The Underground of Happiness

Sounds from a Safe Harbour Festival . Readings by the author with live musical backing onstage. Feist was involved. In a baseball cap. Elaine Howley . Others. It amounted to an intriguing radio drama before your ears. Elaine Howley the highlight for me. Brilliant ambient soundtrack undercutting the hilarious but unsettling text. The Distance Between Heart And Mouth by Elaine Howley

And one more bonus chapter. One more dan for the road. Back to Plugd where the year almost started. Dan Walsh with friends. Specifically... Elaine Howley on keys and vocals. Cathal MacGabhann on organ. Elaine Malone on guitar. Chris Quigley on guitar. Micheál Fitzgerald on bass. Krautrock Christmas 7 . Improv. Krautrock. Jams. But not aimless. Dan on the tiller. Deciding when each beat, each sequence has run its course. Seamlessly chiselling a new beat out of the old one. A new direction. Right hand man on bass. Laying down ferocious markers. High tone. High fret. Plectrum. Battering the fucking thing. Proper to the horizon bass playing. Proper autobahn grooves. Stabs of organ fed through wahwah. Snaking guitar fuzz. Reverb vocals circling and repeating. The whole thing probing the meaning of repetition. Like Can going off on one. In all. Let’s call it a year there so. Thanks Dan and friends. See you again in 2023.

Chapter 30 Part 2 of my Quiet Lights appointments. Back to Coughlans for Aoife Nessa Frances . She played here in February 2020 with a band headed by Cian Nugent. Tonight Aoife is very much in charge on guitar – mostly fingerpicked – and keys. The band is drums, second keys with a side of clarinet and a giant pedal harp centre stage. And it is actually the woman on harp who steals the show. Méabh McKenna is the name I learn later. Sitting underneath this towering slab of wood and steel, she lets loose waves of string glissandi, pulling at the instrument, imploring it nearly, and living every second of the music through her face, frowning, grimacing, raising her leg for extra traction. The effort. And the joy. She is a sight to behold. The songs sound wonderful. Crescendos of mellotron clarinet and big body Epiphone. The sublime Emptiness follows. The yearning Way to say goodbye with that perfect hazy vocal on top. The outstanding stalking groove of Only child. A kind of ...

Chapter 26 Trick Mist was my next October appointment and Tombstome’s second outing of the year. This being Gavin Murray of these parts. Time was when a singer songwriter would appear with a guitar, voice and some carefully calculated backstories. Trick Mist had guitar (electric) but also a control pad, drum pads, keys and a banjo, making a particularly intriguing sound field. The new album The hedge maze and the spade showcases plenty of these. Standout from the gig might be the beautiful Boring bread which features what could be a sample of a bread slicer with assorted other looped ornamentation and Murray’s handsome heartfelt croon topping it off. The album (according to bandcamp) focuses on Murray’s close relationship to his recently deceased grandmother and lyrics have the intimate feel of diary snapshots. Well worth checking. Support in Coughlans was by Howlbux . The duo of Elaine Howley and Irene Buckley . The two women sat at a table, somewhat like lab t...