages to overcome the general lameness of doing such a thing with ease by putting as much effort and energy into his set as most 4-pieces would and capped off a great weekend of music in the city perfectly. The album by the way is good. A little more raw than his previous ablum from last year (and so prolific is he that his next will be out in October), there's less interesting synth sounds but there's no end of spikey pop goodness on it.

Oh and on Monday night Arsenal bitchslapped Derby 6-2. It's hard to get excited about it.

First Impressions: Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer

With the exception of the "I swear we'll record it this year, no seriously" new Wrens album* the 2008 record that I've most been anticipating is the follow up to Wolf Parade's Apologies To The Queen Mary. Notwithstanding that it's one of the finest albums of the decade, on top of that the band's 2 principle songwriters have since its release been responsible for writing 3 ¹/₃ fantastic records (Dan Boeckner made an album with his wife as The Handsome Furs last year and Spencer Krug has put out the second and third Sunset Rubdown albums as well as writing about 33% of Swan Lake's Beast Moans with Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes and Destroyer's Dan Bejer). Despite really liking those records though whenever I listened to them I felt somewhat that they were missing each other. Plague Park didn't have the sort of hooks that Krug excels at and I can't help but wonder how some of the more bombastic moments of the 2 Sunset Rubdown albums would sound if they had snatches of Boeckner's bestial guitar playing cutting through them.

So after a lengthy gestation period which saw the band write and reject a number of songs that sounded too much like what they've done before along comes At Mount Zoomer, written during lengthy improvisational sessions held in the same converted church outside Montreal which Arcade Fire made Neon Bible in. And it really does sound like it was written during long improvisational sessions because there are times when it seems to be to be quite unfocussed. And at this point it doesn't seem to be as good as Apologies ..., nor for that matter anything else any of them have done since. That's not to say that it's a bad album, far from it. "Language City", "California Dreamer" and "Call It A Ritual" (a song I didn't particularly like when I first heard it a few weeks ago but which within the album itself works) are all fine songs but previously Wolf Parade have been at their best when they've written what are essentially pop songs, albeit ones that are unconventionally arranged.

They seem to have taken a deliberate step away from that sort of composing here and let themselves be a little less restricted in where they've taken the songs. The results are for the most part a little more flabby then they could have been had they edited the songs a little and cut a minute or so off of a few of them.

MP3: Wolf Parade - An Animal In Your Care from At Mount Zoomer. Removed at the request of Sub Pop records.
MP3: Wolf Parade - Call it a ritual from At Mount Zoomer.

* Why must you taunt me so Mexico? How have I displeased you?