Blog: Thrill Pier

This is a bit of a short notice one but Times New Viking are playing Whelan's on Saturday and thanks to Urchin PR I've got a double pass to give away for the gig. It's a pretty strong lineup on the night with Lovvers (who I'd be more into seeing) also playing. To be in with a chance to win the tickets send your answer to this question to thrillpiercomp@gmail.com with the subject "TNV". Times New Viking are from Ohio, name the best band from Ohio ever*? [...]

As things turned out the first 2 nights out last week only served as an appetiser for the main course to come at the weekend. Actually, that doesn't work at all, I'm about to write about 2 gigs. And they can't both be a main course. The point is that they were both very, very good. Friday night saw The Tallest Man On Earth finally make his debut in Dublin. A quick look though the archives just now reveals that I've been shiteing on about him on this blog for 16 months now. [...]

Following an impressive showing here last April William Elliott Whitmore returns to Dublin on Sunday to play Whelan's and thanks to Foggy Notions who are bringing him back over I've got a double pass to give away for the gig. Support on the night comes from Squarehead who I saw play a very impressive set in Anseo a couple of Sundays ago. To be in with a chance to win the tickets send your answer to this question to thrillpiercomp@gmail.com with the subject "W.E. Whitmore". What is the name William Elliott Whitmore's most [...]

Thanks to the people at Foggy Notions I've got a double pass for David Kitt's gig in Whelan's on Friday night (18th). Support on the night is from Fatcat Records' Get Back Guinozzi from France. To be in with a chance to win the tickets send your answer to this question to thrillpiercomp@gmail.com with the subject "Kittser". What is the name of the Sonic Youth song that was on David Kitt's covers album? Entry to the competition will close on Thursday morning and the winner [...]

No Electric Picnic for me this year. With a lineup featuring only 3 acts that I would have dearly loved to see (and all of whom I'd seen before) it was hard to justify the expense to see them and then take a look at whatever stuff I'd have been interested in checking out. Fortunately there was loads of great stuff happening around Ireland in the past week by way of an alternative. Recreating The Somme in a field in Laois, who needs it? First up on Monday evening was Okkervil River in Galway's [...]

By a long long long way my favourite new band of 2009 will play their first Irish dates in November. When I'll be out of the country, bugger. 14 Nov, Crawdaddy, Dublin 15 Nov, Aunt Annie's, Belfast Why there are mountains gets a re-release on October 26th.

More excitingly from my perspective Frightened Rabbit are the support on all dates. 4 Dec, Black Box, Galway 5 Dec, Dolans Warehouse, Limerick 7 Dec, Academy, Dublin 8 Dec, Academy, Dublin 9 Dec, Spring & Airbrake, Belfast

2 years ago Goodtime John took himself off to Anacortes, Washington (lovely part of the world the Pacific Northwest) to work with Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie/The Microphones. The results of the sessions is Goodtime's new EP Dark Slipped Its Cloak . You can download it for free (with artwork) here . Lie Ins is the the new project from Groom front man Mike Stevens and one of the band's drummers Ruan Van Vliet (also the brains, if not the talent behind Ireland's best music blog ). The pair played their first gig [...]

Somebody should bring these guys over to play. But only if everyone is given about 4 dried grams of Magic Mushrooms on the way in.

Over on the Those Geese blog the opening line of Karl's review of Deerhunter's recent Dublin gig reads ... Deerhunter played Whelan's last night. I suppose, if yours was a generally systemic view of history, you'd say that this is because Deerhunter always play in Ireland. If one were so inclined to make it a similar charge could be made against Justin Vernon. The past 16 months has seen Vernon come to Ireland 4 times as/as part of Bon Iver, 3 times in Dublin last [...]

This is one that I'm really looking forward to. The Tallest Man On Earth's name being on the bill was basically the thing that finally prompted me to book a ticket for Primavera earlier in the year and he did not let me down. Kristian Matsson dominates a stage like no single guy with an acoustic guitar has any business doing and live his intricate guitar picking stands up to how impressive it sounds on record. By the end of the set the small crowd that was there to see him at the start had swelled massively [...]

Following up from a pretty fantastic opening slot for Dan Deacon in Andrews Lane Theatre back in May (on the first night when I saw them anyway) Future Islands are back in Dublin next Wednesday playing the Upstairs venue in Whelan's and thanks to the good people at Foggy Notions and Urchin PR I've got a double pass to give away for the gig. Support on the night is from Ear Pwr. To be in with a chance win one of them send your answer to this really easy question to thrillpiercomp@gmail.com with "Future Islands" in the [...]

Tuesday December 1st. The Acadamy. Tickets (€33) on sale tomorrow at 9AM. The lead single from Julian Plenti is...Skyscraper is probably the best thing that Paul Banks has done in years but I found the rest of the album to be quite so so. The closing track owes a huge debt to Mogwai oddly enough.

As part of their intro to "Everything In It's Right Place."

Everyone's favourite Norwegian gothic folk banjo and musical saw duo Thinguma*jigSaw will be back in Dublin on October 6th playing in the Joinery Gallery in Stonybatter. Support on the night comes from Sport Murphy (whose music sounds very promising on MySpace) & Arlt .

Between Thursday and Saturday last week I managed to catch 4 gigs and 9 bands in 3 nights. Pretty good going I think, who needs the Electric Picnic this weekend? First up was Wilco in Vicar Street on Thursday. It's been a while, 10 months or so since I was last in that venue and it only hit me when I saw the music shop's worth of gear on stage and the racks of guitars mounted off to both sides of it (I stopped counting at 27) that Wilco are a seriously different level to most [...]

The Happiness Of Being Twice. Future Islands play Upstairs in Whelans on September 9th with Ear Pwr and We Cut Corners, in fact, here's an Ear Pwr song for good measure.

She wrote lots of famous songs. These are 2 of them ...

There's 294 of them. That's a lot. List here .

The Antlers rececently re-released their wonderful album Hospice on Frenchkiss records and thanks to the awesome additional PR power of having one of the dudes from Les Savy Fav behind them they've been getting a bit more attention out of releasing the album for the second time (Best New Music on Pitchfork don'tcha know?). They've got a few gigs going on in the UK early next month but in spite of much blog (Torturegarden, On The Record) and newspaper (Jim Carroll at the Irish Times) love here there's no sign of an Irish date for them. [...]