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As one of State magazine’s Faces of 2012 Galway’s Elaine Mai is clearly one to watch. Praise has been heaped on her from all corners of the Irish music press and yet it’s next to impossible not to heap more of said praise upon her, especially when you listen to her debut EP entitled Dots which was released last week. Her music comprising of intelligiently layered and looped accoustic melodies mixed with with wistful vocals and at times electro beats, speaks to the listener in a way that few artists do in todays musical climate.  

   Opening track Guarded is like a synopsis of Elaine’s style, looped vocals and beats abound and it is impossibly catchy meriting numerous plays before I even explored the rest of the EP.

   The following three tracks stick to the standard set by the opener. Tainted’s electro snare drums and repetitive vocals prompt a kind of laidback head bopping that few accoustic sounding artists can aim to coax from the listener.

   The EP is available to listen to and buy right now from Elaine Mai’s bandcamp page and at a mere five bob you’d be silly not to.

    Luckily for us here in Limerick she plays Bourkes Live this thursday night with the exceptional So Cow also on the bill. Having seen both of these before I can assure it will be well worth a gander.

Listen to Elaine Mai here

http://elainemai.bandcamp.com/

Liam

The year is 2012. Currently living in a post-Christmas era, where we celebrated with family, alcohol, capitalism, the birth of a Jew. And as we start our lives once again with days of the week making sense once more, our wallets attempt to recover and our self inflicted plumpness becomes an issue, so i’m gonna give you two reasons to keep the chin up and look forward to a year ahead of great music.

No. 1 - SANTIGOLD

It was April 2008 when the self titled debut album (Santogold), hit the shelves and faces of the public. An immediate super star in my eyes, the album was a perfect combination of influences to please the taste buds of even the most anal music nazi. Here we are in 2012, 4 years and a slight name change later, and still no follow up album!? What gives! For any artist to have such an impactous debut album, it would probably be considered career suicide to leave 4 years between your next release, but with Santigold there was always a sense of magic about her that never let the public ever forget her. An extremely smart woman with class, style, personality, originality… and possibly her most admirable trait; hard working.

Words by Shane Serrano / Photos by Eric Kelleher

Ok, it’s been 48 hours, i think i’ve recovered, from what was possibly the most anticipated Limerick show of the year. And judging by the attendance on the night, not just Limerick.

So let’s set the scene…

10 years ago, a local Limerick band by the name of Tooth released ‘That Corporate Emotion’. A record that generated quite a bit of stir in not just their home town, but across Ireland and even with our British neighbors giving them several great reviews in some of the most popular publications of the time. This reviewer was 15 years old, starting to play the drums and joining bands. Tooth offered me half a snare stand and some beaten up hi hats as payment for handing out flyers outside HMV. The mocking laughs and demeaning looks I was given by jocks is still drilled into my subconscious to this day. Despite being the under ager that I was, I was snuck in to film them at their CD launch in Termights at The Savoy. Jesus, I wonder where that footage has ended up…

 A year later, as a common occurrence with most bands, people just go their separate ways. After a near legendary ‘last ever show’ for Tooth at The Highstool, all members went on to do different things. They traveled the world with different bands, some shared a stage with many of their heroes, others shared the studio with some of theirs. Some even left the public eye musically and followed the life of an academic.

Fast forward 9 years. Going to see live music on St. Stephens Night in Dolans has become somewhat of a tradition in Limerick. Neil Dolan, heir to the throne of the Dolans Dynasty, has an epiphany as the Stephens night celebrations of 2010 are winding down. He approaches Liam Marley, singer and guitarist for Tooth, speaks to him about an idea he has for Stephens Night 2011, and what are the possibilities of it actually happening… The seed was planted. The idea grew, and through the course of the year, collectively minded they agreed. It’s on.

What the hell? When did this happen…

For this Christmas I received this lovely album as a gift, but it truly did catch me by surprise, I never even knew Jesse Hughes AKA Boots Electric had even released a solo album… 3 months ago! Being a fan of almost all musical outputs of that talented bunch of desert friends (QOTSA, EODM, Alain Johannes, Desert Sessions etc..) I was surprised that I had never even heard of it.

Doing what I probably shouldn’t, I judge the book by it’s cover… Or well album by its artwork. Being a bit of a design nut, It screams amateur at me with all sorts random photographic images of Jesse himself wearing very little clothes, in some cases none at all, with random microsoft-paintbrush-esque scrawlings of presumably his own hand writing, all in neon pink and blue of course. Comes across as not being very serious. And this of course is where I take my head out of my ass and look at it from Jesse’s point of view; fuck serious, It’s rock and roll and it’s fun. And upon listening to the album that’s what its all about.

One would presume that we could almost guess what Boots Electric solo project will sound like, since almost all Eagles Of Death Metal songs have followed a very simple fun and danceable rock and roll formula, and although ‘Honkey Kong’ is not a million miles away from it, there is still a side to Jesse Hughes we haven’t seen before.