Month: December 2016

The end of the final day of Other Voices is always one of reflection and consideration: how did the weekend go? Was it any good, did you see and hear new things, or was it too familiar for you? What were the good points, the bad points, the in-between points, the need-to-fix-it points, the if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it points?

Whatever you feel about the aforementioned queries, there’s little doubt in anyone’s mind that once again Other Voices pulled the rabbits out of the hat. There were two most obvious reasons why. The first was the virtually all-Irish line-up in St. James Church. Not since the early years of the annual music festival has Other Voices so steered its course towards home. There are likely reasons for this, and we’re guessing it’s because of the event’s recent visit to Austin, Texas, where they staged an OV shindig that focused on US artists. A strategy evolved out of that meeting of musicians, and so instead of having – as per usual – an international line-up at the church interspersed with Irish acts, the opposite happened. No doubt we will see the two worlds combine in 2017, when the televised results of the two events on each side of the Atlantic will be broadcast. The second most obvious reason was the emergence of the Music Trail as a standalone reason to visit Dingle.

Now in its fourth year, the Music Trail started off as an adjunct to the church performances – a small series of gigs benefitting those people that couldn’t get into St James for love or money. And yet within a very short space of time, the Music Trail took on a life of its own – first doubling and then trebling the band count. This year, over 70 music acts performed all across Dingle (and even beyond, due to the inaugural Music Trail West, which took bus loads of music fans out beyond the town’s boundaries to venues in the likes of Ventry, Ballyferriter, and the Blasket Islands Centre), and there was hardly one pub or bar that wasn’t utilised in some way to provide a stage or a pulpit. This year, also, the gigs along the Music Trail were rammed to the rafters, which indicated one and one thing only: what was once the best kept secret in Ireland is a best kept secret no longer.

What happens next is anyone’s guess, but we can be reasonably sure of one thing, and that is – as far as we’re familiar with the laws of physics – Dingle can’t get any bigger. In other words, any fears we might have of the event – by virtue of its success – biting off more than it can chew is contained by the town’s literal size and infrastructure. There are only so many hotels, guesthouses and B&Bs with only so many rooms. It is important to remember that unlike, say, Sea Sessions in Bundoran in June, no one in their right mind is going to camp on Inch or Ventry beaches in December just because they want to be Other Voices. In other words, the numbers can’t rise too much because the town in the depths of winter can only receive so many visitors.

Of course, this is semi conjecture based on loose theory. The fact remains that Other Voices is still the best small music festival most of us have ever been to. It has aspects to it that we just don’t experience elsewhere: great contemporary restaurants, fantastic authentic pubs, an increasing number of cool coffee places, very welcoming people, a real sense of well known people walking its streets and frequenting its hostelries without fear of being shoehorned into a corner for a selfie – and the best concentrated level of music in the calendar year. Yes, it is a music fans paradise, but it is also a musician’s retreat. On the three nights I had dinner in three different restaurants, you had the likes of Imelda May, Glen Hansard, Rusangano Family, Kojey Radical, Lisa Hannigan, Annie Mac, and All Tvvins happily sitting down eating their meals without worrying about being bothered. That says a lot about the convivial nature of Dingle, and it says even more about the casual overseeing demeanour of Other Voices. Everyone is here to enjoy themselves as themselves, not to get caught up in the often silly intricacies of the fame game.

Any more thoughts? Just this one: thanks to Other Voices’ partners such as IMRO, we are able to enjoy the best small music festival in Ireland, and one of the best of its level in the world. That’s a fact, and I’ll arm wrestle anyone who disagrees with me. Oh, and one more thing – we’re already looking forward to next year’s IMRO Other Room. Prepare to be impressed – again.

Tony Clayton-Lea

Day Two at Eir Other Voices means a full afternoon at An Chonair Bar, where the IMRO Other Room plays host to six Irish music acts that are way past the Battle Of The Bands stages in their career, and where even the most casual of music lover can determine that what they’re listening to is of a definite quality.

