Being in a band can create friction. What with a number of creative people being confined to a small space each trying to get their version of an idea across things like criticism, frustration and drummers can all lead to problems. You’d think with only three members in a group you’d have less trouble, not so insists Michael Hopkins, lead singer with Kildare’s Planet Parade.

“Being in a three-piece is hard work. I don’t know how five pieces and six pieces don’t kill each other. There’s always someone late or in bed.” Though he does point out this is not always a bad thing. “It’s healthy to argue otherwise you end up in your own little bubble.”

The group consists of Hopkins,  drummer Andrew Lloyd and bassist Ronan Kilduff all hail from Clane, though Kilduff spent his formative years in the Curragh. They have been going in various incarnations since secondary school and in that reductionist way of the music journalist they sound a bit like another classic three-piece, The Police, Hook filled, melodic and just the right side of funky. They weren’t always a three-piece though.

“We were a four piece, we went through a number of singers and we realised I was better than them,” laughs the frontman.

The line-up began to solidify about two years ago. Hopkins might have recently added singer to his skills but still remained resolutely on the drum stool, that is until they decided the Phil Collins’ approach to stage craft wasn’t ideal.

“It was hard to fully capture the energy of what we were doing on stage. I was singing from behind the drums…it seemed like we were missing a singer out front.” Once Hopkins stepped out though “the whole…thing it worked better. We used to spend our breaks swapping instruments anyway and realised we were better like that.”

While The Police are perhaps the best example of the excessive personnel demands of pretty much every other rock band ever, it still has its limitations, Kilduff is quick to point out that there are “massive” restrictions and any attempts at a 16th century lute album will not be happening anytime in the near future.

“We have to write everything with the view that this is three-piece so let’s not get ridiculous here. We might write this epic odyssey of a song but you’ll be waiting a longtime for the brass to come in.”

Hopkins picks up the point “we realise that a lot of songs won’t work unless you have another guitar or a keyboard to smooth it out.”

There is no limitation on imagination though. Having already recorded two EPs, 2009′s Ghost To People and last year’s Zulu Sound will the band look to augment their sound when it comes to recording their debut album?

“Yes if there is room for little subtle things on the record,” begins Kilduff “later in life hopefully we’ll have the budget to have someone play with us on stage a part that we can’t play. So that means we can afford to put it on the record as a feature because we can afford to have a player.”

Ah the sticky issue of finance. It is perhaps the biggest problem in the age of failing record companies that independent bands have to finance everything themselves. Studio time, PR companies, distribution, they don’t come cheap and groups going the independent route (which seems to be pretty much everyone) have to deal with the much less fun business of, well, business. So how do they hope to finance their debut?

“We’ve had to borrow and steal,” jokes Hopkins.

We haven’t stolen! We’ve just borrowed and not paid people back,” clarifies Kilduff.

They are not closing the door completely on the major labels though but only if the interest is right. It is an oft-repeated phrase that of only “working with the record company if the project is right,” though the two members of the group can’t seem to agree on how far they want to go down that route.

“It’s not the case we’re turning down record companies…it’s just everyone is so fearful of record companies. If you can afford to do it yourself you’re better off but then you’ve got to sell your soul a bit if you have to do that.”

So at least a third of the group subscribes to the general consensus of all record companies are evil. The singer is slightly less judgmental.

“There’s always that major label stigma. I’m sure there are a few major labels who have good intentions.”

Kilduff, perhaps the hopeless idealist of the band accuses the singer of seeking financial gain.

“You just really want a major label to  come and give you a load of money!”

He is of course joking with the singer. Both band mates are clearly good friends off the stage and often end up finishing each others sentences. It is perhaps this chemistry which feeds into their stage presence and makes them such a thrilling prospect on stage.  Their next problem is their biggest though translating that formidable stage presence and musicality into a decent debut album.

It used to be the second or third album that would make or break a band. You were at least given that scope to develop, to get your studio legs, to make mistakes. This no longer happens. Judgements are made far quicker in the digital age and often bands can be written off with the swiftness of a Facebook status. Neither are under any illusions about the pressure and task facing them.

Kilduff muses, “you don’t get your debut album again, we don’t want to be a bit ashamed of it.”

Recording will begin in the coming months though no studio has yet been decided upon. They currently rehearse in Marina Guinness’ Pickering Forest House situated outside Celbridge in Kildare. Descendant of the brewing family and daughter of Desmond, her home is a rather huge Georgian Mansion. She has become something of a patron to numerous musicians over the years letting them use her house to rehearse. It is also currently home to Glen Hansard and some animal skin.

“There’s a suit of armor when you get inside the door with an actual white tiger’s skin draped over it, I don’t necessarily agree with it but it’s a sight to behold,” reasons Kilduff.

Tiger skin or not, Planet Parade will use the time spent at the house to hone their considerable repertoire into a cohesive album sometime in the near future, there might even be a few arguments along the way too.

Age is a tricky thing for musicians. Traditionally your twenties is the time for making all those wonderfully classic musical statements. Think about all those great albums you own, or have seen on one of those list shows which are liberally sprinkled over all Channel 4 related stations. Pet Sounds, The Queen Is Dead, OK Computer, all golden in their chains of youth. OK there’s a few people in their thirties who have produced the odd good piece of work, Elbow for instance are currently striking a blow for people beating down middle-age, but after that? It’s all down hill. Artists fade, drive and ambition starts to wane and as musicians proceed down the slow crawl of their fifties and sixties they start to wrap themselves in the comforting sounds of their youth, grumpy Luddites raging against the disposable crap produced by today’s pop stars, with their Facebooks and their Twitter machines. At least that’s how the theory goes.

