London Crawling

If someone was to bomb the borough on Camden Crawl night, it’s safe to say that there would be some very empty stages at next year’s festivals.

The majority of bands are relatively small but justifiably hyped – Tom Vek, Do Me Bad Things and the Magic Numbers are but three cases in point. And the stroke of genius is that the night’s rounded off by established, cool-as-fuck headliners such as The Wedding Present and the Buzzcocks.
It’s apt that the only Irish representatives, The Chalets, are playing the Dublin Castle pub, not far from the area’s epicentre of Camden tube station. Fresh from their soundcheck, the band – consisting of keyboardists/girl vocalists Paula and Caoimhe, axegrinders/boy vocalists Chris and Enda, and drummer Dylan are in enthusiastic mood about the festival's line-up – before remembering that they'll be to see many bands actually play.
“I won’t see anyone,” sighs Paula.
“What are you gonna do?” shrugs Dylan in response. “You’ve got to let it go.”
The man has a point. The painful reality is that unstaggered timings mean even the wristbanded punters will have to choose between ten bands for each of the four time slots. And unfortunately for The Chalets they’re on the most competitive shift of the night, up against the likes of Hard-Fi, the hotly-tipped Maximo Park, XFM favourites Sons And Daughters, and London’s own Drive It Like You Stole It.
“I don’t know half of them on that list, but I’ve a fair idea that there’s quite a lot of NME-tastic bands,” observes Dylan.
Do they consider themselves an NME band?
“No, we’re not very fashionable,” says Paula.
Chris: “We’re more like a Woman’s Own band.”
“But we should have a good audience,” says Dylan. “It’s a small venue and there’ll be a lot of people here for [headliner] Graham Coxon.”
Again, the man has a point. When the band come on stage, the venue’s jammed and stationary people are annoyed with those pushing past to get to the front. Result.
Warming up with ‘David Boring’, they rip through their half-hour with the likes of ‘Gay Hooligan’ and ‘Sexy Mistake’. But it’s inevitably ‘Nightrocker’ that proves to be the jewel in their set, and what a shiny specimen it is too. Theirs is a refreshing sound of kitsch electronics, beefed-up guitar, and playfully interchanging female/male vocal banter, which makes it only right that they were declared Ireland’s best new talent in both the hotpress and Meteor awards this year. Not that these accolades make too much of a difference to the north London crowd. Audience participation is moderate (despite Caoimhe’s calls for people to start dancing “even if you don’t want to!”) but judging by the applause at the end of each song, that's attributable to the fact that The Chalets are being thoroughly checked out. And not only as the girls are wearing kiss-o-gram outfits.
The response on the ground was encouraging. “I thought I’d see them because my cousin in Ireland told me about them,” says one gig-goer. “I love it that they look like they’re having a ball onstage.”
The next day, it’s clear that their ball continued off stage and into the wee hours.
“The gig went really well,” Daryl says. “We had a great time. At least I think we did. I can’t really remember the last half of the night.”
So how long before you expect to achieve UK domination?
“We’re giving six months for the world, so…six weeks!”

The Chalets, The Subways and The Things play the Dublin Village on March 26.