WITH less than a month to go until Christmas, now is the perfect time to keep on completely ignoring the ‘festive season’ until December is well underway.
What better way to cleanse your palate of the Christmas music already beginning to blare mercilessly from every shop, pub and workplace radio than taking in an evening of pleasingly loud local bands, all curated on a single bill for your gig-going convenience?
Foo Laa Fest at The Ulster Sports Club on December 5 is an eight-act deep pre-Christmas pick-me-up of alternative, guitar-based delights split over two stages that should help sustain you through the rest of the year and well into the gig-free wilderness of early January.
Foo Laa Fest is an eight-act deep pre-Christmas pick-me-up of alternative, guitar-based delights
Topping the bill in their latest ‘this is our final Belfast gig of the year, honest‘ hometown appearance are the mighty Problem Patterns, the newly crowned NI Music Prize Album of The Year winners (for their essential debut LP, Blouse Club), who already seem keen to kick on with the next thrilling instalment of their inexorable rise to world domination by working on new material.
We’ve already had the effortlessly anthemic newie I Think You Should Leave - the real NI Single of The Year, don’t let anyone tell you different - and now they are threatening to play us some freshly composed tuneage at this auspicious event next Thursday.
Will they be big and bad enough to deliver on the night? There’s only one way to be sure.
Joining Problem Patterns will be M(h)aol, Silverbacks, The Love Buzz, Makeshift Art Bar, Jock, Affection to Rent and The Drive.
Having just re-released their debut album Attachment Styles for the septic market, Merge-signed Dublin/Belfast/that London-based post-punkers M(h)aol have just put out a new single, Snare, a crackin(l)g poke-back at the kind of deckhead (sic) who can’t wrap his head around the concept of a women playing the drums - something drummer/lead singer Constance Keane knows all about.
This spiky, drone-y, dance-y gem follows cool on the heels of the fantastic Pursuit from earlier this year, which ploughed a mesmerising, increasingly noisy and nightmarish groove for a tune inspired by planning outfits around their suitability for evading strange, creepy men on the walk home from a night out.
Despite original singer Róisín and bassist Zoe having departed their ranks, on the basis of their first two tunes as a ‘power trio’, M(h)aol sound positively re-invigorated.
Expect to hear both aforementioned songs on the night, plus your Attachment Styles faves and hopefully an older tune or three besides.
Dublin sextet Silverbacks sort of seem to have too many members for the kind of slinky, catchy Television/late-period Sonic Youth-informed alternative rock they make - but then again, why have just one guitarist when you can have three instead?
Plus, it’s working for them: their current album Easy Being a Winner is easily the best thing they’ve put out to date.
Signed to the Frank and Walters' label FIFA (always a trademark of quality), Kinsale indie rock trio The Love Buzz will have slogged all the way up from the People’s Republic to perform for you at Foo Laa Fest, so why not do them the courtesy of giving their catchy/crunchy tunes a sliver of your time and attention?
Give their current No Different EP a good blast by way of preparation - you might well find yourself sucked down a The Love Buzz-listening rabbit hole which leads all the way down/back to their 2019 debut, the Candy Flip EP.
Being a Belfast-based trio, Makeshift Art Bar don’t have as far to travel to Foo Laa Fest, but their satisfyingly noisy rumblings are also well worth being present and correct for.
We’ve only had two tunes from them thus far - a moody, muscular musical rumination called Inertia and the similarly Gothy, shriek-along-friendly discopunk skronk of current single, Birthday Party - but that’s already enough evidence to suggest they will be regularly featured in Noise Annoys for the foreseeable future.
I feel like I haven’t mentioned that Jock are class recently, so let me take this opportunity to do so now: Jock are class.
The Brighton-based Belfast-bred punk rock trio have been going for a couple of years now and every song they’ve put out to date has been a total banger - including their current tune, Joe Duffy.
You may disagree, but you’d be wrong.
Dublin’s Affection To Rent are fairly new, but the swirling grungegaze of hugely atmospheric debut single If We Fall is quite the attention-getter - definitely ones to get down early for.
Likewise, Foo Laa Fest openers The Drive, who hail from Cork. The cut of their sonic jib is not dissimilar to Affection To Rent, though perhaps with some extra noise and post-punky ‘angularness’ in the mix, which should come in handy for alerting punters to the fact that the gig is now underway and inane chit-chat should therefore cease forthwith.
It’s not often you get eight top turns on the same bill like this, and with ‘early bird’ tickets costing just £16.75 including booking fee via Skiddle.com, it’s seriously good value for money too.
You’d be a fool to miss it - so make sure you don’t.
GIG RADAR
Descendents, Circle Jerks, Negative Approach - March 10, The Limelight, Belfast
WHAT’S better than one legendary US punk rock band making their Belfast debut? How about three of them visiting Belfast for the first time on the same bill?
California pop punk survivors Descendents will be kicking off their latest UK and European tour in Dublin on March 9 at The Academy with fellow CA punk veterans Circle Jerks and Michigan-bred hardcore-mongers Negative Approach in tow.
To the best of my knowledge, Circle Jerks have never been to Ireland full-stop, while Negative Approach were last over about a decade ago.
As for Milo Aukerman and co - who have recently been touring with Buzzcocks in the US - the last time they played Dublin back in 2022 (again at The Academy), we discovered that guitarist Stephen Egerton had just discovered his family roots here in Ulster, so it’s little wonder he has the band back over again so soon.
Happily, this time they are venturing north of the border - hopefully we can expect special Milo Goes To Belfast gig t-shirts with the Descendents' famous mascot/logo decked out like the northern Mr Tayto to mark the occasion.
Tickets for both Irish dates are on sale now via ticketmaster.ie