Paul Brady is 64 this year having made his name making dyed-in-the-wool folk with bands like Planxty before breaking with his roots in 1981. He should be the quintessential old folkie holing himself up in some country cottage listening to Muddy Waters records and trying to figure out how to set the clock on his 20 year-old VCR, while making no decent new music of note.

Within about two minutes of speaking to the singer he’s talking about recording new song ideas onto his i-Phone. He also has his own Facebook account Paul Brady Music and his own blog, featuring his thoughts on everything from illegal downloads to the Eurovision and classical music.

He’s also still actively making some of the finest music of his career. Last year he released Hooba Dooba, a fine collection of contemporary pop music while today he’s speaking from a recording studio in Dublin. Ideas, he says in that familiar Northern brogue, still come pretty easy.

“I’m writing all the time…I’m a musical animal, there’s music flying around me all the time. I carry an i-Phone and I’m always playing the guitar. I might be watching the telly and something will come to me so I just put the telly on mute and the phone on record.”

Surely age has changed this habit somewhat, after all can anything match the vigor of youth?

“I suppose I’m not trying as hard as I used to, partly because I don’t feel a need to any longer. I’m not as feverishly composing all the time as I might have been 20 years ago but I still feel music very strongly, I still am as emotionally to the fore as I’ve always been. It’s part of my make-up. When I’m in a writing phase I feel as if I’m as inspired as I’ve ever been,” though he does admit that “I go through phases where I’m not really inspired to write at all.”

Sensitivity is a must for any writer as it is what marks out the song-writer from the singer and, well everyone else.

“I think most people have the capacity to write but most people don’t actually think about it because it’s not their job but when you’re doing this all your life you realize this is your work so therefore you’re more inclined to pay attention to emotional and musical currents that run through you.”

The emotional currents which run through everyday life is what turns perhaps emotionally unpalatable stuff into musical gold. On his last album he wrote a song called Mother and Son which deals directly with his relationship with his late mother. He has admitted they were not as close as he would have liked. It is obviously a very personal song though one which we can all relate to but would he ever stop himself writing something in a song which he would be uncomfortable talking about in public? While thinking for a moment it seems there is no subject he would regret tackling.

“Sometimes I think I’ve exposed myself in the past in ways that I look back on now and think maybe that was a little silly. But at the time that was just too strong a feeling and there was no stopping it coming out.”

In reality though there is a clear line between person and performer as he freely admits the doubts and insecurities of day-to-day existence disappear neath the spotlight of the stage.

“When I’m on stage singing it’s almost like I’m a different person. I don’t have the same vulnerability as when I’m a normal person walking down the street. It’s always been that way with me when I’ve got on the stage I’ve always felt that something came into me, that some other persona inhabited me that was larger than life and therefore, not invulnerable, but not plagued with the insecurities I have myself as a person when I’m not on stage.”

There might be some downsides to aging,  but experience is not one of them as Brady admits for a large part of his career he has felt  uncomfortable in his own skin something only time has managed to fix. This seems to have partly stemmed from his decision in 1981 to leave folk music for the rock and pop world with the seminal album Hard Station.  With the switch made he faced some criticism from folk fans about the move into the more commercially lucrative pop market. Whatever the true level of dissent from fans at the time Brady himself admits that he found it tough to turn the variety of his own musical influences into a cohesive whole without dwelling on what his audience might think.

“I’m less plagued by worries of trying to integrate all the different parts of me musically. I went through long periods of feeling that audiences who wanted my [pop] songs wouldn’t want to hear my traditional music and vice versa.” Today he simply puts them all together on stage and doesn’t care what happens, with the result and perhaps much relief that “to my surprise my audience really don’t mind.”

Brady has no doubt earned his understanding audience. With 14 solo albums under his belt and the respect of songwriting luminaries like Bono, Bob Dylan and Bonnie Raitt, he is a man who has gained his standing in today’s field with a command of the songwriting craft few on these shores can match.

As he moves towards his mid-sixties Brady has now joined those artists whose best work should be behind them. In reality the idea that rock music is a young man’s game is something which is proving less and less accurate as the years go by, with people like Nick Cave, Tom Waits and Brady himself making music of exceptionally high quality into their fifties and beyond.

While Brady has grown more comfortable in his own skin his desire to make quality music is still clearly high. As he talks about the current perils of the music industry; illegal downloads, mediocre pop records, and an industry which refuses to develop new artists, Brady wonders whether it’s even worth bothering releasing full albums anymore, perhaps intermittent single track downloads are a better idea, as he says with the ominous intent of a hitman, “all these things have to be taken into account.”

Before he quickly adds, as if a reminder to himself, “but at the same time you have to enjoy your life and have fun.“

I think the honeycomb threw me. I’d never had honeycomb covered in yogurt before but it really is something. I don’t know if I’m just late to the dietetic party here but it took me a while to get over just how great they were. So much so that the brilliant spring sunshine began to literally (figuratively!) pale in comparison, as did everything else around it. With 30 years at, or around, the top of the music business were Michael Stipe and co really cut out for a fight with a delicious health store treat? It didn’t look likely but it was only fair I gave them the chance.