Starting proceedings is Dublin indie/folk singer-songwriter Ailbhe Reddy, who was the winner of this year’s public vote for inclusion at IMRO Other Room. Reddy has been mooching around the fringes of something bigger than the usual level of acceptance for some time, and judging by her performance here she is clearly on the right path to gaining a wider audience. Songs such as Jackie, Distrust, Enough, and Disconnect highlight a knack for well-constructed tunes that are given weight by lyrics that seem much more personal than usual. Reddy’s stage presence is also firm and assured, and the overall impression is of an up-and-coming talent ready to run away with the prize.

Reddy was followed by Fangclub, and you really couldn’t get two more diverse and polar opposite acts (this is a good thing, by the way – variety being the spice of life, etc). Fangclub? Frankly, there are few enough really good rock bands around. By good, I mean the kind of bands that are well versed in song construction and dynamics. Too many musicians in too many bands make the mistake of hurriedly filling in the spaces between the notes, but not Fangclub. From North County Dublin, this three-piece avoids clutter like the plague. All of their songs might reference bands we have heard before (Foo Fighters and Nirvana spring to mind), but there’s something particularly brilliant and different going on here. Whether it’s the perfectly placed wiry guitar lick (so good it makes you smile each time you hear it) or the strategically situated monster-riff, Fangclub’s songs are terrific.

After a batch of rock music so hard hitting, you’re wondering what comes next. A new band? A new name? Moon Looks On is exactly these. Less than a year ago, they played their first gig as a band, and while for some they may have been unknown quantities, they won’t be for long – simply put, this was a revelatory performance. The easy outline for Moon Looks On is a bit of Van Morrison mixed with a bit of The Waterboys, stir, bring to boil, simmer, and serve. In other words, there’s a swagger to the way they walk, and there’s a structural looseness to the songs that’s always on the right side of looseness. Songs such as Gypsy Fires, Bobbing On A Wave and Come Lay With Me are underpinned by chiming keyboards, wayfaring fiddle runs, and the highly engaging front-of-house vocalist, Stephen Gormley.

Next on the line-up is Cry Monster Cry, a sibling band (Richie and Jamie Martin, take a bow) that know how to engage an audience – “come up closer to the stage, and make room for people in the back,” advised the singer, communicating effortlessly in a way that makes you think he was born to be a performer. Cry Monster Cry’s songs are the epitome of really good and likeable pop/folk (of which I’ll Be Here When The Morning Comes is a fine example) that rolls along like a well-oiled truck. What’s more than worthy about a band like this, however, is that there isn’t a pretentious bone to be found (believe me, I looked). We need bands like Cry Monster Cry, frankly, because they focus on the here and now, and of what matters, in a way that’s readily understandable. And besides, what’s not to like about a band that covers a Beach Boys song in December?

What’s also not to like about a band that has taken its name from a Pink Floyd song (in this case Echoes, from PF’s 1971 album, Meddle – although the lyric itself is associated with Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner). One of the few bands around that add something to the intricate matrix that is post-rock, Overhead, The Albatross play to a totally stuffed IMRO Other Room. The extent of their popularity is such that the demographic is much broader than you might think, and so we have music fans of all ages shaking a limb to the band’s amazing fusion of multi-layered music that interlaces developing streams of electronics, fluid guitar and a skintight rhythm section. The result is widescreen, soaring melodies that make your head float. Truly remarkable.

Bringing it down a notch, and also bringing the six music act afternoon to close was Roisin O, a singer and songwriter that, possibly, has the highest profile of today’s batch. Sometimes, it’s better to take the softly-softly approach rather than by the get-’em-quickly method. A case in point is Roisin, who has balanced ambition with patience in a way that others should take notice of. That she has also more than successfully shrugged off her family connection (unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past five years, you’ll know that her mother is acclaimed singer Mary Black, and her brother is Danny O’Reilly, of the equally praised Irish rock band, The Coronas) is more than admirable. The music, then, is as you would expect: really well formed pop/rock delivered with a sure touch and with suitably professional composure.

