Hopelessly Devoted to EU!

It’s minus-five outside, snowing like the next Ice Age is about to start and still all the busses are running on time. Ireland’s public service chiefs should get their sorry asses over to Groningen where our Dutch cousins are able to deal with anything the winter throws at them.

Also refusing to surrender to the elements is Imelda May who’s tour bussed her way over from Dublin for her gig tonight in Huize Maas. A slightly tattier version of Whelan’s, it’s one of 27 venues that have been pressed into action for this year’s Eurosonic showcase festival, which for the first time has sold all 18,000 of its tickets. 2,600 of those have gone to music industry professionals here to spot de volgende grote ding.
With Huize Maas’ dressing-room area doing a good impression of a walk-in fridge, Ms. May is wearing a furry hat very similar to the Mama Claus one she donned for her Hot Press Christmas cover shoot.
“I was going to give it back…honest!” she deadpans. “I tell you who loved that cover – me dad! I’m not joking you, he bought about 50 copies and handed them out instead of Christmas cards!”
Mr. May was also front-row, centre-stage for his daughter’s December 22 visit to the Dublin O2 – quite a step up from HP’s first sighting of her two years ago in the rather more intimate Sugar Club.
“We could have done a few nights somewhere else but I thought, ‘Ah sure, let’s go for it’ and it turned out brilliant. There were no gimmicks, just a bit of snow, some good songs and some good company, and everyone had a ball. I spent the first ten minutes checking that all my family and friends had got to their seats okay – I think I set a new world record for the number of people on a guest-list! – and then I was able to relax and do my thing.”
That ‘thing’ has won her a host of celebrity fans, the most ardent of whom is guitar legend Jeff Beck who’s invited Imelda to sing on his Emotion & Commotion album, out on April 8 and also featuring Joss Stone and a 64-piece orchestra.
“Jeff’s been very supportive,” she enthuses. “He’s also asked me to sing with him and Eric Clapton at the London O2 in April, and last summer I did the Royal Albert Hall with him and Dave Gilmour who’s another lovely man. He brings his little kid and wife Polly with him and makes a family night out of it! He’s sold God knows how many millions of records with Pink Floyd, yet he was terribly nervous about playing with Jeff ‘cause he’s a big fan of his. It was really sweet!”
The high-profile supports don’t end there, with the newly betrothed Jamie Cullum signing Imelda and her band up for his American tour in May.
“I’m interested to see how that goes ‘cause it’s a right/wrong match that’ll either go really well or see me being booed off every night!” she laughs. “I love his music – he flies along with it and will probably be in even better form now he’s married to Sophie Dahl!”
There was, alas, one peach of a tour that got away.
“We were asked to go out with Elbow after doing Jools Holland last year but to be honest with you, I couldn’t afford to do it. I had no record label back then, and all those flights and hotels add up. I was raging we had to turn it down ‘cause I adore Guy Garvey – don’t tell me husband!”
The good news for fans eager for new material is that Imelda has just finished recording her new album in the same converted cowshed where Love Tattoo was assembled. The bad news is that she’s going to hold off releasing it here until the autumn.
“I think Ireland needs a bit of a break from me! I produced it meself and now we’re remixing it with the lovely Andy Wright who’s fixing all my mistakes! I could have gone into a big flashy studio, but I didn’t want to lose the natural charm that I think was captured on the last album.”
Is there a money song?
“Apparently there is, so I’ve been told! It’s called ‘Pull On The Rug’ and everyone’s been jumping around and going mental to it! Me manager sent it off to the record company and they were like, ‘We’ve another ‘Johnny Got A Boom Boom’ on our hands!’ They loved it, which is a real confidence booster.”
Imelda’s confidence will also have been boosted by the 500 indie-types shoehorned into Huize Maas whose initial “what the fuck is this?” bemusement quickly turns into mad idiot dancing. The loud cheers at the end of the set are in stark contrast to the polite ripple of applause, which Marina & The Diamonds had exited stage-left to an hour earlier.
I could have stayed and helped Imelda and the chaps with all the lovely Grolsch on their rider, but that would mean missing some of the other 159 bands who’ve paid their own way to Groningen in the hope of picking up new fans and media allies. A bike-sharing scheme means it’s possible this year to peddle between venues, but traditionalist that I am I walk to the impossibly plush Stadsschouwburg theatre where Norway’s Pony The Pirate are doing their Arcade Fire-y thing (myspace.com/ponythepirate). The eight-piece band describe their sound as ranging from “shoegaze and classical baroque to neo-punk and Riverdance” and for once I’m not going to argue. Despite being perhaps a little too in thrall to Win ‘n’ Regine, they’re the dog’s gonads live and would go down a storm at the Electric Picnic (hint hint!). As would their fellow post-punk death metal countrymen Monolith who I sadly missed but am assured by 2fm’s Ian Wilson and Dan Hegarty, rocked like the bastard demons they aspire to be (myspace.com/monolithicmusic). Subsequent investigation reveals songs like ‘Licking Your Wounds That Won’t Fucking Heal’ and ‘I Hate That We Breathe The Same Air’ to be every bit as genius as their titles, so go check ‘em out.
