Ireland gig guide: The Wolfe Tones, St Vincent and all of this week's biggest concerts
We preview all of the biggest gigs taking place across the country over the coming days
Irish music fans are spoilt for choice when it comes to gigs this week, with a slew of high-profile concerts taking place around the country over the coming days.
This weekend will see legendary Irish rebel band The Wolfe Tones play their final concerts, while legendary minimalist composer Philip Glass and acclaimed singer-songwriter St Vincent will also be performing unmissable shows in Dublin over the coming days.
The Wolfe Tones
3Arena, Dublin - Friday, €57.60; Saturday & Sunday, SOLD OUT
The resurgence of the Wolfe Tones with younger music fans has been one of the most brilliantly bizarre developments in recent years.
READ MORE: The Wolfe Tones 3Arena Dublin gigs - Tickets, stage times and setlist info for band's final concerts
READ MORE: Dublin's ambitious new plan to turn city into 'Europe's leading night-time hotspot'
The veteran band had been playing local concert halls and GAA clubs for years, singing rebel songs to the diehards, so far removed from popular culture that a Wolfe Tones gig was my granny’s last ever night out — and she was in her 80s.
But never underestimate a bit of media-fuelled pearl clutching and manufactured hysteria. When the Irish women’s soccer team were filmed singing the Wolfe Tones song The Celtic Symphony in 2022 after a historic win (“Ooh aah, up the Ra chorus and all”), scandalised media commentators were fainting left, right and centre on RTE TV and radio at the glorification of the IRA.
Within days, meme culture ran with it into the stratosphere, and the song went to No1, and kids who were born after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement had just found a new way to piss off old red-faced farts on the TV.
In 2023, the band had the biggest ever crowd at the Electric Arena tent at the Picnic, and nearly stopped the whole festival on the main stage in 2024, cheered on in semi-aristocratic tones by posh English Picnic boss Melvyn Benn.
Now they’re marking their 60th anniversary with three nights at the 3Arena — a residency feat matched by only a relatively few other acts, including The Script, The Killers, One Direction, U2, Picture This.
Of course, compared with modern trad and folk resurgence acts like Lankum and John Francis Flynn, the Wolfe Tones’ music feels quaint and parochial, but there’s still a sense of danger and rebellion watching a few oul lads rousing a multi-generational crowd, giving two fingers to the establishment and preaching about civil rights in Ireland and Palestine, when so many with a voice keep their mouths shut. Let the people sing!
The Wolfe Tones' three gigs at the 3Arena are completely sold out for Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, however a small number of resale tickets are available to purchase via Ticketmaster.
Evan Dando
Ambassador Theatre, Dublin - Saturday, €33.65;
Roisin Dubh, Galway - Sunday, €31;
Limelight 2, Belfast - Monday, £30.25;
The last time Evan Dando was in Ireland it was for a relatively low-key 30th anniversary celebration of his band The Lemonheads’ breakout 1992 album It’s a Shame About Ray, an LP that fell through the cracks a bit in the 90s alt-rock reappraisals.
The Lemonheads were always bunched together with grunge acts, but, like Smashing Pumpkins, it didn’t quire fit.
Dando was the quintessential slacker pin-up, and their catchy indie-rock was more wistful hippie psychedelia than Sabbath and hardcore-fuelled introspection.
The Lemonheads didn’t short change anyone on that last tour, playing between 30 and 40 songs a night, and this tour is also hitting 30 songs.
As the one member left standing after going through around 40 members, The Lemonheads is definitely Dando’s band, so the set leans into classics like Confetti, Being Around and It’s a Shame About
Ray — but he’s also digging deep for out-there covers by Metallica, Randy Travis, Velvet Underground and Steely Dan.
Tickets to all three of Evan Dando's Irish gigs are available to purchase via Ticketmaster.
St Vincent
3Olympia, Dublin - Sunday, €43.40
On St Vincent’s new album All Born Screaming, Annie Clark sings: “So, who am I trying to be?”
It’s a question critics and fans have been asking of her across all of her albums and live shows.
Since the mid-2000s the St Vincent project has been a vehicle for Clark to explore various alter-egos, performance art experimentation and genre flips, resulting in many acclaimed records, tours and collaborations, pushing the boundaries of pop music and virtuoso guitar playing.
This new album, though, feels like less of a restless art experiment. ‘Most personal album’ is a tired cliche, but All Born Screaming isn’t this time written from the perspective of characters, but rather Clark herself, delving into death, grief and failed relationships.
The music is a thrill too, harsh, distorted guitars, electro-funk and industrial beats, with a hint of 90s New Jack Swing Prince, PJ Harvey and Nine Inch Nails.
A limited number of tickets to St Vincent's gig at the 3Olympia are available to purchase via Ticketmaster.
Philip Glass & the National Symphonic Orchestra
National Concert Hall, Dublin - Friday, €15-65
The music of legendary minimalist composer Philip Glass has a spiritual home at Dublin’s National Concert Hall.
He has performed multiple times, on solo piano and leading the Philip Glass Ensemble, and his works and exclusively commissioned pieces have been performed by other ensembles.
In 2019 he performed his famous Music in 12 Parts on night one of a residency, but fell ill and had to bow out of performing with his ensemble for the score of Godfrey Reggio’s visionary time-lapse non-dialogue film, Koyaanisqatsi.
The Ensemble is back in Dublin again to present a live score to the final film in the ‘qatsi trilogy’, Naqoyqatsi.
While Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi are powerful, evocative warning shots about industrialisation and its effect on modern life in the 1980s, the post-911 Naqoyqatsi (“Life as War” in Native American Hopi language) uses digitally-altered archival footage and CGI to depict society’s shift from nature to technology.
The Ensemble is playing with the National Symphonic Orchestra, for the Irish premiere of a new orchestral score.
Ticket to Philip Glass & the National Symphonic Orchestra can be purchased on the National Concert Hall website here.
Master Peace
Sound House, Dublin - Tonight, €17.45
UK musician Peace Okezie, aka Master Peace, is highlighting the ever-shrinking lifespans of repackaged and recycled music scenes, that’s getting slightly deranging as I get older.
Okezie is inspired by the derivative 2010s music scene that’s retrospectively been dubbed ‘indie sleaze’ even though it was never called that in the first place.
It’s a blitz of MySpace, early Facebook and iPod sonics, evoking Bloc Party, Klaxons, LCD Soundsystem, Friendly Fires, processed to bits and sounding fit for a kids’ bouncy castle party.
And Kele Okereke from Bloc Party must’ve had an “is that me?” two Spiderman meme moment when he first heard the brazen rip-off vocals.
Still, serious party energy, and an easy tip for future festival greatness.
Tickets to Master Peace's gig at the Sound House in Dublin are available to purchase via Ticketmaster.
Sign up to the Irish Mirror's daily newsletter here and get breaking news and top stories direct to your inbox.
Related
Share this page
Guest Posts by Easy Branches