Let me first make this clear that this is not a proper review of the album, it is simply a few instant thoughts on what it was like. Reviewing any piece of music is difficult enough to start with without judging an album entirely on one listen. Arguably The Rolling Stones greatest album, Exile on Main Street for instance was shot to pieces on its initial release while as recently as last week Tim Jonze of The Guardian’s appraisal of Radiohead’s new album was that it pretty much sucked, then a couple of days later, presumably once the rest of the Guardian’s music staff got to hear it, they decided that it didn’t.

Plus no one is going to agree with your opinion completely anyway. So, what can you do?

REM are a middle-aged band and thus the Workingman’s Club was filled with middle-aged journalists in leather jackets swigging the free beer on offer and generally not listening to the record. Which does seem strange but perhaps they’d realised that it was already all over the Internet and were just there for the free beer? Seems quite likely.

Having decided to not listen to the album beforehand (well besides opening track Discover) I was left to make what I will surely later deem to be a far too hasty instant judgement on an album which could well be the next Pet Sounds for all I know.

I thought it was a nice. A perfectly acceptable offering from a band perfectly capable of delivering tightly arranged melodic pop music in their sleep. This is what they are great at. It has less of the aggression of  Accelerate but packs more of a punch than 2004′s Around the Sun. Oh my Heart was probably the stand out with final track the rather splendidly atmospheric Blue a close second, on first listen anyway.  In a way it seems like a kind of Best Of REM without, you know, all those famous songs they wrote. There even seems to be a few mandolins thrown into the mix.

Having only heard the entire album once through I’m not ready to condemn it or say it’s a classic for that matter. It sounded very much like an REM album to me, which is perhaps my only real complaint. Oddly this was also Tim Jonze’s main complaint about the Radiohead album, though personally I think that’s being ridiculous but music is, of course, subjective. In REM‘s case they are a band with hat fulls of talent but who, at least, to me seem to be kind of resting on their laurels, why not head for the ditch like Neil Young and make something, well, a bit different?

That’s my own view of course and I’m sure repeated listens will reveal a neatly crafted album full of fine songs, but what then of the (seriously) hardcore REM fans?

After each song a spritely blonde haired Mike Mills look-a-like broke into applause, it was clear he was enjoying it, on talking to him afterwards it was also clear he was very very drunk. His name was Peter and he had travelled all the way up from Limerick just to be here. They have the internet there, right?

He’d met the band three times before and already had this down as an instant classic. I guess for a band like REM who have been going too long to win over the doubters this is pretty much the best they can hope for, to keep their own fans happy while hoping a few casual fans might pick up the record if the songs are strong enough. Personally I wouldn’t be running to the shops to buy it (not that I ever run to shops to buy anything, that would be silly), then again like Tim Jonze I could be wrong. Once things for sure though it certainly wasn’t the musical equivalent of yogurt covered honeycomb.

With his  occassionally calm, sometimes giddy manner and gently lilting Welsh accent, one could almost mistake Howard Marks for someone’s kindly grandfather rather than one of the world’s most infamous ex-marijuana smugglers. He is now, of course, a senior citizen and has left the heady days of the 1980s behind him. For a while he was apparently responsible for about 10 per cent of all cannabis smuggling in the world. Now his main income comes from flogging his past to a very receptive audience. To a generation of young cannabis smokers Marks is a folk hero. Since his release from prison he has given interview after interview, answering questions about his time spent as a smuggler. And nothing is off-limits.

One of the most striking things about Marks in person is just how aged he looks. With a silver mane and stooped gait he carries the physical cost of a life lived in excess … and what a life it was. He was released in 1995 after serving seven years of a twenty-one year sentence in the Federal Correction Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. He confesses that after his release, as money dwindled he seriously considered getting back into the marijuana smuggling business. He attributes his remaining on the (relatively) straight and narrow to one thing… a hundred grand book deal. If the Welshman’s age is apparent from his physical posture, you could never tell from his conversational manner. With a cheeky twinkle in his eye he giddily describes his amazing life, with more than its fair share of ups and downs.

So would he do it all again? His trademark whispered laughter precedes his answer, ”oh, if I thought I could get away with it I would.” HIs recent return to the limelight coincided with the release of a biopic of his life and career, starring Rhys Ifans. Don’t be surprised if this one slipped under your radar, as the movie ran on a very limited release. Marks himself is delighted with the movie, “I think it’s very very good indeed. I like it very much.”

The film is based principally on his bestselling autobiography Mr Nice which he intentionally wrote with a certain demographic in mind,  namely similarly aged ladies and gentlemen all from a unique era of peace, love and experimentation. Though the ideals of the sixties have faded into memory, those that went through it, such as Marks, are living reminders of an altogether more liberal, albeit crazy, time. The intended audience for the memoir was “fellow geriatrics” who he hoped would read it and sigh in nostalgic remembrance. What he didn’t, and couldn’t, predict is that the youth of the nineties would take a far more active interest in the book and in his past. As for his faith in the geriatrics? “None of those bastards bought it!”

