June 18, 2008
· Filed under American, Irish, Vicar Street, plus · Tagged Dan Deacon, Deerhunter, High Places, Jape, White Williams
The ground’s been covered by others already, and I’ve fallen into the bad habit of writing way too much about everything, so I’m going to do one sentence reviews of all the bands from the Future Days festival, which was a good night in general.
High Places - Their one good song was good, if just as muddy as everything else.
White Williams – Shite Williams
Deerhunter – I wanted to like them, but they did not grab me.
Dan Deacon – The best holiday entertainer ever, and my vote for world-wide funmaker.
Jape – Tried bit hard at the start, before busting out the perennially great Floating and sliding easily and brilliantly to the finishing line.
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November 24, 2007
· Filed under Crawdaddy, Irish, plus · Tagged Jape
Went to see Jape again in Crawdaddy last night. No fruit was flung, many songs were sung, some weren’t sung at all but merely banged out with all the unselfconscious aplomb of Scooter covering lo-fi indie rock. I like Jape. He pulled a strange crowd too. Definitely older than the average Crawdaddy gig crowd, but it was Friday and I suppose the short-lived NME Ireland thing probably helped him in those quarters.
One person was clearly on ecstasy. She was blowing in the wind and making shapes in the air and generally raving it up for the whole gig, but scarily she smashed a pint glass and then didn’t notice that she was dancing barefoot on broken glass. She seemed happy enough though.
Jape-wise, Phil Lynott the song is still ridiculous to anyone who doesn’t worship the name of Phil Lynott, but At The Heart Of All This Strangeness (I think that’s the title – the only other soft one) was really good, and had the Friday night crowd shushing each other. Haunting stuff, and a really unusual chord in there somewhere.
Floating was banging. It’s just instant gratification, alternative pop at its best. He has a couple of those, not so good but on the way. And he has a couple of ones where the lyrics render the song unlikeable. That’s the trade-off when you’re working on that kind of level of honesty, that sort of conversational thing.
It can go terribly wrong, like when it’s about Phil Lynott (sorry! Comedy song!), but the first lines of Floating are poetry.
We took our first pill when the music was shit.
We said “Fuck dancing all night”, but then we did it.
FIRST USE OF BLOCKQUOTE FUNCTION. Good gig.
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October 3, 2007
· Filed under Irish, Tripod, hwch, plus · Tagged Jape
Jape was pretty bangin’ as Sunday’s headliner. I can say bangin’ just this once, because Richie Egan spent the best part of his set pointing in the air or raising his fist in a way that would lead one to believe he wanted to be called bangin’. It was my first time hearing Jape, strangely enough, and I was seconds away from the last bus home before deciding to actually wait and see. I’ll explain to you what I was expecting, and what I got. Jape has always been described to me as an “electronic” artist, and the closest I came to encountering him/them was at Whelans when I was in the bar and there was pounding bass coming from the venue. So I was expecting some techno, basically. I didn’t get it. Jape is as much rock as it is electro. Not that that’s a problem. The best thing about Jape anyway, all things and genres considered, is the lyrics. He has a rare frankness and an ability to make you go “haha” or “fuck” or “…” with every second line he sings. I’m not sure I’d pay 20 euro to see him alone because of the sort of vestiges of 90s-ness about it all, but I think he was worth the extra 2.20 the Nightlink cost me at least.
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The ground’s been covered by others already, and I’ve fallen into the bad habit of writing way too much about everything, so I’m going to do one sentence reviews of all the bands from the Future Days festival, which was a good night in general.