Tony Clayton-Lea

Another year, another Other Voices event, and what do we have? You would have thought – reasonably, fairly – by now that there were no more surprises in the Other Voices bag; that in the event’s 15th year (or is it 16th – time passes so quickly), there wasn’t much more to do except trade on former glories, trade on its name, depend on old reliables to turn up, deliver the goods and then get the hell out of Dodge (or Dingle) before anyone copped on that they’d just witnessed the same-old/same-old. Yet as we have seen, year after year, surprises keep being delivered.

The first interesting shock of this year is the line-up of the acts performing at St James Church – In many ways, this year’s Other Voices directly references its early Irish roots with a predominantly native line-up. The amount of Irish acts in the church is revealing – it highlights just how genuinely vibrant the Irish music scene is. The acts include Lisa Hannigan, All Tvvins, Imelda May, Rusangano Family, Le Galaxie, Saint Sister, Caoimhin O’Raghallaigh & Cormac Begley, Girl Band, Rejjie Snow, and Pixie Geldof (she’s definitely one of ours, so no arguing!). The only non-Irish acts of the weekend performing were on Friday – California’s Margaret Glaspy and London’s Kojey Radical, more about which later.

I was at the church last night (the only time I go to church is when I’m in Dingle), and watched in awe and admiration the blend of cultures, music and mindsets. The evening got off to a brilliant native start with Caoimhin O Raghallaigh and Cormac Begley, two young Irish musicians that are making sure to ruffle feathers with traditional music that is rooted in the source but which is invested with the kind of current why-the-feck-not attitude of young bucks. That they are able to plough two furrows at the same time isn’t necessarily alarming, but it is pretty damned brilliant. Trad music for people who think they don’t like trad music? Bring it on.

And then arrived the enthusiastic and effusive Californian singer-songwriter, Margaret Glaspy, who delivered a really smart set of alt.pop at the church, with all manner of good pop vibes filtered throughout the short gig. Glaspy – looking uber smart in a shiny jacket that sparkled under the spotlights – performed superb songs from her recently released album, Emotions And Math, concluded her set with a Lauren Hill song (Ex Factor) that was both subtle and spectacular. Not much of that about these days, is there?

The second half of the church gigs featured two musicians that came from different ends of the spectrum but which produced thought provoking and terrific displays of talent. London hip-hop/spoken word performer Kojey Radical delivered righteous and thoughtful hip-hop with precision and passion, all of it underpinned with an astute and intuitive sense of jazz-driven melody that referenced Bruce Hornsby as much as Steely Dan.

Pixie Geldof, on the other hand, performed several songs that simmered under the church lights. Unlike her famous Irish father, she wasn’t very talkative, but her seductive and subtle songs made up for the lack of between-song banter.

Of course, before and after the church gigs there are the many gigs in many of the town’s pubs and bars. You can see that this year in particular the Music Trail has come into its own, and is now such an integral part of Other Voices that if it were, for some unexplainable reason, to disappear off the face of the Earth, then Other Voices simply wouldn’t be the same. It kicked off on Friday at 5pm with the soulful Farah Elle (at Nellie Fred’s) and concluded with a surprise appearance at An Chonair Bar at 1am with The Rusangano Family. One word: Jaysus!

Today (Saturday) is when IMRO gets involved. IMRO has been a supporter of Other Voices for many years, and IMRO’s Other Room once again allows Irish acts to shine brightly. In tomorrow’s blog post, I’ll be reviewing all of the IMRO Other Rom acts (Aibhle Reddy, Cry Monster Cry, Fangclub, Overhead, The Albatross, Moon Looks On, and Roisin O) performing at An Chonair Bar.

Until then, take it easy, drink wisely, and dance responsibly!