The Underground of Happiness

A gorgeous wolf in sheep’s clothing. An unsettling wrongfooting piece of songwriting. Wearing a sublime French jazz costume. you could have been born someone else What a brilliantly double edged ocean of possibility. shiny silvery things by Cormac O Caoimh

A compelling series of largely instrumental soundscapes from Cork native Dan Walsh . Side A (it’s a cassette tape) features mostly shorts, Side B two longer form pieces. They all drift and tease through a thick fog of cymbal hiss and ambient haze. The bass is the thing I keep coming back to. The warped rock n roll pattern of ‘Blue paint’. The stalking garage rock feel of ‘Hungry clouds’, although that gives way to a kind of blissed out haunted dream pop. The constant pulse of ‘stigmatostigmata’ amid freaked out filtered guitar. The wonderful frantic motorik effect of ‘The things in the room’. It’s dark more than bright but somehow an optimistic dark. Abstract for sure but still groovy as fuck. Improvisation - knocking on your door then dangling it just out of reach. It just is. There is great art in our midst. FIXITY by Dan Walsh

The second album from the ex-pat Corkman is another smouldering collection of wracked love songs. Defiant acoustic guitars which started out as folk underpin a sweet lovelorn croon layered in sublime harmonies while crisp r‘n’b (as opposed to RnB) backbeats provide matter of fact punctuation. The club comedown feel of ‘You can fall into my arms’ with its bass drum pulse a quickening heartbeat. The gathering gloom of ‘I am swimming’ more of a drowning song than a swimming song under the weight of vocal layers. The wonderful vocal of ‘My own cruel reception’ a fragile thing keeping itself afloat on its own breath. A heart wrenched recording of love and loss. It all adds up to the intriguing prospect of Irish folk music made to collide with post club soul melancholy. Don't forget me (Album) by Kevin Murphy

And to finish off this strange July a first digital release for a little treasure from 1981. Kaught at the Kampus is a somewhat legendary title for people of a certain vintage. Those who remember the Arcadia Ballroom which was the kind of pre-Henry’s Sir Henry’s in Cork. A rock venue that played host to the fledgling U2 as well as The Cure, UB40 and plenty of other worthy names of the time. This Downtown Campus was run by Elvera Butler who persuaded the leading Cork bands of 1981 to be part of a live recording. It’s a live EP recorded at Elvera’s UCC gig Downtown Kampus, features tracks by post-punk bands such as Nun Attax, Mean Features, Urban Blitz and the original line-up of Mircodisney. Finbarr Donnelly and Ricky Dineen of Nun Attax went on to form Five Go Down To The Sea and later Beethoven before Donnelly died tragically in London. Mean Features included singer Mick Lynch who went on to front Stump. And of course Microdisney “spawned” Fatima Mansions and Hi...

First hearing from this Cork band’s upcoming second album ( remember their first album, it was great ). There’s plenty to recognise from that album here, particularly the shimmering Tortoise-like guitars and delicious skittering drums. But the intervening couple of years have seen the addition of a fascinating new element to the sound, motorik rhythms in the form of a fantastic propulsive bassline on this track. It turns what was a highly pleasurable, dreamy, kinda hazy creature into a highly pleasurable, dreamy, kinda hazy and absolutely thrilling creature. The motorik subsides at times over the 6 minutes, falling back into the gorgeous jazz stew, before crawling out of the swamp again and making a break for the horizon. Based on this brilliant introduction, I’m looking forward even more to hearing the rest of the album. Previews are expected when they play with Princess in Cork at the end of this month, which is unmissable as they say. https://www.facebook.com/events/4534...

Over the summer, I took part in a recording of a round table chat about Sir Henry’s from the early 1980s until early 2000s. This was to coincide with the Sir Henry’s Exhibition which runs at The Boole Library in UCC until September 25th and is well worth a visit. It manages to go beyond a mere nostalgia exercise to provide a document of the period, a social history even, of the sub-cultures that gravitated around the legendary rock and later club venue. By extension, there's a hidden history of Cork music and Cork in general running through the exhibition. Updates on facebook here and associated blog here - http://sirhenrys2014.wordpress.com/ . The recording was organised by Jim Morrish who presents the Odds n Sods show on UCC98.3FM , and also featured Paul McDermott of Dublin City FM (also formerly of UCC98.3FM) and Morty McCarthy of The Sultans of Ping . All four of us were qualified only in this way – we're all music fans and had attended loads of gigs in Sir Henry’s o...

Here's the full audio now of that interview with Laurie Shaw - we had a few minutes of it on the show this week. We recorded it sitting outside at The Pavilion in Cork during the June heatwave, while Laurie was taking a break from rehearsing for an upcoming gig with his band. Laurie is originally from The Wirral near Liverpool (as is quickly evident from his accent) but has lived in Kerry for almost 10 years. He started recording using his Dad's equipment at home and has amassed more than 30 albums to date. You can find a selection on these links - http://laurieshaw.wordpress.com/music/ and https://soundcloud.com/laurie-shaw . I'll post some examples down the page. I first came across his name through Plugd Records in Cork last February, when they posted one of his soundcloud or youtube links. I believe you can buy some of his music in there too. Which is something you should do. The first bunch of songs I heard had a distinct Garage Rock flavour (Laurie himself ...