With the success of the book, Marks has been on something of a never-ending tour; something which he tackles with gusto. The show (tonight in Kilkenny’s Kilford Arms) is a mix of comedy and “social agenda” whereby he discusses the benefits of one tobacco plant over another, linking his points in to the apparent hypocrisy of the war on drugs. The second half is predominantly a Q&A;  while everything about his past is up for question most of the queries are about as taxing as “what is the best weed you’ve smoked?” We do also learn, however, that he has kept in touch with “ex-IRA” man Jim McCann who he speaks about with some affection, as well as how he pulled a ‘whitey’ (an over-indulgence of marijuana) in Germany and, also, that he is not a wealthy man – “or else I wouldn’t be doing this shit,” he deadpans.

After years of back-breaking swindling and extraordinary wealth, Marks and many of his fellow cartel members have been left without a pension though he insists throughout the interview that he has no regrets – “well only that I have none.” But what of his family who had to deal with an absent and infamous father and husband? Though he claims to have never been able to tell the difference between infamy and fame, Marks recognises that his chequered past was hard on his family and friends, mentioning that his kids “had a hard time in school, for sure.” While he is often quite descriptive in his books about the troubles a “wanted man” tag brings to his family, in person he is all well-practised one -liners and hoarse laughter.

Though he harboured no illusions about his future when he was smuggling, saying that any misfortune was “the price of losing a game I was willing to play… I knew I would either get busted for it, or die first.” For Marks there was never a plan. It was a teacher in Wales who told him to apply for Oxford, drug smuggling  developed over time and his book deal landed in his lap after he was released from prison.

Yet for such a seemingly passive man he has led an incredibly active life. While the aliases and phone lines (86 at one point) are no longer in use he still remains very busy; gigging constantly throughout Europe. He just no longer has to worry so much about getting nicked. But is there a part of him that misses the chase? “Sure.” The notoriety? “No I was trying to be anonymous, notoriety was a mark of failure, rather than success. Though in my subsequent career the notoriety helps.”

Given that the first book of his life, to which he extensively contributed, High Time, was published in 1984 when he was still actively smuggling, this stance appears somewhat hard to believe.

Where once Marks profited off the illegality of majijuana since his release from prison he has been quite outspoken in his support for its legalisation. He has attempted  to raise awareness for this issue in a number of ways, most notably by contesting four separate seats for the British Houses of Parliament in 1997. Though never expecting to be voted in, he believes that the awareness generated was more than satisfactory. Although he achieved his desired goals Marks is in no hurry to attempt another foray into politics, as he believes that his notoriety, which has become his main earner today,  would do more to harm his goal of legalisation. “I would never stand for Parliament again, I mean, the law’s not going to be changed by lunatics like me,” he laughs, “it’s going to be changed by regular people.”

Marks’ socialist views are apparent, and he himself professes to come from a “socialist stronghold” in the form of Kenfig Hill. “Though,” he adds, “where I’m from you could put a pig on acid up against the Tories and the pig on acid would win.” His stance on the legality of other drugs may be seen as more contentious. “I would support the legalisation of all recreational drugs so far discovered. OK someone might discover one that if you take it it makes you kill people and rape them…the only one I’ve come across remotely like that is alcohol.” The Welshman’s stance on drugs has not changed, and he states that if the amount you need to get high is close to the amount that can kill you, you have an inherent danger.

“I still feel marijuana is a relatively benign substance… try and smoke yourself to death with marijuana tonight and you’ll be there for a year.” Having taken up the mantle of imaginary King of Marijuana, Marks finds himself repeatedly faced with mounting responsibilities…“I feel obliged to take a joint whenever someone offers one to me, even if I don’t feel like it half the time.”

However, while he may be obliged to live up to this persona, regardless of the downsides, it seems Marks can’t help but maintain this image; while waiting to speak to the aging Welsh scoundrel we see him across the room, rolling (presumably) a joint, raising his eyes from his task and spotting the onlookers he quips, “purely pharmaceutical I assure you.”

For a period in the early noughties Irish singer-songwriters were pretty much everywhere. You couldn’t cross the road without bumping into a curly-headed Irish troubadour or a pixie dusted songstress. The likes of Paddy Casey, Mundy and Damien Rice dominated the Irish airwaves and a few (most notably Rice) managed considerable success outside the country. Then things began to change. Perhaps it was a case of over-saturation but the relatively decent radio support began to dry up and things turned sour. Casey, David Kitt and Cathey Davey, among others, were all dropped by their labels and the brief moment of minstrel acceptance was seemingly swept from our pastoral landscape as the airwaves became a homgenised version of mainstream UK radio.

The odd thing about the contemporary lack of support for these and other current singer-songwriters in Ireland is that right now is as good a time as any for Ireland’s troubadours. Many of the old guard (Cathy Davey for instance) continue to make some fine music, while the likes of Adrian Crowley, Foy Vance and, most recently, James Vincent McMurrow have been releasing terrifically ignored, wonderful music over the past few years. Just don’t expect too much of it on the radio.

One of the old guard, Gemma Hayes, is currently putting the finishing touches to her fourth studio album in Westland Studios in Dublin’s city centre. The Tipperary born singer emerged in 2002 with debut album Night On My Side, critical acclaim and a Mercury Music Prize nomination quickly following. However, Ms Dynamite took the Mercury ,while a crossover radio hit never arrived and she was dropped by her label after her second album, taking refuge for a number of years in LA.

