TWO OF Galway's finest singer-songwriters - Ultan Conlon and Eoin Dolan - will be among the headline acts at the Citóg nights taking place in the Róisín Dubh across February, which will also feature punk, indie, prog, and folk.
Loughrea singer-songwriter Ultan Conlon makes a welcome return to Citóg with a headline show tomorrow night. His albums, Bless Your Heart and Songs Of Love So Cruel, have won praise from music critics and bloggers. Hotpress's Olaf Tyaransen called Bless Your Heart “the best Irish debut since Damien Rice’s O”, while Songs... was declared “an impressively simple but classy album,” byMusic-News.com, and as “deep and meaningful, bristling with emotion and passion, not a duff track," by Whisperinandhollerin.com Also on the bill is Whim, the pseudonym of Portland based singer-songwriter Sarah DiMuzio. She has two EPs, Small Infinity (2014 ) and Songs For The Funeral Guest (2015 ), and while her music has so far been in the acoustic folk genre, she is currently working on a new, collaborative, EP, exploring alternative/electronic-pop.Support is from singer-songwriter Pa Reidy.
Cork has a long tradition of producing interesting and imaginative indie bands, and with Neon Atlas that tradition seems to be in good hands. The band, who Hotpress described as having "Tim Wheeler-like melodies and Weezer-esque riffs", play Citóg on February 10.
The band formed in 2013 and within a year their debut album Absolute Magnitude was enjoying rave reviews, while the band performed to more than three million people on the Dermot O’Leary Show on BBC Radio 2. This led to appearances at Hard Working Class Heroes, Indiependence, and a slot on the First Music Contact Tour. Wasting no time, the band released their second album, Graffiti Reality, last June, on their own Demeanour Records label. It was also met with critical acclaim, Golden Plec saying its "warm, fuzzy pop tunes" had "enough songwriting chops to keep even the most hard to please music listener interested".
Support is from indie/alternative band Light of Day.The final Citóg gig of the month takes place on February 17 and will be in the Dominick Street venue's upstairs bar, where the headline act will be singer-songwriters, Eoin Dolan. Eoin will be launching his new EP, Something Good, the follow-up to 2014's excellent Placid Ocean. A taste of the EP is already being provided by the title track:
Eoin's music mixes folk, surf-rock, and pop elements, with audible hints of Brian Wilson, Syd Barrett, and John Lennon. Nialler9 has praised his "seaside sombreness and Beach Boys-esque melodies", while The Irish Mirror has called his songs "twinkly pop gems".Also playing are Liverpool pop-punk trio Sheepy. Their eponymous debut album was released on Blang Records in 2014, which included the single 'Don't Know Much', and followed this with last year's Wild EP, the title-track enjoying airplay on XFM and BBC Introducing.
There will also be a set by Tomorrows, a new project involving members of Biggles Flys Again, The Chapters, Jethro Pickett, and Woodheart, who take elements of sixties and seventies prog, folk, and psychedelia as a starting point to explore new textures, and melodies. Support is from Villy Raze.All gigs take place on Wednesdays at 9pm. Admission is free.
