Luck of the Irish

Drive All Night EP ANTI- Records Read More Glen Hansard I think I just saw the best music movie recently. It's called Once and it stars Glen Hansard, from The Frames, and Markéta Irglová.…

GLEN HANSARD
glenhansardmusic.com

CBS Interactive recently featured Academy Award winning singer/songwriter Glen Hansard for their webcast concert series, "Live on Letterman."

Hansard is currently promoting his Drive All Night EP, which came out earlier this month (December 3, 2013) on ANTI- Records. The title track is a cover of a Bruce Springsteen song.

$1 from each digital sale of Drive All Night will benefit Little Kids Rock, the non-profit charity that provides music education classes to K-12 students in public schools.

The Frames at First Avenue, Minneapolis (04/17/07)

You probably know Glen Hansard as singer/songwriter for the Irish band The Frames, who I caught live at First Avenue in Minneapolis on April 17th, 2007. Since then, Hansard formed The Swell Season with Markéta Irglová. The two of them appeared in the film "Once", which pretty much document the two falling in love with each other on camera.

I believe The Swell Season are no longer a band, having only released two studio albums. Although Irglová mentioned a third Swell Season is in the works. If their debut album The Swell Season was about them falling in love and Strict Joy was about them falling out of love. Then the third album is about them maintaining a friendship?

The Weezer Cruise Poster designed by Marie Chatelot Read More Ash "We got delayed by a storm for... seven years," joked singer Tim Wheeler from Ash, as they apologized for staying away from Minnesota for so long. Ash is currently on small U.S. tour, making a rare Minneapolis…

ASH
ash-official.com

We are longtime Ash fans at W♥M so I'm happy to announce that the Irish band will be doing a US 2014 tour leading up to their appearance on The Weezer Cruise, taking place February 13-17, 2014, in Florida. If you can afford it, you'll be on a boat with these other musicians: Toro y Moi, The Cribs, The Orwells, Caveman, Ozma, Cat Power, Holy F***, Adame Devine, Palma Violets, Diiv, Doug Benson, The Relationship, and, of course, Weezer. I suspect meeting your favorite artists is a lot easier since ... I mean, where else are they going to go?

This is Christmas Infectious Records

In Ash news, lead singer Tim Wheeler and Emmy the Great (which I may have noted they were dating) did a few Christmas shows last week. They probably played some holiday songs from their 2011's This is Christmas album, like "(Don’t Call Me) Mrs. Christmas", "Jesus The Reindeer", and "Zombie Christmas."

Ash, the band, is writing new material at their Atomic Heart Studios in Manhattan, so expect some new singles (Ash said they will stop releasing albums altogether) in the coming year.

Ash's 2014 Winter tour dates:

01/27/14 @ Tractor Tavern in Seattle WA
01/28/14 @ Doug Fir Lounge in Portland, OR
01/30/14 @ Popscene in San Francisco, CA
01/31/14 @ The Echo in Los Angeles, CA
02/01/14 @ The Casbah in San Diego, CA
02/02/14 @ Obscura @ Rips in Phoenix, AZ
02/04/14 @ Cambridge Room in Dallas, TX
02/05/14 @ Stubbs Bar-B-Q in Austin, TX
02/06/14 @ Fitzgerald’s in Houston, TX
02/07/14 @ One Eyed Jack’s in New Orleans, LA
02/08/14 @ Juanita’s Café & Bar in Little Rock, AR
02/10/14 @ Mercy Lounge in Nashville, TN
02/11/14 @ The Bottletree in Birmingham, AL
02/13/14-02/17/14 on Weezer Cruise in Florida/Bahamas

Love Like This Tour tour poster Read More Kodaline “I wanna travel the world, but I just can’t do it alone”, Kodaline vocalist Steve Garrigan sings in their song, ‘Brand New Day’. Because of the Dublin folk-based quartet’s recent success with breakout single…

KODALINE
kodaline.com

Dublin's Kodaline recently announced a North American tour dates for February 2014, taking them from Toronto, Canada, to Chicago, Illinois. Kodaline's album In A Perfect World debuted at #1 in Ireland, #3 in the UK and in the Top 10 in the Netherlands.