While this sounds like a typically tragic career path, in reality Hayes made a success of her time in the States with her music getting played on shows like One Tree Hill, Grey’s Anatomy and The OC while getting name checked on the Counting Crow’s song, Washington Square. Most recently she’s also written three songs for upcoming Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) film Janie Jones. Yet she still can’t get played on Irish radio.

“I don’t write for radio,” she says by way of explanation.  In reality though she is one of a number of Irish artists who find themselves on the outside looking in at a closed shop of radio playlists dominated by UK or US artists. It is a mystery at a time when Irish music is in a genuinely healthy state that so few native artists get played on Irish radio.

“I don’t know why that’s the case. Every now and then the Irish public will embrace an Irish artist like The Frames, who are living legends in Ireland but haven’t really made it elsewhere. So it is possible [to get success at home] but the quality of Irish music out there is incredible.”

The lack of Irish music on radio is of course an old complaint, with France always cited as the lofty ideal. At least 40 per cent of the output of French radio stations is in the French language. In Ireland it is a recommended 20 per cent. Hayes, however, doesn’t think quotas are necessarily an answer.

“I definitely think Irish radio stations should play more music by Irish artists,” she says, “but if the radio station happens to play mainly pop music I don’t feel like they should play a three-piece jazz group just because it’s Irish. But definitely, if there’s Irish music out there and it is daytime radio music it should be played.”

So without the backing of the mainstream pop music stations and now firmly independent, what kind of ambitions does the Tipperary woman have for a new record? Well, in the great tradition of Irish female singers, seemingly not too much.

“I make the record, release it and just hope for the best.”

It says a lot about the current state of the music industry that an artist with considerable critical and occasional commercial success seemingly harbours such little hopes for a new record. It is, perhaps, a very Irish thing.  Cathy Davey, for instance, generally doesn’t tour for longer than two weeks and cites homesickness as a reason for rarely playing outside Ireland. Hayes has not given any of her own music to Irish radio for two years now and is content to just release a record and continue on to something new.

“I don’t listen to my own music very much. When it’s done, it’s finished, it’s time to move on and do something else.

Occasionally though she is forced to reminisce.” Sometimes you hear a song on the radio and you think ,’I wish I had done this with it’ but equally every now and then I’ll hear a song and be really pleased with how it turned it out.”

She is now almost ready to surrender another album to the waiting public. Being independent she can work to her own schedule (though does admit the “kick up the arse” provided by a major label deadline is sometimes welcome) and working once again with long-time producer and old-flame David Odlum, she hopes to have the album mixed and mastered by the end of February, and out by the start of May.

Unusually the recording process is something she enjoys, seeing the creation of a new record as something inherently freeing rather than the stultifying tedious experience other artists often find it.

“I love it. It ‘s my favourite part. Everything is new. You’re singing a song that’s still new. You haven’t beaten the song to death on stage for two years. There’s that wonderful feeling of being creative and seeing something form.”

Another trait so typical of Irish songwriters is just how damned laid back they are. Hayes, with just a month to go until the album is fully mixed, says she is still recording tracks without lyrics, as in she has no lyrics written at all for a number of songs yet. This is perfectly fine by her and is typical of someone who is, it seems, directly inspired by recording something new.

“I tend to record quite late in the album recording process. I’m a lot more chilled out about the process. It’s partly because I’m independent,” she explains, “once I’m happy with the album I’ll release it.”

Believing in the power of melody above all else ,she always writes the music first and is back working with her full band for the first album she has recorded in Ireland, normally opting for Black Box Studios in France (it was booked up on the dates she wanted to record). She is enjoying being back in the studio with her band so much so that she might bring them out on the road with for her upcoming shows, which were initially intended to be totally acoustic.

While Irish singer-songwriter’s can be frustratingly unambitious, this in itself does leave them free to concentrate on the music which is their craft. In this sense while Hayes is happy with much of what she’s released in the past she is still trying to achieve that sense of perfection which all artists search for.

“I’m still trying to write the song where I go ‘Ah that’s it, the song I’ve always wanted to write’. You’re kind of just chasing these sparks all the time.”

It is this search for perfection which will keep Hayes in the public eye and ultimately gain her some manner of posterity. History is a great leveler and while Hayes is currently ignored by Irish radio, (if not TV, where she can be more commonly found) good music, you would like to believe, will eventually find its way onto the airwaves.

Interviewing singers, comedians, and writers, most of whom are Irish, you realise that there is an abundance of talent out there which is so often overlooked, or in some cases, simply taken for granted here at home.  Perhaps being tagged onto the edge of Europe means we’re always looking across the water for some kind of odd validation. For instance, it’s so much easier for an Irish artist to get air-play on Irish radio  if you get played on UK radio first. It’s a strange thing. It seems the guardians of Irish radio, or perhaps the public at large, need reassurance which can be only gotten from our neighbours across the water.

Then there are the artists themselves. Many, while not exactly lacking ambition, seem quite happy occupying that space between international superstardom and obscure jazz quartet. Jack Lukeman, or Jack L as he’s more commonly known, is not, as he says himself, “a careerist”. He still lives in Athy, Co Kildare and admits that he’s simply,

“thankful that I’ve survived as a musician for the last 15 years or so and that’s a charmed existence in many respects.  I wouldn’t say I had any master plan.”

