It’s early morning on St. Patrick’s Day. I’ve woken up in rural Ireland with the sun splitting the trees and I feel petrified for some reason. There’s something about St. Patrick’s Day that never fails to throw me off kilter, something fundamentally wretched about the way we collude with the rest of the world in celebrating out-of-date stereotypes and laughing at what it is to be Irish. Looking back over the Irish performers who have grinned their way through a set at The White House on our national saint’s feast day over the years makes for an interesting foray into cultural anthropology: The Chieftains, Frankie Gavin, Ronan Tynan, The Committments, Celtic Woman and this year Celtic Thunder, a show sponsored by Tourism Ireland. What kind of message are we trying to send?

The only good news was that Liz Carroll and John Doyle also played at the White House this year. However, their involvement doesn’t merit a mention on many of the newsfeeds. Like the President and the First Lady (who has ordered the water in the White House fountains to be dyed green for the day) Liz Carroll is a citizen of Chicago, the U.S. city mostly deeply immersed in Irish musical culture, where Captain O’Neill documented and cataolgued a wealth of Irish tunes that would otherwise disappeared. Maybe Liz could have a word about what Irish music is really about. We’re all aware now that the Celtic Tiger is dead, let’s bury all the other ‘Celtic’ horse doo-doo with it. It’s nonsense. We have no idea what Celtic music sounded like, but we have a living vibrant Irish music scene. So let’s focus on that and give it a run out on what is the single most prestigious gig going for an Irish band.
This month sees the release of Jinx Lennon’s fourth album on his Septic Tiger imprint. Trauma Themes Idiot Times finds him looking at Ireland and himself with a withering eye. Lennon has never been never short on observational skills and the past couple of years has provided a surfeit of material for him to point the shitty stick at.
Musically, the record is more densely textured than its predecessor Know Your Station Gouger Nation. There are some astonishingly beautiful moments, too. The poetry is still intact and serves as counterpoint to the starker songs, the jewel-like ‘Splattered Eggs’ and the trippily haunting ‘Funeral Faysis’ being outstanding examples. If you’ve been to a Jinx Lennon gig you’ll know that it’s normally just Jinx, a guitar, a keyboard, a Kaosillator and the occasional injection of vocal contrast from Miss Paula Flynn – so it’s interesting to see these songs, many tried and tested live stand-outs, fleshed out with a bewildering range of guest performers.
He’s lined up several gigs to promote the new release including a show in the Glens Centre, Manorhamilton on Friday April 3, a gig in Galway’s Roisin Dubh on Monday April 13, a gig in de Barras in Clonakilty on Friday April 17 and a double header with Canadian Geoff Berner on Friday May 1 as part of the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival in Belfast.
The Four Of Us have now confirmed a short burst of live activity in the wake of the recent release of their live album. Four shows have been announced for May, kicking off with a show in Cork’s Cyprus Avenue on Friday May 15, a gig in Dolans in Limerick the following Friday, a show in Breakers in Portlaoise on Saturday May 23 and a show at the Spirit Store in Dundalk on Saturday May 30.
Canada has developed a thoroughly well-deserved reputation for producing original sounding alt-folk bands whose songwriting is anchored in traditional folk but whose instrumentation and approach are often divergent and winningly ad-hoc. The Acorn are one of the latest to break ranks with Rolf Klausener and his cohorts, releasing the highly lauded Glory Hope Mountain in late 2007. Since then they have been picking up some fairly high profile supporters as Elbow’s Guy Garvey has championed them, adding them to the bill on the current Elbow tour. They’ll be taking the opportunity to nip over to Ireland for a show at Whelan’s on Tuesday May 5 before they dart back across the Irish Sea for another high profile support slot, in this case with Bon Iver at the Brighton Festival.