Category: CQAF2023 – Friday 5 May

Early Show – 7.00pm

On Friday 5 May, U.S. indie-rock royalty Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss aka Quasi play their first Belfast show in 17 years at the Ulster Sports Club. After nearly three decades of launching drums and distorted pianos through the shifting interzones of harmony and chaos (moonlighting along the way with the likes of Sleater-Kinney, Elliott Smith, Jon Spencer and the HITmakers, Wild Flag, Built to Spill and a long list of others), the duo continue to be a genre of their own.

Hosted by self-confessed Quasi evangelists The Thin Air, this early show is part of a EU/UK tour, celebrating Breaking the Balls of History, their tenth record – and Sub Pop debut – which lands ten years after their last record, on February tenth. Three tens, which aligns with the thirty years they’ve played together. Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss have become Pacific Northwest icons, and Quasi has always felt so steadfast – their enduring friendship so generative, their energy infinite, each album more raucous and catchy and ferocious and funny than the last.

Tickets £14.

Support  From COWTOWN

Ever evolving rock band from Leeds consisting of Jonathan Nash on guitar/vocals, David Michael Shields on drums and Hilary Knott on keybass/vocals. They began life as a bizarre grungy noise duo before adding Nash and succumbing to the influence of late 70’s/early 80’s punk, post-punk and new wave; Devo, B52’s, Pere Ubu, Walls Of Voodoo, ESG, Liquid Liquid, Black Flag, Minutemen, Tom Tom Club etc, and the soundtracks that galvanised their earliest listening experiences; Teenwolf, Karate Kid, Gremlins, Beverley Hills Cop, Ghostbusters etc. Couple that with an obsessive fascination with They Might Be Giants (which explains away their namesake) and you have some idea of what to expect from the trio. Four albums in with a fifth on the way, there’s a chance you may be stuck with COWTOWN indefinitely…sorry”

Press for Breaking The Balls of History

“Breaking the Balls of History is a gritty rendering of Quasi’s classic garage sound, spearheaded by the blistering single “Nowheresville,” serving as a long-awaited return to form for the band—who bring a triumphant masterclass to the forefront of Sub Pop’s modern catalog 10 years after their last record, Mole City.” [“The 33 Most Aniticpated Releases of 2023”] –PASTE

“[Queen Of Ears] Has all the Quasi earmarks: pointed lyrics, jagged melodies, skronky organ, bashing drums, and Sam & Janet’s distinctive harmonies.” – Brooklyn Vegan
“Lead single “Queen Of Ears” finds Coomes and Weiss bashing away on their keyboard and drums, respectively, lending a raw edge to an otherwise bright and poppy song. The backing vocals are clutch on this one.”- Stereogum

“A punchy blend of state-of-things stream of consciousness and melodic brightness signals the much-awaited return of Pacific Northwest legends Quasi.” – Shindig!

Continuing on from one of his biggest years yet, which included a mini UK & IRE tour and not only performing but being nominated in two categories at the NI Music Prize, Leo Miyagee is one to watch.

Having established himself locally, Leo’s reach is growing across the water, with his rhythmic flow, poetic one-liners and picturesque sounding beats. He’s fast becoming one of the faces of urban music in the north.

Doors 7.45pm | Limited Unreserved Seating

Jolie Holland grew up playing music in Houston, Texas and was a traveling musician as a teenager. She formed The Be Good Tanyas with Samantha Parton in Vancouver in 1999. Shortly before The Be Good Tanyas released their debut record, Blue Horse, in 2001, Jolie Holland settled in San Francisco. It was there that she recorded the songs that eventually became Catalpa, released in 2003

Over the span of her career, Jolie Holland has knotted together a century of American song—jazz, blues, soul, rock and roll—into some stew that is impossible to categorize with any conventional critical terminology.

This is her burden and her gift, to know all of these American songs of the last ten decades in her head and her heart, and to have to wrestle with their legacy. She dives straight to the pathos of a song the way the very greatest singers, singers like Mavis Staples, or Al Green, or Skip James, or Tom Waits do.