Kodaline at Turf Club, St Paul (10/23/13)

You may recall that we've covered the band twice when they were at First Avenue on April 23rd and at Turf Club on October 23rd. Read John's review to get an idea of what to expect when you see the band: "The evening’s strongest highlight came late in the set, when the four left the stage and walked to a mid-room platform, to serenade an older woman with an acoustic, soulful doo-wop cover of Sam Cooke’s ‘Bring It On Home’ with full audience snapping (or ‘clicking’ as the Irish say) along."

Kodaline "Love Like This" Tour Dates

02/08/14 Toronto, ON Phoenix
02/09/14 Montreal, QC Sala Rossa
02/12/14 New York, NY Webster Hall
02/13/14 Philadelphia, PA World Café Live
02/14/14 Boston, MA Paradise Rock Club
02/15/14 Washington, DC 9:30 Club
02/17/14 Atlanta, GA Terminal West
02/18/14 Nashville, TN Exit/In
02/20/14 Austin, TX The Parish
02/25/14 San Diego, CA Casbah
02/26/14 San Francisco, CA Great American Music
02/27/14 Los Angeles, CA El Rey
03/02/14 Denver, CO Bluebird Theater
03/06/14 Columbus, OH A&R Music Bar
03/07/14 Chicago, IL Bottom Lounge

Read More LCD Soundsystem It starts off with a piano beating that wouldn't feel out of place on a Roxy Music record from the 70's, but then steadily reveals itself as more of a sped up half relative of the piano on that Velvet …

SH** ROBOT
sh**robot.com

Sh** Robot (aka Marcus Lambkin) is an Irish electronic DJ/producer and musician who started his career with his friend James Murpher from LCD Soundsystem.

Sh** Robot recently announced his new second album called We Got A Love, which is coming out on March 18th, 2014 via DFA Records.

Apparently Lambkin was not inflicted with that difficult sophomore slump syndrome, commenting, "It wasn't as tricky as I thought it was going to be. I think my first record was pretty special because there was a lot of lucky coincidences and a lot of being in the right place at the right time, so I didn't try to repeat it. I just tricked my brain into just making stuff and not trying to follow up the first."

Upcoming DJ Shows:

12/31: Dublin, Ireland @ Sugar Club
01/18: Lisbon, Portugal @ Music Box
01/24: Freiburg, Germany @ Jackson Pollock
01/25: Munich, Germany @ Kong
01/31: Vienna, Austria @ Pratersauna
02.01: Berlin, Germany @ Panorama Bar
02.07 Brooklyn, NY @ SRB
02.08: Philadelphia, PA @ Dolphin
02/15: Denver, CO @ Vinyl
03/14: Istanbul, Turkey @ Indigo
03/15: Athens, Greece @ Plixi
03/22: Dublin, Ireland @ Button Factory
03/05: Cornwall, UK @ The Masked Ball

BRIEFLY:

GIRL BAND facebook.com Irish four-piece noise rock band Girl Band announced their 7" single "Lawman", to be release on January 20th, 2014, in the U.S. on Any Other City Records. The record has a limit pressing of 300 copies and the cover will be screen printed on some nice fabric. The Irish Times called them as "a fantastic blast of punky fury and righteous energy" while Rough Trade named-dropped some bands, "musically somewhere between bleach-era Nirvana, Mclusky, Jesus Lizard and even that incendiary first Idlewild demo in their teens, long before they started sounding like REM."

IN SUNSHINE AND IN SHADOW dannyboystory.com In Sunshine and in Shadow is the new book, written by Anthony Mann, that examined the truth behind the Irish song "Danny Boy." Anthony Mann is the grandson of Fred Weatherly, who wrote some verses for "Danny Boy" in 1910, but it became a song until it was set to the music of the victory anthem song "The Londonderry Air" in 1912. There's more to this story, as written in In Sunshine and in Shadow, which is available now.

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