Another fantastic racket from Cork Psych’s leading lights, produced by Elastic Sleep's Chris Somers and released on Cork-based Art For Blind . It starts out with a distorted minor key riff that threatens lift-off with a side order of scraped atonal guitar shards. It’s thrilling, although for me the next section is even more enduring – clean, propulsive guitar chords and a brilliantly wobbly drone made up of synth and bass. It suggests the autobahn’s white lines disappearing in the rear mirror. It suggests the digging down of the song’s lyrics. It would suggest a trancelike meditation if it wasn’t so itchy and confrontational. It’s tremendous fucking stuff.

It’s been a vintage year for Irish album releases. O Emperor, Cat Dowling, Biggles Flys Again, The Last Sound, Peter Delaney, Ann Scott, Enemies, Hidden Highways, God Is An Astronaut have all released singular and accomplished works. It’s time to add another one to that list, someone who is likely to be much less known to you than even those mentioned above. Kevin Murphy is an Irishman currently living in Australia, maybe that’s why he’s slipped under the radar of the Irish mainstream media. In line with those others, he writes songs that stay with you, in his case because of an achingly authentic delivery and brilliantly subtle arrangements. Here’s a review I wrote of his album for WeAreNoise a while back. An unassuming package came through the Noise letterbox recently (I mean that literally, it was a CD). An indistinct, autumnal woodland cover. The artist's name, Kevin Murphy , the album title LOVEhATE (which I'm happy to report appears to bear no relation to the tv s...

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of seeing The National again, in my hometown this time. They played in Cork before (see below) but I couldn’t make it to that gig. I did see them at The Olympia in Dublin in 2008 on the back of the Boxer album – that was great – but this time had four or five times that number of people, something not far off 5,000. Thinking back on it now, it was unusual, as gigs go, because it was almost as much a literary experience as a rock n roll one. It certainly was visceral but the show engaged the intellect at least as much as the melody receptors. Two sides of the brain in play then. That's the way with The National though. At a glance they seem to be a certain kind of band but let them seep in and they're revealed to be several types of band in one. I reviewed the gig for WeAreNoise , here’s the link with the full text. http://wearenoise.com/index.php/2013/07/review-the-national-w-tall-ships-the-marquee-cork-28-06-13/ All photos below...

Photo: Simone Della Fornace www.flickr.com/softblackstar I had the great pleasure of exchanging correspondence recently with Little Annie . As you know, I was a huge fan of her album with Baby Dee last year on Tin Angel Records , State of grace . It had a great dignity about it, some wonderful instrumentation (especially Dee’s fluid piano playing at the core of it) and it brilliantly evoked real life, earthily, through a kind of debauched New York prism. That moniker “Little” is no word of a lie by the way, she really is very dainty and looks like a puff of wind might blow her over. I know this because I was lucky enough to see her play live as well in Cork at the Southern Gothic Festival earlier in May, with Baby Dee and backed by a double bass player and violinist. In fact, she was carrying a walking stick that evening as a result of a leg injury, she told us. I wrote a review of that gig for WeAreNoise , here it is – http://wearenoise.com/index.php/2013/05/souther...

The Altered Hours are a band based in Cork (although they're not all from Cork, interestingly) and they're creating quite a buzz at the moment. And not just at home either. Cathal Mac Gabhann and Paddy Cullen from the band were in studio last week chatting about their musical influences - they brought along some tunes with them - and their wonderful new Sweet Jelly Roll EP which came out last week, recorded in Berlin with Fabian Leseure and released on a Recordings (Brian Jonestown Massacre, Dirty Beaches). It was all most interesting - we found out that Cathal got into punk via a friend who was into skateboarding, that he met at his granny's house!; and that Paddy had a row with someone at a house party in Ballina over a bottle of Buckfast and proceeded to discover The Clash. The lads also had some interesting ideas about psych rock and and why it seems to be in the water these days. May 7 2013 show w/ guests Cathal & Paddy from The Altered Hours, picking ...

Continuing a very strong Cork showing this spring, The Altered Hours’ debut single with the Berlin label is a smouldering, slow-burning affair of background fuzz and hushed-and-high female vocals. The MBV comparison is there but is kept at bay by an elegiac, rising keyboard line and the expert stretching of the suspense over 5 minutes. It still doesn’t quite capture the power and intensity of their live shows, mind you, a thing that folks should go out of their way to check out.