Since the release of his first (widely distributed) solo album, the acclaimed Metropolis Blue in 1999, the singer has won fans across the world – most recently winning the Best Music Award at the Edinburgh Festival – while never perhaps rising to the level of fame his talent deserves. In fairness, it’s not something that seems to bother him too much. World domination (musically at least) comes from “hard graft and a lot of luck”. It’s the luck part which perhaps Lukeman has missed out on. Not that he feels bitter about it, in fact, he says he’s been “lucky to be playing music for a few years now and getting away with it.”

His career thus far has produced seven studio albums and led to the release of The Story So Far, a collection of the essential Jack L tracks in October 2009. The album came about, quite by accident, when author Anna McPartland released her book So What If I’m Broken , which has characters re-united through a Jack L show and features his song titles as chapter headings. He was asked to do something to tie in with it the book.

Often artists have a problem playing their best known stuff and want appreciation for their less known “gems”.  Lukeman is not one of them. He has no problem with the Greatest Hits thing. “Growing up, the Greatest Hits stuff was how I got into a load of bands. It was kind of nice to do it.”

Currently on tour, he’ll play all these “old favourites” while testing a few new songs which he hopes to record for an album later this year.”

The writing of new material is something he relishes.

“I’m always writing. At the end of the night I often empty my head out onto a page.”

Of course this process has changed over time. Over a career you learn certain things which you had wished you’d known when you were younger, but does the process of actually writing music really get any easier?

“It’s easy to put together the skeleton of  song. Sometimes a song comes purely in a stream of consciousness, other times it would take years to build a song. There’s nothing easy about it, unless you have those moments where you sit and play the guitar and, suddenly, there’s a song.”

He is a firm believer that as a writer you must first please yourself and admits that he writes songs solely for his own entertainment and hopes the audience will follow.

“I would try to write songs that would turn me on first. You’re trying to entertain yourself and people get off on that. It’s all about creating an atmosphere as much as a song,” he says. “There’s a certain kind of hypnotism there that you’re trying to draw people into a story for a few minutes. I write lots and lots of songs and it’s like mining for gold . You see the ones that are shining out, that have something different.”

While he was forced to look back over his career while compiling The Story So Far (he chose the track listing himself), looking back is not something he wants to do as an artist.

“It’s always about the next song, the next album. You always think you can do things better”

If live performance is all about creating an atmosphere, then Jack L is something of a natural, but does he believe it is something anyone can learn or is it, like his versatile baritone, simply something you’re  born with?

“It’s something you can only learn through experience. You learn you’re trade as you go along. It might look effortless but it’s just the knowledge of doing it for so long. Most things can be taught.”

For instance, for his own shows he doesn’t have a strict set-list, he has a beginning and an ending but the middle is determined by the crowd.

“If it’s going in an up-tempo direction you take it there, if it’s a nice relaxed atmosphere you take it there. That’s something you learn as you go along, how to judge the atmosphere of the room.”

Perhaps though, the key to any kind of performance is, as he puts it himself, not over-thinking things. You need to learn enough tricks to not have to consciously call on them at any point in a show.

“It’s like dancing, if you think about it too much you trip up. You find the centre of the song and try to get into it.” The dancer analogy is apt, you can’t of course switch off completely, it is a balancing act.

“I don’t think about it too much, I just do what I do”

Home is the debut album from multi-instrumentalist and San Diego local Jacob Montague under the guise of Achilles and the Tortoise. It’s essentially acoustic folk music with a wide range of Americana instruments, played predominantly by Montague himself. Everything from mandolin to banjo to accordion and even the occasional brass flourish can be found beneath the quite subtly strung arrangements. According to the notes which accompany the album Montague is hoping to inspire “the curiosity of childhood and the search for something bigger” in his collection of songs which continually yearn for something better.

It opens with Western Sky an ode to a Californian sunset or a vacant ex-flame. Featuring a merge of guitars and mandolin it is tightly arranged with a strangled affected vocal which might put some people off. Then again folk music is full of these sort of voices, so perhaps it is more a signature sound than a sonic hindrance.

1748, unlike the rest of the album is not written by Montague but is instead penned by Cameroon Woodward and is the most satisfying lyric on the album. It’s brooding guitar and up-tempo backing also make it one of the album highlights.

Accordion takes the place of mandolin as back-up instrument on Jungenberg and finds Montague once more yearning for the idealised freedom of “somewhere else”. This time the words are made all the more affecting by the subject matter; seemingly the suicide of a close friend. Oddly, though, for such a personal subject the lyrics don’t get any deeper than “I remember your smile, I remember your laugh.”

Lyrically it is hard to place the album. Most of the songs take a quite simplistic look at a world of pastoral elegance, a place of “blue jays and autumnal trees.” They are simple and childlike and it is hard to be too critical when this is seemingly what the writer is going for. The innocent whimsy does begin to get a bit tiring though.

A case in point is Rocking Chairs which while picking up the tempo a bit is very much a sort of contemporary folk song with all the naivety of a nursery rhyme. A child’s view of the world might be quite innocent but it is an innocence which comes with an awareness of the good and bad in the world around them, even if they don’t quite comprehend that dichotomy. Montague doesn’t quite pull that off, though in fairness this is no easy thing to do. There is still, though, much to recommend in Home.

The arrangements are splendid. The use of a variety of different instruments make a fine change from the regular acoustic singer-songwriter albums and  aside from songwriting he is clearly a fine musician in his own right. Home has its flaws but for a debut album it shows a great deal of promise.

