Impossibly attractive and equally surly Strokes main man Julian Casablancas today announced his solo European Tour with a Dublin date included.

Julian plays the Dublin Academy on December 14th with tickets on sale this Friday.

In other news, Deadmau5 has continued the trend of every big name in the world of dance music(this may be a slight exaggeration) playing the Ulster Hall by announcing he will hit the venue on the 29th December. If you don’t think he’s a wee bit over-rated(cough) then tickets go on sale November 2nd priced at 25 of your english pounds.

And last but by no means least, next month’s Two Step has been announced with the rather awesome Panda  Kopanda to take headlining duties with the equally awesome Teenagers in Tokyo and Nakatomi Towers also on the bill. As always it’s the Limelight and all for the cheap as chips price of 5 pounds.

Cambridge’s finest (although don’t say that too loudly around here, Oxfordarians ACTUALLY really don’t like Cambridge…we know, weird) open the set with their biggest “hit”, the Skins featured ‘It’s All Over’ and the poignancy isn’t lost on the crowd as cheers of “don’t give up” punctuate the song’s quieter moments. What follows is a set of the band’s finest moments with only new single ‘Salivating’ and ‘Borrowed Time’ featuring on latest release ‘Please and Thank You’. The latter is the perfect example of why this is a band that will be sorely missed, after seven albums they can still produce a line as inspired as ‘and in the old folks home where they leave us//i will fuck you on the stairlift”.

As the gig progresses we have increasingly bizarre crowd interaction as heckles include a young lady who yells at the stage exclusively in french and an elderly gentleman who finds it h-i-larious to yell “thank you Broken Social Scene” at inappropriate moments. Undeterred the band continue to delve into their back catalogue to provide set highlight ‘John Belushi’ taken from their debut ‘Welcome Home,Loser’. Requesting a Sunday Sing-Along, singer Steven Adams gets his wish as the crowd return his vocals word for word.

Defying the venue’s curfew to play two fan favourites from debut album ‘Cold Water Songs’ the crowd are especially receptive of closer ‘Devil in the Details’ with its opening greeted with the loudest cheer of the night. The band thanks the crowd for the night and the last eight years followed by a long, seemingly emotional embrace while the mass applause shows no signs of ceasing. Eventually, however, it peters out and the band are left to ponder their next moves. Our money is on frontman Ant/Dec (delete where appropriate) reuniting with Dec/Ant (delete where appropriate) to try to re-introduce Saturday Night Takeaway…sorry, we hate a cheap shot but Steven’s resemblance to Ant/Dec(delete where appropriate) really is uncanny. Either way, what we can guarantee is that we’ll be at the very front for the 2020 reunion tour.

JB

Handsome Furs- Spring and Airbrake, Belfast.  26th October.  £11.25.
The Academy, Dublin.  27th October.  €16.50.

Wild Beasts- Limelight, Belfast.  4th November.  £9.75.
Academy 2, Dublin.  5th November.  €16.

Yo La Tengo- Tripod, Dublin.  5th November.  €20/24.50.

A Place To Bury Strangers- Auntie Annies, Belfast.  11th November.  £8.

Cymbals Eat Guitars- Auntie Annies, Belfast.  15th November.  £8.

Ian Brown- St. George’s Market, Belfast. 22nd November.  £29.50.
Olympia Theatre, Dublin.  23rd and 24th November.  €39.20/44.20.

Julian Plenti- Olympia Theatre, Dublin. 1st December. €33.10.

Modest Mouse and Frightened Rabbit- The Academy, Dublin.  7th and 8th December.  €27.
Mandela Hall, Belfast.  9th December.  £19.50.

*After some heavy words about whether or not Ian Brown made the cut…which of course let to a full on row about his genius, or lack thereof.

Be safe.

Alternatively: For those of you not “lucky” enough to get a place on the above list, why not check out some of the other fine offerings on the Belfast Bands platter, for the wallet-friendly proce of zero pennies at RADAR. This week the lineup includes Team Fresh with support from NI Soul Troop and Axis Of.

Hell…if you’re really enthused, you could attempt both. I mean, if it’s good enough for the Panama Kings boys…

Dear Trace,

We hope you can find it in your heart to forgive us our wayward meanderings.  We fell off the beaten track and apologise sincerely…if only for not keeping you fully informed of our whereabouts along the way.  You would have really enjoyed the adventure.  Well, actually, you would probably have called us lazy bums and spat in our faces as you stepped over our collapsed five-day-old-jean wearing remains in the hall on your way out the door to your highly paying city job.

In short, since the last post, a lot has happened.  We went to a few shows, we threw a few parties, we stopped drinking for a while and then fell off the wagon in spectacular style.  Some of us returned to university, some of us reveled in the fact that we didn’t have to.  Some of us met the Pixies (that’s right, the frickin’ PIXIES!) while the rest of us just met some guy who met Bob Log III (without the helmet…that counts for something, right?).  We also bought some new albums to review, because we’re pretty proactive like that.  Oh, and somewhere in there we all got very excited for overuse of the royal “we.”

