"To be modern, I said, is to experience personal and social life as a
maelstrom, to find one's world and oneself in perpetual disintegration
and renewal, trouble and anguish, ambiguity and contradiction: to be
part of a universe in which all that is solid melts into air.To be a
modernist is to make oneself somehow at home in the maelstrom, to make
its rhythms one’s own, to move within its currents in search of the
forms of reality, of beauty, of freedom, of justice, that its fervid and
perilous flow allows." Marshall Berman
My good friend Louise is holding a charity quiz tomorrow night in the
Harcourt Hotel in aid of Habitat for Humanity's El Salvador home
building project . But wait, I hear you say, isn't it Arthur's Day
tomorrow? Of course my friends and what better way to stick it to
blatant commercialism by not partaking in an organised advertisement
party but to give instead to a worthy charity -whilst impressing all
with your general knowledge skills.
Louise is not long
back from a 7 year stint in Montreal. She is showing us all up now with
her half marathons and charity nights so I need your help in showing her
that, hey we can be all zesty and do-goody too yknow!Pffft.
Harcourt Hotel 7.30pm
Team Size: 4
Donation: €10/person
Drinks Promotions: €3 beer, €4 glass of wine, €5 cocktails!
I had a lovely weekend at Castlepalooza in Tullamore. All I can say is thank god for a short week as I felt like I had been run over by a truck on Monday and came home to discover the pub I had just moved in above is in fact an early house. An early house that plays bad music really loudly. Music that is only sonically outdone by the occasional drunken 'woooo' of an appreciative lush . Oh Joy. Luckily I had just had my fill of good music and lovely people so was forgiving.
So back to Castlepalooza, I had never been before and was surprised at how small it was. Good small. Picturesque and friendly. You could nip back to your tent in no time and there was always something to see and I met some of the loveliest ladies in the loo queue.
My highlights: Moths started it off brilliantly, we gathered momentum at The Minutes, Django Django were great , Kid Karate revived us on Sunday, Adbeisi Shank were absolutely mental, These Charming Men made me nostalgic and Naughty By Nature finished it all off nicely.
There was so much to see on Sunday that I am looking at it as training for Electric Picnic - try not to peak on the first night being the main lesson.
The only low point was on arrival when we didn't realise the bus would drive you up the driveway and walked the length of it with our heavy four man tent and bags, arriving slightly sweating and dying for a drink. It was a long road but as I said, training.
I must admit I spied the table of good looking people before I knew who they were when I walked into Green 19 on Saturday to meet my friends for a quick pre-gig dinner. I tried not to look but there were at least four or five tall, blonde ridiculously attractive males. 'That's Lykke Li' my friend whispered. Craning my head around in my most subtle attempt I saw the pretty little Swede nursing an esspresso amid these chisled Scandinavian models, I mean band members. Everybody at their table was dressed head to toe in black. As they all got up to go, slinking out in a sea of leather and dirty blonde hair I couldn't help be reminded of the Buffy episode (nerd alert) when Xander became part Hyena, and accumulated a posse of sexy, bad, cool people. Skulking around in black, being all... cool 'n' stuff.
Turns out this was all part of a bigger plan. Lykke Li's stage in Tripod is theatrical, eerie, slightly menacing and very black. With long black drapes, smoke and a whole-lotta drums. Why have one sexy drummer when you can have two.
Lykke Li is gorgeous, dressed like a vampy witch, but in a good way and occasionally disappears behind the drapes, reappearing dramatically banging the symbols by her side. She's a confident performer and a slick little dancer but her new album is full of much slower, sadder songs than before ('Sadness is my boyfriend'-Aww, bless) and are somewhat drowned out in this venue. At times the levels of chat border on embarrassing.
'Most people scream and shout at this part' she teases before one song, and the crowd kick into gear a little. There were many having a great night however, the guy next to me knows all the words to every song and nearly has a conniption, jumping up onto his friends shoulders for the hit song 'Get Some'.
While I am not a huge fan of her music it was a nice and sultry gig that hovered somewhere between fun and dark but perhaps would've been better served up in a smaller venue or with a more focused audience.
I was lucky enough to get a ticket for the sold out James Blake Whelan's gig a few weeks back. I didn't pick the best spot, stuck as I was behind three very tall men. I wonder what the gig etiquette of tall people is? Should they be limited to one tall friend each per gig? I think this needs to be explored.
From the short glimpses I managed to steal he looks like quite the posh English public school boy, tall, neat, with a short choppy hair style airing on the quiffy side. What a whopper of a voice though. Surprisingly powerful and soulful. If you couldn't see him, and I couldn't, you could certainly feel him. The gorgeous and heartbreaking emotion in his voice on songs like 'I never learnt to share' and 'Why don't you call me'.
And if the emotion didn't get to you then the vibrations certainly did. The bass and dubstep rhythms passed straight though your bones, washing over you, shaking your very being. All there was to do was be still, listen and feel. Very soothing actually, almost numbing to your ears with the air being palpable and thick with sound.
Then there was 'that' Fiest cover, 'Limit to your love'. Worth the wait when it finally came, teasing us at parts with extra long breaks, leaving us waiting for the piano hook to return. No encore for us, sure wouldn't that be greedy?
'Sold out? WTF!?' Says an incredulous Thom Powers to the packed out Button Factory on Saturday March 5th. New Zealand's five piece, The Naked and Famous were touring their electro-pop/rock outfit ahead of the release of their debut album, 'Passive me, aggressive you'. Should he really have been surprised though? Their single 'Young Blood' debuted at number one in the New Zealand charts last year and was on heavy rotation in this hemisphere on radio along with equally strong singles 'Punching in a dream' and 'All of this'. They were also featured on the BBC sounds of 2011 list.
They were an interesting looking bunch and to blatantly pigeon-hole their style there's a nerd, a jock, a pretty indie girl, a rock n roll drummer and ... a mullet haired 70's style rocker. They got straight down to business and offering up early on a few of their singles, 'All of this' and 'Punching in a dream' to an ecstatic crowd, singers Thom Powers and Alisa Xayalith sharing the vocals mostly in unison over their pumped up synth-pop.
It's clear these antipodeans are talented in the art of writing summery anthem-like songs, with 'Young Blood' being the penultimate. Instantly recognisable intro leading you in, building the excitement, then they hit you with the sugary electro-pop with just enough guitar and thumping bass to rock out to and with a catchy, sing-a-longable chorus. They could probably boast the best use of the word 'yeah' this side of hip hop, breathing new life into what is the most commonly used and meaningless lyric filler. A perfect and uplifting crowd pleaser.
Though they're great at melting into dreamy echos not all their tracks achieve the same dizzy heights as the upbeat numbers so they may need to pull another few gems out of the bag and be wary not to disappear under some of the more subdued tracks where the use of high pitched, floaty but muted vocals can get a bit sam-ey. Basically a can we have a little less of the passive and a bit more of that lovely aggression.