Drop-d rating: 6.5/10

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Most bands build a support base slowly. They plot a route, build up a following, take every gig they can and pray like hell.

O Emperor, on the other hand, are one of those mysterious bands that seem to have appeared as if by magic. With their layered harmonies and ringing guitars they could be a long lost sixties pop group. A cross between Smiley Smile era Beach Boys and the more sinister side of Elliot Smith.

That they are Irish and have been together for over a decade now is both a surprise and a demonstration of just how Dublin-centric a lot of the Irish music press is. How could we have ignored these guys for so long?

The band met while in secondary school in Waterford and continued to play together when they re-located to Cork for college. Their early days were spent playing the local pubs and clubs, covers were mixed with the occasional original as they searched for their own voice.

“We did gigs with dramatically different styles and slowly but surely we weaned out the weaker songs,” reveals lead singer Paul Savage.

The group has no fixed songwriter and instead has an organic approach to writing as Savage puts it;

“A person comes up with a rough idea, a riff or a couple of chords, a template and that gets put through the mill of the band. We jam it out for a day and see what happens…it goes through a progression and eventually when it comes out being recorded it could be completely different than when it started.”

The group gathered enough material for an album which was initially recorded in Kinsale, Co Cork in 2008. However, fearing that the record would simply disappear without requisite label support Savage decided to send a copy to every Irish record company he could. And thus Universal Ireland came on board. While the band now have major label backing behind them, they don’t regret their time spent going the independent route.

“It started out as an indie thing and it was good that we did that. It gave us time to write the album and learn a couple of things.”

So with the backing of Universal Ireland the group decided to re- record their debut. It was, though, not something they were initially look ing forward to.

“We thought it would be a little bit tedious. We were going back to recording songs we had recorded originally ourselves.”

The process would prove much more cathartic than expected with Savage insisting the that it turned out to be “very easy and very painless.”

By this point the band were now gigging relentlessly, honing their live sound and gaining an increasingly large following in anticipation of the album’s release. Their first single Po was released in late 2009 while a support slot with Mumford & Sons fol-lowed at the start of 2010. It was to be an eye-opening experience for the group.

“The sheer massivenes [sic] of the whole crowd was bizarre…I ignorantly didn’t know how big they were,” admits Savage.

Their first release under Universal, the four track EP, Reverie arrived in May though proved only a mild taster for the album itself.

Hither Thither was released on October 1. Recorded over four weeks with engineer Keiron Lynch it has set the Irish music industry into something of a spin.

With songs like the sublime Don’t Mind Me it debuted in the Irish charts at number six last week and has gained the sort of breathless reviews most young Irish acts can only dream of. While much of the media has focused on how the band has “snuck up” on the music buying public the band have of course been going for some time. So does Savage think being based outside of Dublin has been a a help or hin drance to the band?

“It gives us more of a get-up and go attitude to touring and gigging. Not to say that people from Dublin are lazy but if you’re from a small town there’s less of a scene and there less things for you to play so you have to travel more. So it gives us that kind of work ethos.”

Savage admits that journalists and DJs don’t often check out bands outside Ireland’s capital. For O Emperor this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all doesn’t familiarity breed contempt?

“The less you play in a place the more intriguing you are to people. If you only play once every three or four months people will actually go and see the gig. If you play every weekend people kind of get sick of you. It’s nice not being from Dublin and not over doing it.”

O Emperor appear to have got the balance right. From here the band will now try and crack the more difficult UK and European markets with tours in January and February and a UK release for the album possibly at the start of next year. For the minute though they can bask in the critical glow emanating from their debut album.

“Yeah it’s been great. I’m delighted we sold some records, which is tough to do in this day and age and we’re really happy with the response we’re getting. It’s been a long time coming so it’s a relief to get it out there.”

O Emperor’s debut album Hither Thither is out now.

O Emperor MySpace

It seems nowhere can escape the pinch of the tightening belt of a recession, even Ireland’s favourite boutique festival had to scale back a bit this year. Some early exploring  revealed the cinema tent was no longer with us, Arcadia and it’s fire breathing monoliths had been scaled back and a few other smaller stages were no more. It didn’t really dampen the spirits though, especially with the sun beating its heavy rays down on us all Friday long.

Friday

Gil Scott Heron

The Waterboys were the first of the big dogs to take to the main stage with Fisherman’s Blues and The Whole of the Moon as sure-fire festival favourites as anything.
From here it was over to see Sigur Ros’s Jonsi play  a typically theatrical ‘Rosesque’ apocalyptic wonder of a show. He also was dressed like a Native-American pigeon which was nice.

After this it was a straight choice between Roxy Music and Eels. E won hands down.  Rather than play some of the slower happy love song ballads off his latest album it was a show full of punk rock freak-outs with acoustic folk songs like Little Bird getting reworked as fine aggressive Rock ‘n’ Roll.

The crowd, perhaps a little surprised at the volume of it all took their time getting behind it but were eventually won over. The mash-up of Mr E’s Beautiful Blues and Twist And Shout was the highlight of the whole day.

Rubberbandits featuring Crystal Swing would probably have rivalled this for sheer spaced-out oddness but alas it took place at the same time as E and so sacrifices had to be made.