But all that is in the past baby, and we’re just hoping you’ll let us make our absence up to you, so we can start being the loving, united family unit we’ve always had the potential to be.

Lots of Love,

Maw, Paw and the rest of the Young ‘Uns.

P.S.  We could really do with some money for paying the bills yo’!

While the news will no doubt be met with the kind of ambivalence fitting of a band who have long since ceased to be relevant we’re feeling slightly nostalgic today and as a result have decided to reflect on the highs and lows of Noel and our kid.

The Highs:

Definitely Maybe: With British music only just emerging from a barren period, Oasis realease their debut album in August of 1994 to critical and widespread acclaim. Noel penned songs sneeered by Liam about leaving behind their Manchester estate and jobs on building sites to be a ‘rock and roll star’ struck a chord with the public looking for a more colloquial alternative after seeing Kurt Cobain and his contemporaries take over the world. The best British debut since the Smiths, they were never, ever, better than this.

Don’t Look Back In Anger: For the purposes of clarification, it’s not that Don’t Look Back In Anger is a particularly great song. Lyrically it carries all the hallmarks of Noel’s biggest faults, most notably it doesn’t make a great degree of sense(who even IS sally, anyway?) and the Lennon rip-off  featured in the intro was as brazen a display of Gallagher’s magpie’s eye as we ever saw. It’s a high though, as everything, right the  from getting away with the union-jack guitar and silly sunglasses to the hearing of the chorus on terraces up and down the country, showed that they now truly were the biggest band in the world. Which is all they ever wanted, really.

Knebworth: In August of ’96 Oasis played two nights in Knebworth park to a total of 250,000 spectators. The gigs were(and are) the most in demand in British history with over 2.5million people applying for tickets. To put that into perspective, more than the population of Northern Ireland. To put that into perspective, only three times more popular than some boats at the Odyssey last week. Perspective is a funny thing.

The Masterplan: This collection of B-Sides showed that the tracks not deemed album-worthy by the brothers Gallagher were still vastly superior to much being released by their peers. Half The World Away, Fade Away and the album’s title track remaining both live and fan favourites to this day.

Tales From The Middle Of Nowhere: Noel’s blog really is the most entertaining thing Oasis have produced in the last decade

The Lows:

Be Here Now: While, they certainly released worse, this album will forever be connected to Brit-pop’s self implosion in a fit of cocaine fuelled egotism. For that and that alone, its inclusion here, is more than deserved.

Country House Vs Roll With It:If you must be involved in an inane chart battle, its important that you at least win. As for wishing aids on people? Well, that’s just not very nice.

Little James: As their career progressed the band’s quality control plunged to new lows. This coupled with Noel’s loosening of his creative stranglehold on the band by allowing Liam to write songs led to this abomination. It features the couplet “have you ever played with Plasticine?//even tried a trampoline?”. That’s all that can be said about that, really.

August 1996: Liam fails to show at a string of Oasis shows, all of which are cancelled at the last minute. During the ensuing media circus, Liam comments “I don’t give a fuck for any fucker. Its me who comes first”. He always was a charming lad.

August 2009: Whats that saying about the more things change the more they stay the same? Maturity seemingly evading them even at their advance age, more inter-band tensions lead to last minute(quite literally in the cases of Rock-en-Seine and V festival) cancellations and thousands of disappointed fans. As well as, it emerged yesterday, an inglorious end to one of the most memorable(if nothing else) bands of our time.

At least, much in the same way that Bogart and Bergmen will always have Paris, we’ll always have Definitely Maybe

The gig was a rescheduled date after the cancellation of their Stiff Kitten gig earlier in the year.

Not that we’d question The Falco, he’s a scary dude, but this seems slightly shoddy behaviour.

Thursday 27th August – (Belsonic) Dizzee Rascal, Vampire Weekend, Crystal Castles, Two Door Cinema Club- Custom House Square

Friday 28th August – (Belsonic) 2ManyDJs, Boyz Noize, Deadmau5, Space Dimension Controller – Custom House Square

Saturday 29th August – STA ALL DAYER w/ Future Of The Left, LaFaro, Panama Kings – St. Columb’s Hall

Monday 31st August- Blitzen Trapper – Auntie Annies

Go to this.

We’d love to.

But Team Trace is upping sticks to Belgium for some Pukkelpop action.

On that note, no posts for a week, stay tough kid.

Desert Hearts take headlining duties with Kowalski and Yes Cadets on the bill as well.

There’s also word of cup cakes.

It all takes place on the 17th of September and will set you back a mere five pounds.