11th December: Groom, Land Lovers, The Former Soviet Republic @ The Lower Deck

VascoJ

Groom and Land Lovers present:

* Groom
* Land Lovers
* The Former Soviet Republic

A night of self-presentation in the bowels of the Lower Deck, Portobello on Thursday, 11th December.
It's not quite Christmas, yet it's not unlike Christmas.
They will charge 7 euro at the door.
The doors will be opened at 8:30PM.



Here is some information on the persons involved:



GROOM began life in 2004 in Dublin, arising out of the ashes of alt-folk band Settler. Starting off as an electro-folk two piece centred around the songwriting of Michael Stevens, they played some intimate gigs in Ireland’s capital, and shared a stage with Deanna Varagona (LAMBCHOP). Having released a short experimental album, Stitch, GROOM soon expanded into a four piece and began to explore synth-folk-rock territory. They played this particular brand of indie folk-pop around Ireland in late 2005, made some appearances on various compilations, and even released a Christmas single. 2006 saw the release of GROOM’s first album proper, All This Happened, More Or Less on Fairview House Recordings. The record was well-received all round and got GROOM some supports with Jawbone, Jeff Tweedy (WILCO), Suburban Kids With Biblical Names, Evangelicals and Viking Moses.

GROOM are Michael Stevens (guitar, vocals, synths), Jeroen Saegeman (guitar, melodica, keyboards), Wil McDermott (bass, synths), Brian O’Higgins (drums), and Ruan Van Vliet (drums, percussion, synth, autoharp).

http://www.myspace.com/groomtheband



Land Lovers come from a bedroom, where an album of smartass pop was recorded in solitary confinement over the winter of '07/'08. Bursting out into springtime with the finished item flaunted proudly, founding myopic Pádraig Cooney coerced Brian Lynch, Rob Maguire and Ciarán Canavan into an arrangement whereby the four would play the recorded songs together before progressing to a satisfactory future making new and wonderful music in public. "Romance Romance" was released in September, and received its fair share of critical acclaim (mode rating: 4 stars). The band have attracted large and growing attendances to their Dublin shows. A 5-to-7 song EP is scheduled for early '09. Although they are entirely original, Land Lovers will not object to comparisons with Elvis Costello & The Attractions, The Magnetic Fields, Guided By Voices, Luke Haines, Wolf Parade or anyone else really.

http://www.myspace.com/landlovers

Finally:

The Former Soviet Republic is not a band but rather one person. That person plays guitar and bass and synths and hamonicas and recorders and glockenspiels and whatever else he buys on a whim when he's in music shops. He's also trying to learn how to programs stuff on computers, he's failing; there's this weird optical theremin yoke that some friends of his made too. He sings. He doesn't do all these things at once, that would be ridiculous. But thanks to a loop station he can play more than one thing at the same time without resorting to tying a bass drum to his back and cymbals between his knees. He sometimes likes the noise that he makes. He'll also cut you if you look at him sideways. He doesn't like talking about himself so he keeps it vague. He gets annoyed when other people refer to themsleves in the third person but he's a bit of a hypocrite about it when it comes to himself.


http://www.myspace.com/theformersovietrepublic

VascoJ

Next week. Yes, that close!

VascoJ

Hup. Thursday night.

VascoJ

Tomorrow, stage times could be something like this:

TFSR: 8:40PM
LL: 9:30 PM
GRM: 10:20PM

VascoJ

Bump. This is tonight.