Pick of the week
Hard Working Class Heroes
Dublin, Thurs-Sat, various venues/times €45/€20 hwch.net
This annual music industry event has gone from good to great to essential, and its place in the Irish music calendar now seems incontestable. Aside from the music on offer (from Adultrock to Young Earth, we're looking at more than 100 acts that will perform in venues dotted around Dublin city centre – our personal picks include Bitch Falcon, Rusangano Family, Exploding Eyes, Loah, above, and Wyvern Lingo), there is also an increasingly popular and relevant panel/seminar element: the HWCH Convention.
The Convention (admission free) features a wide range of panel events, one-on-one conversations, workshops, how-to seminars, practical demonstrations, talks and discussions with an equally diverse array of industry speakers from Ireland, UK, US and Europe.
Highlights include How to Listen to Music Now (with New York Times’ music writer, Ben Ratliff); How Music Works for You (a daily strand hosted by Niall Byrne, aka Nialler9, of this here parish); Getting Media Coverage in the US (with US writers Amanda Petrusich, Emily McBride and Hazel Cills); DIY Video Making (with Brendan Canty, and more); Meet the Fans (that’s you, folks); and a Guide to International Festivals (with representatives from events including Iceland Airwaves, SXSW, Great Escape, and Eurosonic).
And there’s more! Another music highlight is HWCH & the City, a free all-ages music trail that will feature acts in pop-up mode at charity shops, tattoo parlours, cafés, bookshops, and other urban spaces. For anyone interested in any and every aspect of music in Ireland (and beyond), this is a stone cold, certified must-see. Visit hwch.net for information on day-to-day timings.
Monday
Melancholy Witness
Custom House Studios Gallery, Westport, Co Mayo Until Oct 30
customhousestudios.ie
Sean Hillen is best known for his surreal photo-collages that represent Ireland with satirical insight. This show draws on an earlier body of work, mostly black-and-white photographs taken in Northern Ireland from about 1979-1990. Revisiting the province from art school in London, he found an "already surreal" world, a place disturbingly transformed by The Troubles.
Swan Lake/Loch na hEala
O'Reilly Theatre. Previews until Sep 30 Opens Oct 1-9 7.30pm (Oct 9 6.30pm) €20-€35
The choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan has long been a festival favourite. With his company Fabulous Beast he delighted and divided audiences with ballets and myths that had been reconceived for a dark, haunting and venal Irish midlands: Giselle, The Bull and James Son of James began at the festival and travelled far and wide. Rian, his follow-up with a new ensemble, combined trad music and a tradition of Irish dance quite transformed to make for an almost religious experience with all that entails: for the believers no proof was necessary, for the sceptics none possible. With Fabulous Beast retired, he returns under his own moniker with a new version of Swan Lake, the story rather than the ballet, transplanted to his darkly familiar Irish midlands, with live music from experimental trad group Slow Moving Clouds and a company of 14 performers led by Mikel Murfi. Whatever your response, you'll want to be there.
Tuesday
Subtech
The Library, Limerick 10.30pm €8/€7/€6
facebook.com/SubTechMusic
Dutch electronic talent Keith Carnal had an early dalliance with house grooves before techno and the Amsterdam scene turned his head. Aside from standout shows at Tresor in Berlin, Fuse in Brussels and Concrete in Paris, Carnal tracks such as Untold and Analysis for Affin have pushed him forward. Support from Luke Xander.
Samuel Laurence Cunnane/Textiles from the Atlas Mountains
Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College Dublin
Samuel Laurence Cunnane's understated photographs, small in scale and often oblique in terms of viewpoint and content, recall aspects of a strand of European arthouse cinema based on close observation and narrative indirection. Here they take on the cavernous space of the Douglas Hyde Gallery, in conjunction with a range of Berber textiles, including rugs, a ceremonial headscarf and a saddle cover, gathered by Gebhart Blazek, in Gallery 2.
Wednesday
Aerie
Dolans Upstairs, Limerick, 8.30pm €10, dolans.ie
Also Thurs Wexford Arts Centre 8.30pm €15/€12 wexfordartscentre.ie
German saxophonist and composer Inigo Hipp's quartet – including Dubliners Matt Jacobson on drums and Sam Comerford on saxophones) fly past the obvious, mixing contemporary "downtown" influences with funk, metal and folk in a flurry of feather-light grooves. Their short Irish tour continues next Saturday to Mick Lally Theatre, Galway, and Sunday to JJ Smyths, Dublin.
James Vincent McMorrow
Black Box, Galway 8pm €32.50
roisindubh.net
It is nearly three years since James Vincent McMorrow played indoor live shows in Ireland, and with a wonderfully svelte and sensual third album (We Move), what's the betting that this show (and next week's Dublin gig in the National Stadium) will once more melt the audience into squishy submission?
Dua Lipa
Academy, Dublin 7pm €22.90
ticketmaster.ie
Make way for contemporary hip-hop, soul and pop music as this London-born Albanian makes a smash'n'grab for global stardom. Lipa's debut album is out early next year, but she has already released five singles, each of them making steady inroads internationally. If you fancy seeing a pop star in the making up close before they skyrocket, now's your chance.
Thursday
Cathy Davey
Set Theatre, KiIkenny 8pm €20
set.ie
Cathy Davey launches a nationwide tour to promote her recent fourth album, New Forest. It's an intriguing time for Davey: with her new record, she has proven true creative worth via a series of idiosyncratic, courageous topics and tunes. Yet the admission that her passion these years is more animal rescue than on-the-road adventures indicates that such tours in future this could be a rarity. All the more reason to catch her when you can.
The Pillowman
Siamsa Tíre, Traláee. Oct 6-7 8pm €23/€19
siamsatire.com
Katurian K Katurian, an author of grisly fantasies, is admirably succinct with his own plot synopsis: "A writer in a totalitarian state is interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a number of child murders that are happening in his town." Like that arch self-reference, McDonagh's 2003 play creates an artful mesh between reality and fiction. Decadent Theatre Company, entrusted last year with the play's belated Irish premiere, respond to it with a clear sighted and brilliantly imaginative production, set in a narrow stone cell that rises up like a fairy-tale tower. It is hard to say what, if anything, is 'real' in this strange and septic world. Are the ghoulish fairy tales that Katurian spins (Grimm Brothers stories recut by Quentin Tarantino, essentially) the product of his own unhappy childhood or have they inspired his damaged brother, Michal, towards dreadful acts? The Pillowman may be a sustained satire on writing itself, but it teases at questions of the thought police too, and what is permissible to darkly imagine. Decadent's production, now undertaking a national tour, makes it all enjoyable, probing and fantastically unsettling.
