Irish week: Aoife Barry’s top 5 Irish acts right now
All this week, there will be guest posts from various people involved in different strands of Irish music – record shop owners, writers, bloggers, promoters, radio presenters, bands and more, telling us what Irish bands or artists they are really into right now.
Aoife Barry is a Cork journalist, based in Dublin who blogs under the name Sweet Oblivion, has a radio show at 5pm every Thursday under the same moniker on 2XM, contributes to State.ie and has a weekly column ‘Adventures in Veg’ in the Irish Independent Weekend magazine about veggie food with a food blog here.
1. Squarehead
This young Dublin fella is a member of the Popical Island collective and his utterly AMAZING song ‘Fake Blood’ will feature on their brilliant compilation, which will be out very soon. I swear, this dude should be best friends with Best Coast, surfing with the Beach Boys, writing with Thurston Moore and hanging with TuneYards. His music is so fun and fresh and yet reminds me of so many classic pop bands. So, so good. If you like handclaps and pop hooks then you will love this. Can’t wait to hear more by him. Altogether now, ‘Awoooooo…’
2. Laura Sheeran
After seeing the fascinating Laura perform at Vicky Langan’s (who is often referred to as the Queen Bee of noise music in Ireland) Black Sun event last summer, I was hooked. Laura’s music can be dark and a bit scary in places but live she has a wonderfully fun approach to her music. She’s like an episode of Twin Peaks in female form. I’m impatient for her to release her full-length album (‘Lust of Pig and the Fresh Blood’) this year – but thankfully she’ll have an EP, ‘Music for the Deep Woods’. Can’t wait.
Love song for mr. skin by laurasheeran
3. Toby Kaar
Cork is a real hotbed for electronic music, with loads of live gigs going on, and Toby Kaar is one of my favourite musicians from here – but it was hard to pick just one as there are so many talented people. If you’re a fan of Flying Lotus or Four Tet you’ll definitely dig his stuff – but rest assured he’s got his own thing going on. He’s studying music in the UK and it’s really cool to see how his style is changing and getting better and better with each track. He’s progressing as an artist and it’s so great to see that. Excellent stuff.
Wensleydale – Toby Kaar by Wimbot
4. Stone Throwing Youths
Did you think that grunge was dead? Wrong! Cork band Stone Throwing Youths – the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Brian Casey – are making music that belongs back in Seattle in the ‘90s and I reckon that Layne Staley and Kurt Cobain would have approved. You may need to don a checked shirt and mess up your hair a bit to really get into their stuff, but you’ll definitely relive your youth listening to this.
03 – Stone Throwing Youths – Too Much Information- SubPlot Records by GoodSeedPR
5. KVX
These five Corkonian young women combine nice riffs with great vocals and sweet flute and glockenspiel bits. I love the combination of their syrupy vocals with the heavier music. I like them best when they have fun with the vocals like on the demo of ‘Thoughts and Actions’ on their Myspace and think there’s a lot of potential for them. Their sound has moved on a lot in the past few years and they’re just after releasing their ‘Dinner’ EP – I’m excited to see where they will go with their music.
