NORTHERN IRELAND has given us three of the most exciting Irish bands to emerge over the last 18 months - Two Door Cinema Club, not Squares, and And So I Watch You From Afar.
Maybe there is something in the Ulster water that has produced this creative explosion, but whatever the cause Irish indie/alternative fans have plenty of reasons to the thankful.
Hailing from Belfast, post-rockers And So I Watch You From Afar have stunned critics with their self title debut album, released in 2009.
The Quietus said it was “Quite some distance ahead of the rest of ‘09’s guitar albums”; NME described it as “the sound of someone crashing an oil tanker through Sigur Ros’ ice floe”; while Kerrang! declared it “dreamy and elegiac yet conversely monstrously heavy”.
Indeed even the titles to their compositions - ‘Set Guitars To Kill’, ‘Clench Fists, Grit Teeth... GO!’, and ‘Don’t Waste Time Doing Things You Hate’ sound immense with their iron-clad riffs and the pummelling crash of cymbals.
And So I Watch You From Afar play the Róisín Dubh on Thursday December 30 at 9pm. Support is from Jogging and Axis Of. Tickets are available from the Róisín Dubh and Zhivago.
