Hot shots 2004: Hal

After just four gigs – all at Dublin’s Sugar Club – the band had been signed to Rough Trade, with the publishing being picked up by Heavenly Music. Their fifth gig was supporting Starsailor in Glasgow.
Like JJ72 and The Thrills, to a large extent Hal have bypassed the rigours and the pitfalls of the Irish scene and moved straight to working the UK. More Starsailor dates were followed by a short tour with Grandaddy and a prestigious support to St Etienne at the London Palladium, before returning to Dublin with Starsailor in December. The approach seems to have worked. Day jobs duly jacked in, those in the know are proclaiming the four-piece as one of the year’s brightest hopes, albeit a couple of months behind hotpress.
As for their elusive sound, the band themselves have talked of the Beach Boys and Burt Bacharach as influences, while The Guardian pitched them somewhere between David Gray and Coldplay. We can judge for ourselves when debut single ‘Worry About The Wind’ arrives in February, preceded by an Irish tour extensive enough to suggest that they realise the wisdom of taking care of business at home too