The best thing about a festival like HWCH is that how you enjoy it is entirely up to you - kick back for a few days in the company of your favourite go-to bands; piss away the weekend with friends old and new; or pay tribute to the ethos of the festival by working every bit as hard as the artists themselves, dashing from venue to venue gorging yourself on new music and eventually ending up a pile of exhausted road kill on Ormond Quay (I was never one to resist a party with a theme).
No better chaps than the ever-enticing Enemies to kickstart my rather hectic weekend, whose sunny instrumental delights get more emotive every time I see them. Across the Liffey, sister act Heathers are in typically staggering form while one half of tripster duo NouveauNoise is carrying the weight of their intricate signature beats beautifully.
On Friday, I’m introduced to Friend?, part angry thrashers, part ambient tunesmiths who specialise in shapeshifting instrumental rock that sounds best when a freewheeling violinist is allowed to do her thing. In Dame Street’s Mercantile venue swoonsome downbeat duo Sacred Animals prove themselves to be another of the weekend’s treasured finds, while scenester foursome Futures Apart offer an ever so slightly funkier take on Delphic-brand nerd pop. Terribly tight and hugely watchable.
Likewise, Kid Karate is a band you’ll want to hate - painfully hip, impossibly showy, with testosterone spewing from their every orifice. But all this honed showmanship makes it even sweeter when they overthrow the cynical overlords of my brain by giving the performance of the festival. Composed of “screamy man” Kevin Breen (vox, guitar, synth) and “smashy man” Stephen Gannon (drums, vox), the duo thrash and spit their way through a dozen or so dynamite tunes with impossible precision. Breen ends the set from the floor, writhing around in the foetal position, while Gannon commands an expanded percussion section of audience members. This is as hard as two bodies can work!
Loveable hooligans Grand Pocket Orchestra continue the calculated madness with a quickfire set of irresistible tunes like ‘Yeah Work It Out’ and the frantic ‘Basketballs’. Over in The Button Factory, Le Galaxie are bolstering a dance-happy crowd with smoke and movies. Their flamboyant electro is taken to a trippy new level against a backdrop of ‘80s horror flicks, making for 30 minutes of pure entertainment. Next, over in the Twisted Pepper, Nordy riff merchants LeFaro are making no apologies for busting our heads open with some shockingly good, hard-hitting rock. Now this is worth the muscle spasms.
Finally, it’s time for the band every single HWCH ticket-holder is raring to see (if you don’t believe me, just ask the bouncer at the Workman’s Club, who mutters a very manly ‘I’m scared…’ as scads of punters form a disorderly queue). The Cast Of Cheers are cleverly aware that they need to step things up a notch to end the weekend in style – hence the nostalgic punch-em-up Sega game Streets Of Rage pulsating in the background. The end result is nothing short of mad scientist brilliance, with tunes from TCOC’s soon-to-be-recorded second album sounding every bit as thrilling as Chariot favourites ‘Goose’ and ‘I Am Lion’. Hey, expected genius is still genius.
And just like that HWCH is over for another year and I’m stricken with the realisation that I’ve literally spent more of the weekend in the Workman’s Club than my own apartment (what can I say? it does a far superior spiced banana daiquiri...) Honourable mentions go to Miracle Bell’s head-spinning snare smiting, Cloud Castle Lake’s genuinely magical Jónsi-style croonery and Squarehead’s dreamy California rock.
Sure, this year’s festival suffered from an unbalanced line-up (Saturday kicked Thursday and Friday in the proverbials), but this is a gripe I’ve had with everyindependent Irish festival this year. HWCH chucks trembling newbies into the water along with the buzzworthy, the overrated and the accomplished. The swimmers won’t be forgotten in a hurry.