Everyone you meet is not better than you.

I’m not, in day to day life, Jeffrey Lewis’ biggest fan. It’s not because I don’t like his music, I just never spent any time with it for some reason. I did however see him supporting HRH Stephen Malkmus last year in Tripod, and I was enthralled.

Take one part Moldy Peaches-y New York anti-folk, add in one part US slacker punk. Mix in an obsession with comic books, and take away most of the cocaine, pills and alcohol that Adam Green seems like he’s on. Add some bizarre, image-accompanied factual songs about the history of communism or, on that occasion, the Creeping Brain.

That’s Jeffrey Lewis, or the ingredients for Jeffrey Lewis in any case. Saw him in Crawdaddy on Wednesday night, and it was surprisingly packed out.

The Invisible Tour Guide

With his reputation in tatters, his career all but over, and his fürstlich acquaintances abandoning him at an alarming rate, everyone’s erstwhile favourite blue-blooded populariser of Dublin’s fine arts, Byron Chaffinch Frump, clings obstinately to the one final thing he can be sure of:

Eleven foot lizardmen from the Bacchanalian dimension are among us and threatening everything we hold dear.

Adrian Crowley at the Sugar Club

On a whim (and an offer of free entry) I made my way to the Sugar Club last night.

It was a night of firsts. The first time I was ever in the Sugar Club, for example. That place is weird. Waitress service to the tables DURING the gigs, and a soft, warm colour scheme that almost makes your face feel fuzzy. Felt like I should be watching a particularly glib stand up comedian.

Also the first time I’ve been directly stung by the cancellation of mid-week Nitelinks, leading to a twenty minute traipse to the nearest lend of taxi fare.

But primarily it was the first time I ever saw Adrian Crowley.

Record Store Day

Clockwise from top left: Sky Larkin - The Golden Spike; So Cow - So Cow; Young Galaxy - Young Galaxy; Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band EP; Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Zero.

It was Record Store Day on Saturday. Here’s the Those Geese agenda for talking about it:

• What I bought and where I bought it, with early evaluations.
• What I saw and where I saw it, with reviews.
• Was Record Store Day good – in the sense of being an enjoyable day.
• Is Record Store Day good – a ruse or genuinely something worth having?

HEALTH in capital letters.

Photo by Cáit Fahey.

Going to see a reasonably well-known band that you haven’t really listened to can be an interesting pursuit. It’s the stuff festivals are made of, obviously, but it’s just as fun the other nine months of the year. It works on expectations, really. Obviously, if you’re going to see a band that some of your friends like, or that have been talked about by people, blogs, magazines or sites you respect, you’re going to have a store of plusses and minuses in your head before you begin. An imaginary checklist of presumptions that you can tick off as you go, correct or incorrect according to the infinitely more nuanced reality of a band playing live compared with how you think it’s going to be in your head.

I had a whole cache of these assumptions for HEALTH. Want a list?

Taking the bait

It’s not list season right now, but after seeing Nialler9′s unordered top fifty Irish acts right now, and Hardcore For Nerds’ ordered top fifteen (both of which surpassed the Irish Times list by being a bit more sensitive to the now rather than the lifetime pass) I am finding it hard to avoid taking the bait and throwing in my two cents.

If the words are incidental, then why’s what you write so mental?

Photo by Loreana Rushe @ myleftventricle.wordpress.com

There are only so many times you can beat a drum before it just turns into background noise. Nonetheless, this is as good a time as any to say (for the millionth time, possibly) that So Cow is potentially better than sliced bread, that he would be number one in my version of Jim Carroll/Nialler9/Hardcore For Nerds‘ list of best Irish bands right now, and that going to see a So Cow gig is always a great thing to do.

Saturday at the Box Social

So on Saturday I made the pilgrimage to the Box Social in the alluringly mysterious venue of “Behind No. 236 South Circular Road”. Sure enough, when you make it to 236 South Circular Road, you are met with a sign on the door telling you, conspiratorially, to go round the back. Some secret business that can’t happen in front of the eyes of the masses.

Inaugural Podcast! Other News!

To hear the inaugural Those Geese podcast, click here. Music by everyone from Wire to Wavves, all is explained if you follow the link.

Also, after two years of inexplicably unhelpful tagging, you can now use the tag cloud at the side of the page to find, for example, everything that has been written about Animal Collective or Why? since this blog began.

As a not-that-regularly-updated blog, I suppose I have to rely primarily on the fact that I put in a sustained effort over a sustained period, so it’s nice to think that if people want to find two and a half years’ worth of opinion on Fight Likes Apes or Of Montreal or So Cow, then they can.

Enjoy!