From the current booming local scene to the towering global presence of U2, Ireland has always shouted very loud when it comes to music. Alan Corr charts the greatest Irish bands and artists of all time and marks some new names to watch out for.
U2
Where to start? Howth Community Hall in 1977? The Edge’s kitchen table the year before? The Dandelion Market . . . ? U2 began as a gauche post-punk band from north County Dublin with a vision thing that has never left them. Their Christian crusade (Boy/October) soon transmuted into politics (War), arty European experimentation (The Unforgettable Fire) to ’80s recession anthems shot through with radical politics (Joshua Tree) and ironic/serious Berlin a go-a-go depth (Achtung Baby). They burned just as brightly in the ’90s and when they released their best song, Vertigo, a full 27 years after forming, it seemed that god and Bono were on more than just nodding terms. Slagging them off is a national pastime (is Bono the greatest ambassador for Ireland since Arthur Guinness or is he just plain embarrassing?) but even the most ardent of critics must marvel at their achievement. U2 have done more to and with rock ’n’ roll than nearly any other band in history. Where to end? The misfiring No Line on The Horizon? That dirty great ruddy claw? Bono’s hairline? Thirty-three years into a frankly spectacular career, the U2 story is far from over.
Listen: The Joshua Tree (1987), Achtung Baby! (1991)
The Undertones
This joyful mob exploded out of Derry in 1975. Fergal Sharkey and co. surfed the punk tide while ignoring the sectarian inferno raging around them and good for them; their three-chord Ramones-like trick was a joyful world of teenage kicks and chocolate and girls. With the likes of Jimmy, Jimmy, the peerlessly pithy My Perfect Cousin and Here Comes the Summer, they were up there with The Buzzcocks and The Jam as a great singles act. When they split, the O’Neill brothers hooked up a Californian surf dude Steve Mack to form the incendiary That Petrol Emotion, who made space between themselves and The Undertones by truly engaging with the North’s many problems.
Listen: The Undertones (1979), Hypnotised (1980)
Van Morrison
The Belfast Cowboy would be on this list even if he’d only ever made one album. That album is 1968’s Astral Weeks, possibly the most eulogised and revered piece of music in Irish rock history. He recorded it at a mere 22 years of age in upstate New York after the dissolution of his killer r ’n’ b combo Them and it marked the beginning of a spiritual quest that has taken him from Celtic soul to eastern mysticism to finessed and very mature jazz. Morrison’s songbook is one of the greatest in any genre of music, with an ability to capture time, place and mood like few other singers. He may be savagely private about his personal life and dismissive of the modern world but Morrison does occasionally crack a rare smile. At 65, Van is still very much the man.
Listen: Astral Weeks (1968), No Guru, No Method, No Teacher (1986)
Republic of Loose
Could Mick Pyro be the smartest man in Irish music? As lead singer of the sleazy but cerebral Dublin outfit RoL, he has created an urban underworld of beautiful freaks and bowery bums over the course of four albums. But he’s also brewed up the kind of metaphysical poetry that would make William Blake’s head spin. Best of all, Pyro and his collective have opted out of the Irish pop and rock idiom completely by taking their influences from blues, vintage rock ’n’ roll and the American soul and funk stars of the ’70s and ’80s. You can expect a Hall and Oates croon one minute and a Prince musical back flip the next. To really get these cats you have to see their marathon funk/soul revue live on stage.
Listen: Aaargh! (2006), Johnny Pyro and The Dance of The Devil (2008)
A House
Something Happens may have turned the airwaves all paisley and jangly in the late ’80s/early ’90s, but the best band in Dublin back then were these angry west Dubliners. Led by Dave Couse, a caustically witty young suburbanite, and with Fergal Bunbury playing one of the spikiest and most distinctive guitar style of the era, A House could be scabrous one moment and achingly tender the next. Ultimately hobbled by an uncaring public, they limped from record deal to record deal before delivering their defiant masterpiece I am The Greatest in 1991.