I’d be in rather less of a hurry to make the acquaintance of Name The Pet, a.k.a. Swedish electro-popper Hanna Branden who can grab her crotch all she likes but on the evidence of tonight’s shambles of a show isn’t going to be the next Lady GaGa. That said, she does possess one stonker of a tune, ‘American Boy’, which you could imagine the Bacardi Breezer brigade going nuts to (myspace.com/namethepet).
Hot Press gets to go to bed happy though thanks to masked London dance pranksters Team Monster (myspace.com/weareteammonster) and Joensuu 16, three Jesus & The Mary Chain-worshipping Fins who do a bonkers cover of Brooce’s ‘I’m On Fire’ (myspace.com/joensuu1685).
The benefits to be derived from playing at Eurosonic are evident the following night when within minutes of coming off stage at Shadrak, Delorentos are offered festival dates in Luxemburg and Hungary. They also get the ‘thumbs up’ from one of the UK’s biggest bookers, Steve Strange, and Dutch promoters Double Vee who are going to be bringing them back in the spring for more dates. Result. The band are playing out of their skins at the moment, with the new songs from their You Can Make Sound album bedding in perfectly, and Ronan and Kieran indulging in the sort of guitar duelling that was Strummer n’ Jones’ speciality back in the day.
Another band jolly glad they’ve come to Groningen are FM Belfast who despite the name – “We chose it because it sounds sexy!” – are from Reykjavik and in the minority of Icelandic bands who sound nothing like Múm or Sigur Ros. Instead, they whip up a storm in Shadrak with psychedelically inclined pop-dance tunes like ‘Underwear’ (“We’re running down the street in our underwear/Because nothing ever happens here”), ‘Synthia’ and ‘Par Avion’. Add in a slo-mo version of Technotronic’s ‘Pump Up The Jam’ and a plaintive love song take on ‘Killing In The Name Of’, and you’ve a band worthy of your immediate attention (myspace.com/fmbelfast).
The only act we see going down better than FM Belfast at Eurosonic – cue outpouring of national pride – are And So I Watch You From Afar whose every move is being filmed by Germany’s legendary Rockpalast TV show. If the lads are looking a little peaky, that’s because they’ve been celebrating their Choice Music Prize nomination, which was announced 48 long drinking hours ago.
“We’re really excited about that and keeping everything crossed”, enthuses bassist Johnny Adger. “We used to bitch and moan about how we couldn’t get in contact with anybody in the South – sending e-mails and getting fuck all response – and now we’ve got 2fm broadcasting our show live tonight and this Choice nomination. A lot of it has come from us finding likeminded souls in Dublin like Enemies and Adebisi Shank who we’ve been able to swap gigs with. Finally there’s some interaction between the two scenes, which is great.”
Neil Hannon (in)famously spent his Choice winnings on a new kitchen. What home improvements will ASIWYFA carry out if the ten grand comes their way?
“We’ve amassed quite a few debts over the past couple of years, so we’d try and pay some of those off. We played 170-plus gigs in 2009, which was brilliant but a bit of a drain on our already meagre resources.”
The sleeping on floors and eating shit motorway service food has been worth it though, with the band embarking on their first headlining European tour in April. Will it be a journey into the unknown or do they already know which countries they have fans in?
“Last.fm’s interesting because by holding a cursor over the last six people who’ve listened to you, you can tell where they’re from,” takes-over resident ASIWYFA computer nerd and guitarist Tony Wright. “We’ve had Peru, the Russian Federation, Taiwan, New Zealand… loads of places we’ve never gigged or had a record out in. That’s the positive side of the internet, which gets overlooked sometimes.”
In addition to their And So I Watch You From Afar duties, Tony and Johnny are also planning to form the world’s first ginger supergroup with Hector Ó hEochagáin.
“I had no idea who Hector was until we got an e-mail from him before Christmas asking, ‘Do you want to be on this Craic House show I’m doing with Tommy Tiernan?’” Jonny explains. “We’d heard of Tommy so we said, ‘Yeah, sure’, and ended up having a brilliant time. Afterwards, over the course of quite a few drinks, we decided to put together a ginger band called Fire Down Below which would ideally also have Josh Homme in it.”
I can see the platinum discs now! Talking of which, how’s the second ASIWYFA album shaping up?
“It’s in the pre-production stage, which is a new occurrence for us,” Johnny laughs. “The idea is to be all prepared rather than going into the studio and completely winging it as we have in the past. It’s going to be like the first record… only even more so!”
There was more craic and indeed ceol before Christmas when the boys played to 1,300 people in the Ulster Hall.
“That was just insane!” Tony recalls. “I kept expecting to be tapped on the shoulder and told,’Sorry, there’s been a mistake, you’ll have to leave!’ I saw my first ever gigs there.”
Which were?
“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me that! Bush, which is bad, followed by Coldplay, which is really bad! There’s always been a Gavin Rossdale and Chris Martin element to our music. The biggest buzz we got from playing the Ulster Hall, apart from all our friends and family and the mighty LaFaro being there, was knowing that we were on the stage where Led Zeppelin played ‘Stairway To Heaven’ for the first time back in the ‘70s. Hopefully a little bit of Jimmy Page seeped into us by osmosis!”