Excellent line-up for the all-day Foggy Jam on October 10 at Whelan’s, Dublin. On the bill: No Age, Health, Mice Parade, Male Bonding, Silje Nes, Squarehead and Hipster Youth.
Usually whenever Ragged Words walks into Whelans of a Sunday afternoon, it’s to retrieve a jacket, an iPod or a large slice of dignity left there the previous evening. Today, though, we’re here for Foggy Jam .01, the first in a series of all-day gigs bringing a top-notch lineup of loud, sweet and local acts to the Wexford St. stronghold.
This evening’s bill is so choc-full that a large part of the dancefloor - the corner where the men’s jacks used to be back in the day - has been cordoned off as a storage space for the bands’ gear. And that’s before tonight’s headliners No Age wheel in some mile-high amps (more on them later). There’s very little to complain about, then, particularly with punters only being charged twenty quid in exchange for nine hours’ entertainment. Alas, 4:30pm proves just too early a start for most of the hard drinking class heroes among us, and so Ragged Words can’t really tell you whether Hipster Youth’s one-man bedroomtronica sank or swam early doors.
But given that Teenage Elders - the free-to-download debut from young Dubliner Aidan Wall - is one of the best opening gambits we’ve heard all year, we can safely assume he nailed it. So too, for the most part, do fellow Dublin buzz-stirrers Squarehead. Mixing ‘Popular’-era Nada Surf slackerdom with pleasingly ramshackle doo-wop harmonies, the trio show why they’ve recently become a name to drop around Camden St. watercoolers. Old-new songs ‘Axes of Love’ and (especially) ‘Fake Blood’ shine brightest among a clutch of three-minute gems that suggests there’s surely a strong debut EP on the way. Next up is Norwegian songstress Silje Nes. Undeniably pretty – both in looks and sound – tonight she and her pair of bandmates share well over a dozen instruments between them (arm-scratch solo, anyone?). Unfortunately, as with Nes’ recent Opticks LP, ‘pretty’ is about as far as you can go to describe tonight’s brief set. One frantic outro aside, it’s hard to really be stirred by her floaty folky numbers. “It’s all a bit too ‘FatCat’,” observes a friend at one point, and that about sums up her overall appeal.
By stark contrast, and much like their home of Dalston, Sub Poppers Male Bonding don’t really ‘do’ pretty. Instead, the well-travelled three-piece unleash a mean and dirty half-hour set – one that’s even more formidable, in fact, than their already-pretty-thrilling debut Nothing Hurts. They’re tight, loud and confident in equal measure – and a rapidly-increasing crowd laps up their volleys of frenetic noise pop (emphasis on the pop), with lead single and track-of-the-year contender ‘Year’s Not Long’ proving a particular crowd-pleaser.
You don’t need to be a BitTorrent-addled UPC customer to know that Male Bonding ain’t really that loud compared to tonight’s main special guests HEALTH. The L.A. natives unleash an undeniably thunderous noise wherever they go – but honestly, it’s one this writer doesn’t really get. There’s just something a bit too sterile about their more extreme, Zoothorn-driven numbers, while some of their more palatable, synth-heavy moments tonight – this year’s ‘USA Boys’ being a prime example - bizarrely end up straying a bit too close to Linkin Park territory for our liking! Do I appreciate the skill, the mastery of noise? ‘Course I do. Can I enjoy it? Not quite.
Mice Parade frontman (and anagram fan) Adam Pierce is clearly enjoying himself onstage half an hour later, however. We reckon he may have availed himself of a complimentary Guinness or three – maybe he misread those posters as Groggy Jam? – but the smiles on the faces of him and his ludicrously talented bandmates are refreshing to see. Their set actually turns out to be a little hit-and-miss – a bit of an oddity given the overall consistency of Pierce’s work – but when it does hit, it’s pretty great. Watching the peerless HiM/Codeine and now Mice Parade drummer Doug Scharin in action is a serious pleasure too.
But back to those towering No Age amps. Randy Randall and Dean Spunt must have a bet on with fellow Californians HEALTH to see who can burst the most eardrums tonight because fuck, do these guys make a racket. The duo – now augmented by a Dom Joly-lookalike keyboardist for live outings – have never sounded louder. While this writer is yet to be completely won over by new album Everything In Between, we can say with certainty that No Age are hitting their prime as a live force.
Most of the audience, meanwhile, are soon hitting each other, as a serious moshpit starts to kick off down the front. The rest of us stand further back – those more advanced in years complaining of sore backs after standing for almost nine hours – as old reliables like ‘Eraser’ and ‘Teen Creeps’ merge seamlessly with rasping newies like ‘Life Prowler’ and ‘Sorts’. The band are loving it as well - as they almost always do – and, given that it’s fast approaching 1:00am, the latter parts of the set have the feel of a traditional No Age after-show party.
For those in the crowd still wrestling hangovers from the weekend’s Hard Working Class Heroes festivities, the inaugural Foggy Jam ends up feeling like one hell of an after-party in itself. Roll on Foggy Jam .02!
No Age - Shred And Transcend
Health - Goth Star
Male Bonding - Pumpkin
Mice Parade
Review by Padraic Halpin