As evident on her first recordings, Holland has no fear of the truth, and there is no emotional core that she cannot reach in song. In fact she thrives on the red hot centre of a musical composition, in all its strange and brutal detail.

Which brings us to Wine Dark Sea. Listeners to Holland’s work will recognize how her writing over the years has deepened and matured. The classic Holland lyrical concerns are evident in songs like Palm Wine Drunkard, and St. Dymphna, and Out on the Wine Dark Sea, all of which mix a density of literature and poetry to brutalities of romantic love, to the fragmentation of self and narrator in a torrent of loss and grief.

There has been no album of the recent decade with quite this sonic ambition, with quite this command of what a rock and roll song is and ought to be, but Wine Dark Sea is all of that.It is the album of a lifetime with a lifetime of work in it.

Doors 7.30pm | Unreserved Seating

is a project which features the music of Kevin Murphy, a celebrated cellist, multi-instrumentalist, composer and songwriter from Cork Ireland.

He is also a founding member of critically acclaimed Irish experimental bands Slow Moving Clouds and Seti The First. Blind Stitch has just released its debut album – The Emperor’s Lung.

Kevin has featured as a guest musician with many Irish and international artists such as The National, Bon Iver, Jenny Lewis, Lisa Hannigan, Gavin Friday, Rick Danko, Seamus Fogarty, Adrian Crowley and Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode.

He has also collaborated with Irish traditional and folk musicians such as John Spillane, Cathy Jordan, Phil Callery Cormac Breathnach, and Ger Wolfe in live settings and on recordings.

His band Seti The First co-wrote two songs on The Waterboys 2017 album Out Of All This Blue. He also participates in the People collective spearheaded by Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) and Bryce and Aaron Dessner (The National). This has resulted in collaborations with the above artists and others in festivals across Europe in recent years including the Funkhaus in Berlin 2018 and Sounds from a Safe Harbour Cork in 2017 and 2019.

He has co-composed the score for Michael Keegan Dolan’s Swan Lake/Loch na Heala hailed by the Guardian Newspaper as the second best dance production of the 21st Century.

Kevin co-composed the score for feature film Tomato Red (2017) directed by Oscar long listed director Juanita Wilson and The Lodgers, (2018) which featured at the Toronto Film Festival. He has just finished co-composing the score for acclaimed Irish director Kim Bartley’s new feature documentary True Grit released in 2022.

Glasshouse is a Dublin–based music ensemble and arts organisation. Their mission is to elevate Irish music through commissioning and collaboration. They combine sound, space and visual design to create unforgettable live music experiences.

This event features chamber ensemble and electronics, accompanied by striking visual projections. Enjoy Glasshouse’s lush and soaring take on Aphex Twin, one of the most influential figures in electronic music.

‘Glasshouse are among the highest calibre of musicians the nation has to offer.’ NIALLER9

Damon Gough aka Badly Drawn Boy has embarked on a a series of intimate shows to celebrate 25 years of releasing music. The shows will feature a career-spanning set of hits and fan favourites as well as being his first full headline tour since 2020’s album Banana Skin Shoes.

“I’ll be playing songs from across my career, including favourites and some rarities and deep cuts. I’d like to think this is the tour I’d want to see if I was a long-time fan. Very much looking forward to it and hope to see you there.” – Damon Gough (aka Badly Drawn Boy)

It’s hard to predict what he will play from such a beautiful and eclectic discography that over nine albums has earned him the reputation as one of the U.K’s most treasured songwriters.

From his still-towering, Mercury Prize winning debut The Hour Of Bewilderbeast in 2000 to the enthralling soundtrack to Nick Hornby adaptation About A Boy (from 2002,) Have You Fed The Fish? (also 2002) which featured You Were Right, his biggest single to date.

Then there was the mental-state-of-the-nation epic Born In The U.K. (2006) and his most recent album Banana Skin Shoes which was met with great acclaim from critics.

Damon is expected mix it up each night and when you’ve got a repertoire like his, why wouldn’t you?

Doors 7.30pm | Mostly Seated