Listen: On Our Big Fat Merry Go Round (1988), I Am The Greatest (1991)
Thin Lizzy
Recently a British broadsheet asked why Phil Lynott never ascended to the godhead of much lesser rock ’n’ mortals. It was an interesting question but as anyone who has heard the music of Smashing Pumpkins and Metallica will tell you, a rather silly one. Thin Lizzy were always one of the most adored acts in rock, especially by their peers and a new generation of modern acts who grew up listening to their twin guitar assault and jaywalking basslines. In their ’70s heyday, Thin Lizzy were one of the tightest rock acts in the world and in Philo they boasted the very embodiment of rock ’n’ roll – devilishy handsome, charismatic and as agile as a cat – he also wrote anthems as well as tender love songs. His death in 1986 from complications from years of drug abuse truly was the day the music died in Ireland.
Listen: Jailbreak (1976), Live and Dangerous (1978)
Lisa Hannigan
When Lisa Hannigan was Damien Rice’s muse and musical partner, the big question was when was she going to slip free of his cloying confessionals and strike out on her own? When she eventually did, the result was 2008’s Sea Sew, an album of quiet, shimmering beauty that let Hannigan’s wonderfully honeyed voice really take flight. Quirky and original, her beautifully constructed songs sound like they’re carved straight from nature herself. The 30-year-old from Kilcloon, Co Meath has just finished recording her second album in Wales with LA producer Joe Henry, who previously worked with Ray Lamontange and Solomon Burke. Hannigan has only just begun.
Listen: See Sew (2008)
Two Door Cinema Club
There was an upset at the recent Choice Music Award in Dublin’s Vicar Street when Conor J O’Brien’s Villagers did not take home the trophy. Instead, it went to the frighteningly young Co Down trio Two Door Cinema Club. Named after band member Sam Halliday’s mispronounciation of the name of their local picture house Tudor Cinema, they delivered their startlingly fresh debut album Tourist History last year. They make a wiry and kinetic guitar pop that recalls Vampire Weekend and the likes of I Can Talk and Something Good Can Work zing with sunny optimism and thus buck Irish rock’s default setting of miserable introspection. The kids love ’em and you’ve gotta listen to the kids. Sometimes.
Listen: Tourist History (2010)
Adrian Crowley
The churchy and ancient-sounding organ strains of The Wishing Well from Adrian Crowley’s third album alerted listeners that here was a singer-songwriter with something much more than clichés and bombast to offer. The Maltese-born Galway man dwells in a similar musical corner to Bill Callahan and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, a place where spine-tingling intimacy and strange imagery can induce a trance-like state in the listener. Crowley is never going to be the new U2 but he is destined to reach a wider audience with his gorgeous music.
Listen: Long Distant Swimmer (2007), Season of The Sparks (2010)
The Pogues
Led by London-Irish Glimmer Twins Shane MacGowan and Spider Stacey, The Pogues were one of the most vital and dangerous Irish acts of the 1980s. As a live entity, they were like a particularly lairy Brendan Behan fronting an Irish trad band; pints flew and MacGowan, with his tombstone grin, acted as fear an tí amid the swirling, swilling madness. However, it was on record where The Pogues’ terrible beauty was really to be heard. At a time of mass emigration, Phil Chevron’s Thousands are Sailing evoked the real pain of the Irish Diaspora and for a band who knew how to bridle sentimentality in the face of very harsh truths they even managed to write the greatest Christmas song of all time. These Irish trad and punk rock devotees chased the true spirit of rock ’n’ roll down London’s back streets and out into the blood-shot light of some semi-mythical Eire.
Listen: Rum Sodomy and The Lash (1985) If I Should Fall From Grace With God (1988)
The ten Irish albums you must hear
Astral Weeks – Van Morrison
Loveless – My Bloody Valentine
The Joshua Tree – U2
I am The Greatest – A House
Rum Sodomy and The Lash – The Pogues
Sea Sew – Lisa Hannigan
Sacred Heart Hotel – The Stars of Heaven
The Holy Pictures – David Holmes
Ghostown – The Radiators
In Towers and Clouds – The Immediate
What’s next?
The Twitterati may know these acts already but the mainstream just might beckon in the next few years, paving the way for the next generation of Irish musicians to make an impression on the global stage
Cashier No 9
The Cast of Cheers
Not Squares
The Danger
And So I Watch You From Afar
O Emperor
Adebisi Shank
Lost Chord
Squarehead
