Esben & the Witch (Live at the Crawdaddy) Review Snapshot: The critically acclaimed Esben and the Witch make their Dublin debut in The Crawdaddy, and give a performance appropriate for the fairy tale from which they’re named. A memorable night for those in attendance. The CLUAS Verdict: 7.5 out of 10  Full review: A small crowd of about forty gather for the night's support act, The Ambience Affair. The unsigned Leinster band have to date released two EPs, but with a full length LP in the works expectations are high. Pounding drums and jangling guitar sail the band from track to track, from upbeat to soothing and from start to finish. The band, masters of creating a wall of sound, seamlessly mount guitar and vocals on replayed loops, building a sound far more tangible and expansive than could be expected from a three member group. Once the applause after each song has died down there is a dead silence with frenzied guitar change... [Read on]

Alias Empire  (live in Crawdaddy, Dublin) Review Snapshot: Happy, dizzy, sweaty: Alias Empire rocked a sell-out Antics night with enough synths to wake yer granddad.  The Cluas Verdict? 9 out of 10 Full Review: I like disproportion. And I like sensory stimulation. This might explain my love of tiny daffodils, miniature Heroes and giant Jenga. It would also account for my pleasant feelings on walking into Tripod Wednesday night to see a huge white Raffaello on the ceiling, a giant stretched thong-like decoration, young girls with small knees and a DJ with a tiny head and gigantic round headphones. Crawdaddy filled up nicely as Antics began to sell out. The time waiting for Alias Empire (formerly Dry County) to take the stage was spent posing in front of visuals that consisted of whales, fish and other little monsters swirling around in a sea of colour. The music began with Jape and Morrissey and ended up getting all tech-house-like which got the crowd excited... [Read on]

Port O'Brien (live in Crawdaddy, Dublin) Review Snapshot: Port O’Brien come to Dublin on the back of their excellent ‘All We Could Do Was Sing’ album, but fail to recapture the energy displayed on the record for the most part of the gig. The Cluas Verdict? 6 out of 10 Full Review: ‘A damn cold night outside’, proclaims Van Pierszalowski. Considering he spent many months every year as a teenager as a fisherman on boat in Alaska, that’s saying something. Still though, despite the weather and some financial crisis I keep hearing about, the punters were not put off. About 100 people turned up to see Port O’Brien, the band that has been receiving favourable reviews from the Times and Pitchfork for their latest album, ‘All We Could Do Was Sing’. Maybe it is due to the fact that Ireland is the last stop on their European tour, but the performance seemed tired and lacking the exuberance I expected from this band. Both ... [Read on]

Plaid (live in Crawdaddy, Dublin) Review Snapshot: More dubstep than Double Figure, Plaid knocked out a short and surprising set. There were two schools of thought: the Disappointed (discussing the performance in the smoking area) and the Dancers (who made up the electric crowd in the venue). As a disappointed dancer, the gig lay somewhere in between for me... The Cluas Verdict? 6 out of 10 Full Review: Support act Sunken Foal opened the night of electronica. Featuring one half of Ambulance (Duncan Murphy), the duo soaked the venue with eerie church bells and sustained apocalyptic sounds. Imagine the haunting, sweeping discords of the Radiohead's Morning Bell/Amnesiac infused with deep synths that sound like bullfrogs - and you've almost got Sunken Foal. They drifted from darkness to more euphoric moments of harmony, and brought the crowd on an emotional journey with them. As my companion said to me of their sound, 'Oh my God. It's like Kermit on crack.... [Read on]

Midnight Juggernauts (live in Crawdaddy, Dublin) Review Snapshot: Midnight Juggernauts shocked the crowd's systems with overwhelming spacey sounds that were smothered with starry synth and disco beats. In short, amazing. But support group Late of The Pier upstaged them: their flamboyant, dramatic dancing set the night up for more than just yer usual gig... The Cluas Verdict? 9 out of 10 Full Review: When you wake up with a creak in your neck from dancing, you know that last night's gig was good. The evening began with a small boy at the foot of the stage, dressed in what can only be described as a batwinged jacket fashioned out of golden tinfoil. The boy (okay, he may have been about nineteen...) approached my friend LJ, announced 'I have a maraca', shook said maraca, and then jumped onto the stage like some kind of wonderboy athlete on stilts. It was then that I realised the boy (dare I say, young lad?) was part of the act - he started playing one of the ... [Read on]

DeVotchka (live in Crawdaddy, Dublin) Review Snapshot: They may be known predominantly for the soundtrack of everyone’s favourite indie film of the past few years, but the Denver based band show Dublin that there is much more to them than yellow camper vans and wee Miss Americas. Despite the claim that their "live performances are considered transcendent- with audience members dancing and crying, sometimes in the space of a single song", the Dublin crowd are happy enough to cheer and dance. We’re just a little more restrained I suppose… The CLUAS Verdict? 7.8 out of 10 Full Review: Spending a balmy and surprisingly dry Friday evening in the beer garden of Crawdaddy is not entirely unpleasant. However the prospect of having to enter a cramped, dark and sweaty room is not exactly enticing, even if it is to see a band that are reluctantly forced to refer to themselves as “Little Miss Sunshine soundtrack composers” in advertisements desp... [Read on]