The Underground of Happiness

One of my favourite albums of recent months was the debut by Galway's Dott , Swoon , a beautiful and stirring combination of garage pop and brilliantly delivered female vocal harmonies. I had the chance to see the band play live in Cork last month too which I usually find adds value to listening to any album. This was my review of the gig for WeAreNoise . http://wearenoise.com/index.php/2013/11/dott-w-french-for-rabbits-tdc-triskel-arts-centre-cork-08-11-13/ Galway’s Dott were just setting up, a selection of multicoloured dot(t)s adorning the stage area suggestively and attractively. They came armed with debut album Swoon , although minus the official CD copies which had apparently suffered an unexpected rerouting to India. In compensation, singer Anna McCarthy announced that she had personally handmade 50 CD’s specially for the gig to go with the beautiful vinyl pacakges on the merch stall. I was soon doing some swooning of my own as one of the star vocal turns fro...

A mixture this week of a few Christmas tunes, a few more Best of 2013 picks plus a few new tunes. (Watch out for dedicated podcasts on the Best of 2013 review as well as a Christmas theme over the next few weeks.) Seasonal - Dean & Britta , lush dream pop channelling Lee Hazlewood; Cocteau Twins making flippant sound like a headrush; and Lost Idol bringing medieval choral sounds and dubstep brilliantly into contact with each other. Best of 2013 - Dott singing classic Brill Building style songs within garage pop; Shearwater w/ Sharon van Etten , ineffably gorgeous; Jeffrey Lewis making one of the best statements of the year in the form of a question - What Would Pussy Riot Do? And a couple of new songs. Howe Gelb with Bonnie Prince Billy , sounding like Leonard Cohen doing 1950's country. And Frankie Rose making pillow-soft synth pop from the New Order songbook. More on these pages. Dec 3 2013 show w/ Dott,September Girls,Jeffrey Lewis,Shearwater,Dean & ...

A few themes on this week's show, kicking off with the garage pop two-punch of Dott and Crystal Stilts . Mmm. SlowPlaceLikeHome plays Cork tomorrow and Keith Mannion of SPLH I know is partial to a bit of Connan Mockasin , who is doing the filthiest impression of Prince since Prince was Prince. Then husband and wife, kind of. The wonderful Britta Phillips guest sings on the last song of the latest Fuxa album, brilliantly refashioning the Mike Nesmith classic 'Different drum' (seguing from Randall Niemann's 'Stand by me'). And she's married to Dean Wareham who has a new EP out, the first under his own name, solo like. Britta plays bass on it and (I think) sings too. It's great. Then a kind of mid-show, broadly folk theme. The Doomed Bird of Providence chart early Australian immigrant experience through song - compelling and not for the faint of heart. littlebow (lowercase) ply a beguiling brand of folk exotica. And Dan Haywood is a songwr...