Saturday

Every Irish festival is generally dominated by one topic, the weather. It is one of our national obsessions, due in part to our rather changeable climate. When the rain hit early Saturday we all dreaded the inevitable mud and wind and rain. We were spared, for the day at least and just as well, as Saturday had the stand out line-up of the weekend.

Before the music it was time for a little bit of spoken word. Roddy Doyle and Irvine Welsh did some readings in the Leviathan Stage with Welsh revealing that a prequel to Trainspotting is on the way. Albeit when he could not say.

After that it was time to check out Steve Frost and his Improv Allstars with guests Phil Jupitus and Joe Rooney providing all kinds of comedic madness only somewhat dampened by watching the entire thing from behind a pillar. Comedy is a visual medium after all.

So now for some music. Hypnotic Brass Ensemble were great as always, while Paul Brady over at the Crawdaddy tent was very very happy and the music wasn’t bad either.  Tucan in the Body and Soul, now a full band, were an instrumental treat as always.

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble

After that it was time for Steve Earl who drew a surprisingly massive crowd. It was an all acoustic set which was just as well for Earl’s morbidly obese roadie who surely could not have handled setting up a full drum kit, in fact maybe that’s why Earl didn’t bother with a band. Either way he delivered one of the finest sets of the weekend.

Seasick Steve played his second show of the weekend on the Salty Dog – a ship shaped stage in the forest. A much stronger stage presence on the smaller stage a clearly drunk Steve and his crazy Gandalf look-a-like drummer enjoyed their time on board and shared a drink or two with the locals as well.

Again the headliners clashed once more. This time it was Leftfield up against Gil Scott Heron. Choosing the comfort of the Crawdaddy tent over the main stage it was Heron who won out. While the show was no match for his Tripod gig earlier in the year – his jazz indulgences  too prominent on this occasion- it was still a fine show and it is always great to see such a legend at such close quarters.

And that was it for Saturday and what a fine day it was too. Sunday had a lot to live up to.

Sunday

It began with a search for money, which was to prove rather futile,both ATM’s running out of its gold dust after a half an hour queue at both machines. Luckily, being merely an observer, I could enjoy the Sunday Gospel with The Dublin Gospel Choir before checking out The RTE Concert Orchestra’s debut Electric Proms at Body and Soul. Despite sound problems and a quickening wind the Orchestra still played a pretty triumphant show and will no doubt be asked back next year.

Two Door Cinema Club

Two Door Cinema Club were a right crowd pleaser though still had nothing on Mumford and Sons on the mainstage. Always destined to be the biggest thing of the weekend their radio friendly folk-inflected dance-rhythms were always going to be one of the shows of the weekend and so it proved.

With the weather now swiftly worsening, the wind quickening and the rain now falling we could have done with something to raise some festival spirits. Three days in and even the most seasoned festival fit goer would have been feeling things a bit. So who could swoop in to save the day and finish out the festival with a sun-soaked sing along? The National and Massive Attack of course.

Both acts are brilliant in their own right but The Beach Boys they ain’t and while The National at least had a couple of catchy choruses to distract us Massive Attack could do little to make us forget about our wet and weary bones.

And then it was all over once more. Friday and Saturday displayed all the best that Stradbally has to offer, Sunday was a bit more of a damp windy washout but that is the way with Irish festivals. Still when a line-up is good enough that you miss the likes of Modest Mouse, Roxy Music and Villagers you can’t complain too much.

Peter Doran is one of those rare species in Ireland; a singer songwriter. Yep if there’s one thing this country lacks its wistful singers wielding acoustic guitars and  songs which read like diary entries.

Peter Doran, Sleepless Street

OK so maybe there’s one or two or even a few dozen out there and quite a lot of them do suck. Mullingar’s Peter Doran has many of the usual traits we’ve come to expect from our sacred singer-songwriter; mid-tempo songs, lyrics of love and heartbreak and the always metaphorically bleak strings. Here’s the thing though; it’s actually pretty good.

Yes the lyrics can get a bit too introspective at times but still individually there are some good songs on here and taken as a whole it’s a fine piece of work.

Hunter’s Sketchs kicks the album off on a rather strident note, Doran’s voice floating over a glam rock backing track that Marc Bolan would have been happy to shack his curly head to.  Sacred Place is more of the mid- tempo confessional – it even features the line “at first I must confess” – but is rescued by some fine vocals and a decent chorus.

Eternity is perhaps the highlight of the album as Doran laments that “everything gets swallowed…by this bottomless eternity” It may not be uplifting but we all like a bit of misery -or at least steely-eyed realism -every now and then. Regardless of subject matter it’s a fine song.

And that’s the point here really. We all shudder just a little when we hear the term singer-songwriter and are even more suspicous if Irish is thrown on the front but really it doesn’t matter how they are categorised as long the songs themselves are decent. It’s all we can ask as consumers really.

Sleepless Street is not without its flaws, a few of the lyrics could have done with a revision or two and Steeped In You does fall the wrong side of winsome folky for my liking but as second album’s go its got plenty of potential with his voice a mix of Damian Rice and Loudon Wainright perhaps the singer’s greatest strength.

Doran is as good an example as any that all those singer-songwriter ticks that have come to be so bloody tiresome are really the product of bad songwriters and that a good song regardless of subject matter or categorisation will always win out.

Drop-d rating: 7/10

Peter Doran