Who’s Playing
in 2024
Gossip
Proudly presented in association with Mother
Real Power, pioneering American trio Gossip’s first album since 2012, finds Beth Ditto, Nathan Howdeshell and Hannah Blilie back together and reunited with super producer Rick Rubin, who helmed their 2009 opus Music For Men. The result is a comeback of magnum force that celebrates the galvanizing might of music, the joy of creative expression, and the power of chosen family in the aftermath of collective and personal trauma. It was Rubin who coaxed the band back together again.The timing is ripe for a Gossip reunion, and Real Power heralds a new maturity and renewed sense of purpose for the trio. “What a way to come back after years of being gone: to come back strong and with purpose and so much joy and gratitude, but also getting out a lot of that fuck-the-world kind of energy,” says Blille.Also playing on the night: Sprints + nation of language
Deacon Blue
Thirty-five years since their debut single, ‘Dignity’ - and their debut album, Raintown - Deacon Blue released their most comprehensive greatest hits anthology to date, All The Old 45s - The Very Best of Deacon Blue, in September. All The Old 45s - The Very Best of Deacon Blue charts the band’s multi-million selling history - from bringing ‘Chocolate Girl’ and ‘Dignity’ to life in the corner of a Glasgow basement, to skyscraping, stadium-filling hits like ‘Wages Day’ and ‘Real Gone Kid’, via their swoon-inducing tribute to Bacharach and David (‘I’ll Never Fall In Love Again’), their collective favourite single (‘Your Swaying Arms’), and one of the most significant songs in the Deacon Blue canon, which followed a split in 1994 and the loss of two original members: 2012’s comeback single ‘The Hipsters’ heralded a new lease of life for the group, and jump-started a second act that’s seen them more fired up, and prolific, than ever. ALSO PLAYING ON THE NIGHT : ALTERED IMAGES
| 23Rd - 27th AUGUST COLLINS BARRACKS DUBLIN |
| 23Rd - 27th AUGUST COLLINS BARRACKS DUBLIN |
James Blunt
...in 2002, Blunt released the biggest-selling album of the decade in the UK: Back To Bedlam sold over 12m copies. He also released a further succession of hit albums, every one of them a Top Ten hit, and a brace of huge singles including ‘1973’, ‘Stay The Night’, ‘Bonfire Heart’ and ‘OK’. October 2023, James Blunt released a new album, Who We Used To Be. The first single, Beside You, is, as Blunt puts it, “pop, very, very easy on the ear, sweet, incredibly simple”: it’s also the latest in a series of James Blunt songs that seem gently infected with the spirit of the dancefloors in his adopted home of Ibiza. But, as Blunt also points out, the rest of the album is markedly different in tone: a collection of songs that address some very grown-up concerns: the pleasures and difficulties of long-term relationships, ageing, fatherhood, death.ALSO PLAYING ON THE NIGHT : GARETH DUNLOP
The The
THE THE are bringing their Ensouled world tour to Dublin in 2024, the band’s first since their hugely successful The Comeback Special world tour in 2018. Having released six studio albums since forming in 1979, THE THE are one of England's most cherished bands. Always unpredictable, recent years have seen Matt and THE THE make diversions into film soundtracks on Hyena, Tony, Muscle and Moonbug.+ in 2018 a beautiful and moving 84-minute film, The Inertia Variations and biography; and Long Shadows, High Hopes: The Life and Times of Matt Johnson & THE THE.ALSO PLAYING ON THE NIGHT : A LAZARUS SOUL
James
With more than 25 million albums sold over their 42-year career, James are amongst the most successful alternative rock bands of their era with hits like ‘Laid’, ‘Sit Down’ and ‘Getting Away With It’ earning them cult status and an incredibly loyal fan following.
Having gathered a cult following around compulsive art rock gallops like ‘Johnny Yen’ during the 1980s, James broke through to mainstream chart success with their 1990 major label debut Gold Mother and went on to unite the early nineties with euphoric anthems of solace, love, sex, loss and frustration at the ills of the world: ‘Come Home’, ‘Sit Down’, ‘Sound’, ‘Sometimes (Lester Piggott)’ and ‘Laid’.
The band entered a six-year hiatus in December 2001, but such was the connection and fervency of their fanbase that their 2007 reunion was met with such renewed success that it was as though they’d never been away. James’s celebrated second era, launched with 2008’s Hey Ma, would earn them more Top 20 album placings and faster ticket sales than their whirlwind initial run, completing an unbroken run of 15 Top Twenty albums since 1990.
ALSO PLAYING ON THE NIGHT : THE ZUTONS