Northern Ireland Tunes - Round-Up #32

It's always great doing the annual round-up of this blog's favourite releases of 2014, however one thing it means is that we focus all our attention towards it, and a result there might be some great songs that we may have written about but didn't get around to due to our laser-focused attentions being elsewhere. So to remedy this, here's a few tracks from Northern Ireland that we've been rather taken by in the past few weeks that we think will float your Metaphorical Boat - 
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Viola Dust - Trick

Having featured on this blog on several occasions throughout 2014, you'd think that Newry band Viola Dust don't need any introduction, but I never let that stop me.

Viola Dust have built up a stellar reputation, and a little bit of blog lovin', with their rather intelligent take on electronic-pop. As of today, "The Big Hop" has racked up over 25,000 streams on Soundcloud, which is pretty fantastic going for a band who've only being a going concern since May. Their latest single to made available is "Trick", a fantastic single with a monster of a chorus. It would not surprise me if Jay-Z nicked it as the main hook of his next hit single. It's available to download for free, which is a steal if I ever saw one.


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Lauren Bird - Goodbye, Good Luck

Last month, I went down to Dawsons in Belfast city centre to watch a friend of the blog who was taking part in a singer/songwriter competition that they were running. As part of the competition, they had to perform two songs, one original song and one cover. Although most of them were okay, I was completely blown away by one performer in particular. Armed with a ukulele, she broke into one of the most downbeat songs ever made, "No Surprises", and turned it into a thing of beauty. I joked on Twitter at the time that I refuse to listen to that song unless it's played by a girl from Strabane on the ukulele, but the more I think about it, the more I agree with myself.

I later learned that her name is Lauren Bird (having spent hours searching for her music in vain after mishearing it as Byrne), and discovered that she released a self-titled E.P of her own songs a few months ago, which is available on a pay-what-you-want basis. Taken from the E.P is "Goodbye, Good Luck", which was the song that she performed alongside "No Surprises" when I saw her last month. It's a heartfelt ode to a relationship gone awry, which calls to mind a more acoustic version of Kate Nash.


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Aspen Pales - Blue

And finishing off the round-up this month is Rostrevor band Aspen Pales. The track "Blue" premièred on Chordblossom earlier this month, taken from a recently released self-titled album. It's a deceptively simple song that ebbs and flows throughout, whilst burying itself deep under your skin without you realising it. It's one of those songs that seems to have existed in a time bubble, as if it has always been ever-present in the background, like cosmic radiation.

Viola Dust - You're Mine

The debut single from Newry based 5 piece Viola Dust, "The Big Hop", seemingly came out of nowhere to blow us away, with its sleek electro-pop sound sounding absolutely incredible for a band's opening salvo. Unsurprisingly, it picked up a lot of love, gaining airplay on 6music and XFM, as well getting a lot of blog lovin' along the way. Surprisingly, even in the wake of all this attention, the band have been somewhat hesitant to give us more information about themselves online, bar the basics, although it is our understanding that some of the members were formerly involved in the band Elspeth (whom we featured on the blog a few years back). Perhaps they just prefer to let the music do the talking?

The band have now released their second song, "You're Mine", a song that proves that their last song was not a fluke. The song's a lot more R&B inflected than their debut, but there's also elements of acts such as Prince and Passion Pit chucked into the glorious mix, creating a sleek track of electro-pop goodness. If Viola Dust are happy enough to let their music do the talking, then you'd better believe that we're happy enough to listen.

King Kartel - Gunslinger

The bands who came to make up the so called 'landfill indie' movement circa 2007 may have taken a complete battering over the intervening years, but in spite of all the complete guff that came out of it (I'm looking in your direction, Holloways), only the harshest of critics would claim that there was nothing in it that was enjoyable at all.

This brings us on nicely to "Gunslinger" by King Kartel, a Newry born band who now find themselves situated in Manchester. The song, which has more than a hint of The Fratellis' laddishness about it, is the sort of song that would have infected indie discos in the mid-00s whilst simultaneously being used in the soundtrack of the first series of that horrible TV show Skins had it been released a decade ago. In 2014 it might sound a little out of place, but there's no doubting that it's an enjoyable little nugget of a track. Maybe there really are things worth salvaging from the scrapyard.

"Gunslinger" will be available to download for free from 18th August.

Viola Dust - The Big Hop

It's not often that you come across a début song by a group that sounds like it could appear in the Top 40 on Sunday in its current form and not sound out of place. It's rarer still for said song to come from a band who are literally in their infancy, only playing their first gig two weeks ago and not even having a Facebook page until this week. And its even rarer still for said band to hail from lovely Newry (Northern Ireland's newest city since 2002).

Yet all these circumstances have come together like a beautiful cosmic collision to give us "The Big Hop" the début single from 5-piece group Viola Dust. The song is one part post-Guetta electro-pop, one part Bastille, one part alternative rock, and one part that they can claim as their very own. It's a sleekly produced, well polished track. Many more established acts would have taken years trying to perfect this kind of sound. Viola Dust have cracked it on their first attempt.

So have we found ourselves another reason to get excited about Northern Irish music? You bet your bottom dollar we have.

"The Big Hop" will be released as a single at the end of the summer, with an Irish tour planned for July/August time.