Ahead of his appearance at the White Horse Session in Lahinch this evening, Andrew Hamilton chats to singer songwriter Pearse McGloughlin - the driving force behind Walkperson.
After serving his apprentership in band like Socialite and Thy Swan Army - Pearse McGloughlin has decided to go in alone. Well, sort of alone. For the last number of years Pearse be working and making music with an ever growing and evolving set of musicians - loosely tied together under the moniker Walkperson.
So where does exactly does Walkperson stop and Pearse McGloughlin begin.
“It’s an interesting question really. For the Lahinch gig it will be me, going under my own name but there are different musicians who will be with me for some of the other gigs. Walkperson is a fairly loose term - I kind of swing between being Pearse McGloughlin and being Walkperson. At the moment I am Walkperson but at other times there would be a few different talented musicians involved. It’s hard to say sometimes where Walkperson stops and Pearse McGloughlin begins…
Album five in the bag and The Prodigy have finally remembered how to relax. Ever since the breakthrough success of The Prodigy Experience, this bubblegum nuttercore collective have consistently managed to take themselves too seriously.
‘Invaders Must Die’ is an album of renewed freedom. Gone is the claustrophobia and musical paranoia that has been such a feature of the last 10 years and in it’s place is an album which takes the best of Liam Howlett’s slow musical evolution and combines it with that long lost taste for fun.
And by God does it work.
The record opens with title track Invaders Must Die taking about 15 seconds to warm up before it blow your ears (and maybe even your mind). But this is an album of innovation as well as rediscover fearlessness - and songs like Thunder, Colours, the surprisingly jazzy Warrior’s Dance and Run With the Wolves (featuring Dave Growl of all people), comfortable fit both boxes.
This is why we fell in love with the Prodigy Andrew Hamilton
Before considering the relative merits of what might, on the surface, seem a virtual non-event of an album - I think that it’s important to declare a few prejudices. You see, when the great ideological battle for Brit-Pop took place back in the heady summer of ‘94 - I was a Blur head.
So, despite not being a fan of essentially pointless compilation album, and the undoubted fact that this is an essentially pointless compilation album, I find myself torn between being two stools: loving this album and being a hypocrite.
It goes without saying that this album is back with stonking tune after stocking tune (but I would say that wouldn’t I) but is it worth parting with your hard earned cash?
All the predictable big sings are there, the album is decorated liberally with some of Blurs lesser known classics. Songs like Chemical World, She’s So High, Advert, Badhead for Tomorrow and (possibly my favourite Blur song) Blue Jeans make this album a very worthwhile trip down memory lane. Andrew Hamilton
Who could ever have predicted that we would be using the words “Nouvelle Vague” and “third album” in the same sentence but here we are, despite all the odds, welcoming another release from this odd little French collective.
While most artists might consider a covers album to be essentially a gimmick - the stuff of charity albums even - Nouvelle Vague have made this least praiseworthy of musical genres into somewhat of an art form.
Personally, I think it’s the French accents - to our brutish Irish, Anglo and American ears something sang or spoken with a French accent automatically has an air of authority about it - whither warranted or not.
So, what if anything is to be gained from an art-house version of God Save the Queen, Blister in the Sun or even Road to Nowhere? In truth not a lot, it’s the kind of thing you might stumble across in the sitting room of some ill-conceived or unlucky house party.
Still, like the house party, it’s relatively good natured and in the end nobody get hurts. That’s saying something right? Shane Murphy
Josh Ritter
Hello Starling (New Edition)
Independent Records
6/10
.
It’s very important not to say nasty things about Josh Ritter. He’s a very good musician, who in the past has written some really great songs - but more than that he’s a proper nice guy.
That’s why I’m just a little bit puzzled by his latest release. It’s Hello Starling (again) but now it’s a newly recorded solo acoustic version of the album with 3 or 4 older songs thrown in for good measure.
Unfortunately for Ritter, the sums of these new versions just doesn’t add up to anything new or tangible. Remember it’s not three years since he released his last live album - which featured most of these songs.
So why buy this record? Besides an admittedly stonking version of Kathleen (recorded in Dublin Castle in 2003) and a pretty decent Arnold Schwarzenegger impression there really isn’t much to recommend from this album - at least to the seasoned Ritter fan who will already own the back catalogue.
So lets have a proper new album, that’s what we all want. Andrew Hamilton
Composer, conductor, actor, artist and singer-songwriter - Julie Feeney has a solid claim to be the Renaissance woman of the Irish arts scene. Andrew Hamilton chats to the Choice Music Prize winning Galway woman about her latest album and finding her classical feet in a rock and pop world.
I think Kermit the Frog said it best - sometimes, it’s just not easy being green. While the similarities between our Kermie and Julie Feeney might not be immediately apparent, the two, surprisingly, do share some common ground.
Like Kermit, Feeney is a bit of a one off. As a classically trained musician, composer and vocalist, her CV might well have been rejected from rock and pop circles with one word stamped across the cover letter - overqualified.
