The Underground of Happiness

10 years since Grant McLennan died, good to remember his heartfelt cinematic songwriting, in a shape of a genius cut from Tallulah , a somewhat underrated album even by the standards of The Go Betweens . A trio of haunting/chamber/devotional pieces around the middle of the show. Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld , so delicate, so elegant, so compelling. Pedro Soler & Gaspar Claus , a father and son duo playing Spanish guitar and (very muscular) cello, stirring inspiring stuff. Brigid Mae Power , the Galway singer making haunting late hours music with a little help from Peter Broderick. More on these pages as always. The Underground of Happiness uplifting pop music of every creed www.theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.com www.facebook.com/theundergroundofhappiness Twitter: UndergroundOfHappy Playlist 402 Tues May 17 2016 11.00am-12.00pm (repeated on Tuesdays 8.30pm) UCC 98.3FM listen live on the web at www.ucc.ie/983fm *listen back to this show h...

As you know, Robert Forster was a founder member of The Go Betweens with Grant McLennan in Brisbane . Together they released 6 albums of literate off kilter pop music in the 1980s. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) they did not make the commercial breakthrough achieved by other indie bands of the time like The Smiths and REM. The prevailing consensus goes that McLennan had the better melodies and singing voice but that Forster had the spikier lyrical talent. (McLennan’s style had a more poetic, and often nostalgic, quality.) The band broke up in 1989 and the two songwriters embarked on solo careers. They reformed in 1997, initially to tour, and subsequently recorded three further albums together until Grant McLennan’s untimely death in 2006. Robert Forster then released The Evangelist in 2008, a solo album but which included three songs of Grant’s, so it’s thought of as a de facto Go Betweens album by many. Not surprisingly, most of the reviews so far have painted this first re...

1996 and ex-Go Between Robert Forster releases his fourth solo album recorded with old friend and recently crowned king of the world Edwyn Collins. (Famously beer drinkers in a Cork bar danced to his monster smash ‘A girl like you’ while the man himself played virtually unnoticed with his band in the venue at the back.) Warm nights is my own personal favourite from his solo output, another killer combination of wry songcraft and rock n roll stance with a beautiful warm sound palette. A first listen to the upcoming new album Songs to play suggests a return to this palette and how welcome it is. First single ‘Let me imagine you’ has a familiar up front acoustic guitar figure with lovely supple backing from Scott Bromley and Luke McDonald of The John Steel Singers and Forster’s touring drummer Matt Piele, including a beautiful Blonde on Blonde -ish organ. In fact, there might be more in that Blonde on Blonde hint in terms of the album as a whole. Songs which feature th...

We started this week with a riff on a kosmische theme. Villalog are an Austrian duo on the Faust label Bureau B . They have plenty of motorik rhythms too but this tune has a beautiful ambient drift to it. And Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith making transcendant electronic music which manages to have a playful undercurrent, which is great. More from Noveller , Sarah Lipstate, creating epic instrumentals with one guitar. Grasscut , a kind of chamber pop with a pastoral tone. A treasure from The Go Betweens from 1984's Spring Hill Fair album (which by the way is cruelly underrated, even by Go Betweens' standards), sounding a little like Orange Juice who of course the band were friends with at the time. New Bjork , break up analysis with heartwrenching orchestrations. New This is the Kit , serene folk music with timeless drones. Two male-female duos, one Swedish, one Australian. More from Death & Vanilla (great reverb-drenched psych pop) and new from Elstow (lovely hazy dre...

A few more of the Best of 2014 bunch this week. A Lazarus Soul, Sean Nicholas Savage, Twerps, AWVFTS & Golden Retriever , all great music, find the full 4-part round up elsewhere on these pages. We also had new music from Nathalie Prass whose upcoming debut album is receiving much critical love, and rightly so - she also plays Whelan's in Dublin at the end of January. And Myles Manley , continuing his ongoing conversation with his public quite brilliantly with 'Pay me what I'm worth'. Robert Pollard (GBV) is going under Ricked Wicky for a new album on Fire Records , going back to his Who rots which sounds great. Lubomyr Melnyk plays two Irish shows this month. And The Go Betweens , the subject of a major new Domino box set reissue this month, with their lost treasure of a classic 'Karen' from 1978. Jan 13 2015 w/ Best of 2014 AWVFTS,Sean NIcholas Savage,Twerps + Nathalie Prass,Myles Manley++ by The Underground Of Happiness on Mixcloud...

I had the huge pleasure of seeing Future Islands play live in Dublin last weekend - they finished their show with the fantastic 'Tin man', I've started mine with it. Sleaford Mods too, touring Ireland next month, and putting some vicious vim and bounce back into protest songs. The Go Betweens sounding sunny and carefree from 1979. Fellow Aussies Twerps sounding similarly endearing. Another ghostly, late-night folk creation from Kemper Norton and Chloe March with glorious dream pop, perhaps with a debt to Ryuichi Sakamoto. Mid-section of the show, three crooners of the highest order; Liam Hayes (Plush), back with a new album in January, Rumer with a voice like velvet and Harry Nilsson making desire and longing sound absolutely gut-wrenching. Plus Merchandise , bringing a wonderful white soul vocal to slinky rock guitar songs. More on these pages as always. Nov 4 2014 w/ Future Islands,Sleaford Mods,Go Betweens,Twerps,Jennifer Castle,Merchandise++ b...

We’re not doing a Christmas special as such this year, but I will slip in a few songs of the season before we take a break for the holidays. So we had Johnny Cash singing a June Carter song, Darlene Love with an incomparable wall of sound and Dean & Britta with some gorgeous dream pop. In one way or another, all three songs are about a return to another time or place, some kind of home. New music wise, The Great Balloon Race , a fantastic Cork band whose debut album is just out, also Adrian Crowley, Yo La Tengo, Sylvain Chauveau & FU . And from earlier in the year, Kyle Forester singing the wonderfully laconic songs of Joshua Stein, Dirty Projectors rocking out and the great cut up rhythms of Zammuto . In the “My Highlights of 2012” category, David Byrne & St Vincent and Ariel Pink , both on 4AD but poles apart in most other ways. And a pair of chamber pop beauties – Jon DeRosa from his great new album, and The Go-Betweens , from the 1986 classic album Liberty ...

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...