You have to start somewhere, and it might as well be here. You’ve decided to become an acclaimed musician, launched on a trajectory towards a Totally Dublin review that declares you “interesting, but not hugely enjoyable” as you fire to the top of the album charts with a three-night stand in the Olympia ahead of you. But for now, you just want to know what other people think.
I’m here for you, internets, the Demosthenes of demos, the Fortinbras of four-track recordings. While Jackie Hayden presses go on the steampunk machine that produces U2 comparisons when you turn the crank, I’m here with the big speakers plugged in. Send your demos to karl@totallydublin.ie and if you don’t see yourself this Friday, be patient, we’ll get there. This is full John Peel, everyone-gets-heard business.
Floor Staff
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Floor Staff are a two-piece Dublin ‘experimental pop’ group. It’s probably a stretch to call them experimental – it’s more that they sound like the experimental elements of grown-up pop (Radiohead, Spiritualised, Coldplay, mass-appeal house) – but with each melody in its right place and a deliberate approach to their mid-tempo sincerity, they sound pretty much ready for the radio already. There’s a form of emotional frailty spread through the tracks that could either be real or aesthetic, but it’s relatable, and it’s hard not to imagine a classic camera swoop over the crowd as they project it to the masses at a festival – for better or for worse. They’ll be in the Twisted Pepper on July 12th as part of 10 Days In Dublin.
A Second Moon
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A Second Moon shine an important light on the difference between pure folk pop and psychedelic folk pop by sounding like the former but, with flanged acoustic guitar and heavily reverberating vocals, pitching up in the latter camp. You have to appreciate the effort put into the arrangement, even if it’s distinctly lo-fi. If it wasn’t for those beats, those accenting backing vocals, those shakers, you might end up cringing at this at an open-mic night you’d accidentally attended. It’s the age-old chestnut, though. The emotions are real, and they’re evidently strongly held by the singer, who gives a background on all the songs in the Soundcloud, but the genre-boundaries mean they’re always expressed through a certain bunch of tropes. More psych, less strum.
Go Swim
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If you were to be told, off the bat, that Go Swim were a Belfast-based indie rock band, self-described as “newest and most exciting”, with an “explosive live show”, what would you imagine? You’d probably imagine something vaguely in the ballpark of Two Door Cinema Club, and you’d be imagining right.They have everything in place, the posi melodies, the build and release and the ubiquitous dance-to-me drum pattern. It’s really just a matter of whether they’ve arrived at the right point in the curve in terms of public interest in bands that sounds like this, and whether they can find that more mainstream audience. They’re playing Whelans on August 15th if you want to volunteer yourself.
Me and My Dog
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Me and My Dog comes out of a tradition of one-man chillpop that’s found a home in Dublin bedrooms, and it stays within the lines in terms of the friendly, surfy elements used. We get the Be My Baby drum beat, because what’s the point of being one-man chillpop if you can’t use the Be My Baby drum beat, and we get oohs and wobbles along with the sometimes-excellent, sometimes-frail singing that binds the personality together. It’s close to the more tempered end of Swedish twee pop, something reinforced by the fact that it’s literally three ostensible love songs about a dog, Everything Is Easy, the final track of the three, has a melody running through it that’s up there with any American weed-pop seven-inches.
Sliab Cuinciu
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Sliab Cuinciu, nicely addressing the total lack of proto-hip hop acts with names in Middle Irish, presented a set of songs with tags that strongly implied either the drugs that inspired them or the drugs that are recommended for consumption while listening. Oh Boy (2CB) flits between Egyptian Lover-type disco hip hop and earlier sleaze jazz in a colourful, woozy way, while Alright! (2CI) is airy, euphoric and jerky, still with the acid squelches. Drug Game (‘discosiative’) comes with disco’s synthesised horns and a call-and-response early hip hop line cut over the top, reinforcing the lane Sliab Cuinciu has taken. It, in particular, seems a good fit for the middle of a mix in a dark dancefloor, and as a whole there’s an interesting aesthetic at work here in, of all places, Wicklow.
Sliab Cuinciu wins this weekly competition, moving forward to the even more prestigious Demo of the Month (and potentially year) category.