A thrilling return from the Cork-based (although Waterford-born) band, the first song from their upcoming second album, Vitreous , due in June. A motorik rhythm section sets the pace, stylish prog guitars and keys attach themselves and banks of soaring, unexpected vocal harmonies cap it all. Coming in at just 2 and a half minutes, it’s the most bite-sized progressive pop package you’ll find and a cracking tune. Vitreous by O Emperor

Peter Broderick has a track record of speaking directly to his fans, literally - in the past he has recorded his answers to fan questions and uploaded the audio to his website, a particularly lovely personal touch. You get a gist of this kind of personal attention too in this interview I did with him when he played at the Crane Lane Theatre in Cork in 2009. http://theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.com/2011/06/peter-broderick-interview.html His new "vocal" album is just out on Bella Union (as opposed to his many soundtrack and instrumental/collaborative projects). It's called http://www.itstartshear.com . That's right, it's a web address. Why? Rather than me explaining, let me hand you over to the man himself. How do you feel about music downloading? It is a common question addressed to musicians and one that I have been asked several times in interviews. My response has always been that it doesn't bother me. It is unavoidable. And in the best case s...

Meet Waterford-based but Cork-born John Haggis , and an album made with friends (including one Katie Kim and Richard from House of Cosy Cushions ) at his Granny It’s OK to Experiment studio in the south-east of Ireland during a period of recovery following an operation. No maps no compass is a great wall of sound to start, with beautiful shoegazey vocals offset by a heavily filtered trumpet, and drumbeats tripping over themselves. So long Bitter Root Hill features a circling Spanish guitar figure, followed by a fantastic deep-sea rumble of a bass underneath a lost, echoing voice. The great silence of snow transforms a simple plucked banjo and spoken word recitation into a looping vocal refrain with cinematic backwash of uplifting and epic proportions. Another haunting male falsetto adorns the brooding closer Happy endings (tending to put one in mind of Luke Temple from Here We Go Magic a little). Stitched throughout the album are bits of film dialogue, harmonicas, violins, b...

We love a bit of Field Music around here. So imagine how happy we were to hear the news about the new Field Music album, due out in February 2012. It'll be called Plumb , and will be released on Memphis Industries . Here's the stream and download. Field Music - (I Keep Thinking About) A New Thing by memphisindustries It sounds very much like a continuation of where (Measure) left off, which is to say, great. And it seems timely to upload the interview with the Brewis brothers, Peter and David, from September 2010, when they played in Cork shortly after that year's Electric Picnic Festival . It features... ...Stratocasters vs Gibson SG's, a village in County Durham called Noplace, Sunderland's shipbuilding past, The Beatles' Happiness is a warm gun , the predictability of pop song structures, Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds , teenage pub gigs, singing like Joe Cocker, and more... Field Music Interview by underground of happiness My other n...

We had a few extracts from the interview with Casper Clausen , the singer from Efterklang , on the show this week. The full interview is available here. Topics of conversation include Vincent Moon and the making of the film An island , celebrity crushes, the common ground between Harry Nilsson and Mariah Carey , the differences between The Leaf Label and 4AD , their collaboration with Daniel Bjarnason and the Messing Orchestra for the Reich Effect Festival at the Savoy Theatre in Cork , the secret location for work on their new album, their Efterkids music education program and being “married” to music. Listen out too for an unexpected rendition of The Beatles’ Penny Lane . AN ISLAND - 3rd TEASER - Vincent Moon & Efterklang from Rumraket on Vimeo . The gig they played in Cork (the night after I did the interview) was a powerful, even emotional event. More thoughts on it here .

The latest offering from the Cork ambient artist continues the strong form shown on last year's EP's. I liked LFB001 a lot, here's what I thought of it at the time. Letter from Belgium - LFB001 EP (self-release, free download) Elegaic guitar and synth instrumentals from Corkonian Alan Healy, employing Pajo-esque structures with field recordings (including some classic Hollywood moments if I'm not mistaken). Highlight for me is Christmas Eve , which drifts beautifully over melodramatic cinema dialogue, until the unexpected arrival of out-of-context 8-bit noises puts a different complexion on things. LFB002 coming soon apparently, which should be well worth watching out for too. For some reason LFB002 passed me by at the time, but it is still available to listen and download for free on LFB's bandcamp, along with the 3rd edition. Go here. LFB003 by Letter From Belgium Best left combines some lovely, incongruous banjo plucking with a warm bed of synth wash...

Back in the days when Comet Records existed in Cork , I got into The Go-Betweens (Comet later became Plugd , which has now moved around the corner from Washington Street to the Triskel Arts Centre building). In those days, Comet used to sell Beggars Banquet releases on cassette for a fiver - and in those Walkman days, cassettes were my medium of choice. And so I found The Go-Betweens: 1978-1990 . I was vaguely aware of the band - I think I had heard Bachelor kisses on Dave Fanning's radio show a few times during the 80's. But I didn't own anything by the band. Of course, typical me, to become interested in the band after they'd broken up (in fact, both Grant McLennan and Robert Forster had released their first solo efforts by this time). I think it was the sleevenotes that sold me on it. Each song had a short note from either Grant or Robert. Like this one by Grant, for Bye bye pride - Cairns is a lazy, small town full of boats and cane fields. It is also unbea...