In the recent past you see, classical and pop music and have a slightly stogy relationship. And like young teens at a disco, they have stared at each other from afar, each unsure of what to make of the other or what, if anything, to do next. There in the middle of that dance floor stands Julie Feeney.
“I have always felt in an odd place. I’m like the girl who was really really tall or someone who is tiny, or whatever. It’s about getting to that point when you can say to yourself that this is actually the way I am. I am 6 foot 7, that is the way that I came into the world,” she says.
As she returns from her second tour of duty entertaining the troops in Iraq, Andrew Hamilton chats about anything but politics with American country star Nell Bryden.
Outside the wind blows and the sand stirs. As the surprising cold of a spring Iraqi evening descends on the desert, the temperature inside the large makeshift canvass tent is beginning to rise. Ali Al Salem is a military airport, and like most military airports in this region it is filled with American soldier on their way to or from Afghanistan and Iraq.
The faces in the crowd are well worn - altered by what they have already seen or misshaped by the worry of what they are about to. But tonight is different, tonight is all about letting go.
Clearly starting to enjoy themselves, the soldier begin to sing along.
On stage Brooklyn girl Nell Bryden is starting to enjoy herself too. Caught up in the emotional release and the energy of the moment her mind races with excitement. ‘Louder, louder, I must play louder - I want everyone to hear’.
But the feeling is temporary, burst by an indescript noise a mile or more to the north. And just like that reality is restored, they are once again Americans in a warzone - with more enemies than fiends.
“For me it was all about leaving the politics to one side. I went over there as someone who wasn’t supportive of the war and I’m not someone who ever thought of themselves as a ra-ra patriot…
Ahead of their triumphant return west later this month, Andrew Hamilton chats to Ruairi Ferrie of Galway music perfectionists Dark Room Notes.
London’s Brick Lane is alive with people. Ancient and modern, it’s medieval cobble stone heaves under the weight of Bengali traders, Bangladeshi soothsayers and graffiti artist such as Banksy, D*Face and Ben Eine. Each plying their own particular art, each carving their own path.
Around the corner from the lane, in a small room with no windows, another group is doing it’s own thing. As the temperature rises in studio, Dark Room Notes are a band on a mission. Fourteen days to record fourteen songs can mean only one thing - pressure. But sometimes, a little pressure is no bad thing.
“That was Ciaran Bradshaw, our producers plan. We set up everything as we would do live in a rehearsal studio or on stage. We played and played and played the one song over and over again. In most cases we managed to get the song down that day,” says Ruairi.
As a quick-fire follow up to one of the most original albums of last year, ‘Two Dancers’ from English art rockers Wild Beast, shows no signs of being a rush job.
After gaining much critical acclaim from their odd little debut ‘Limbo, Panto’ Wild Beast have taken things one step further for this engaging and brave follow up, due out in early August.
This album is a clear progression - the often outrageous falsetto squawk of Hayden Thorpe is still present, though now it’s employed in a less obvious (if not exactly subtle) way.
Alongside strong single material such as Hooting and Howling and This IS Our Lot, songs like Underbelly and The Empty Nest reveal a more considered, slow and calculated side to the band.
Despite their obvious shared musical heritage and easy comparison with any number of the smarter Brit pop/rockers, Wild Beast remain a musical anomaly. In this album they manage to sand down some of their more rough edges while bringing the essential essence of their music even more to the fore. Andrew Hamilton
Three years after stealing the hearts of the nation – not to mention a Choice Music Award - with her debut album 13 Songs, Galway songstress Julie Feeney is back with a record packed with innovation, creativity and beauty.
For this album Feeney took control of a full orchestra - mounding woodwinds, brass, strings, vibraphone and glockenspiel to her will – first composing, then conducting and finally taking the orchestral track and writing her own songs over it.
So not only is Feeney a supremely talented musician, she is also a gifted songwriter and ‘Pages’ is an album of jaw dropping beauty.
The album opens with a couplet of love songs - Love Is A Tricky Thing and Impossibly Beautiful - setting the tone for the record high bar of honest, open song writing.
Yet here, just as the album threatens to veer into the world of sentiment, Feeney changes tack with songs like Grace and Valentines Song bringing a new, darker and musically more challenging edge to the album.
This is a mature, creative and challenging record and should be Julie Feeney right back on centre stage. A joy to listen to. Andrew Hamilton
Are you tired of the one-dimensional world of ink and paper? Does your heart long to be able to look behind the stories and see, hear and touch what’s really going on? Well, thanks to the Clare People Newspaper, your prayers have been answered. As a classic Libran, the Clare People loves long walks on the beach and getting lost in the rain. Looking for some action but unwilling to make the effort, don’t worry, the Clare People will do all the running for you. So come and join the party.
The Prodigy
Midlife - a beginners guide to Blur
Nouvelle Vague
Josh Ritter
Outside the wind blows and the sand stirs. As the surprising cold of a spring Iraqi evening descends on the desert, the temperature inside the large makeshift canvass tent is beginning to rise. Ali Al Salem is a military airport, and like most military airports in this region it is filled with American soldier on their way to or from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Wild Beast
Julie Feeney
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