*All events are 21+ valid ID required for entry*
*Attendees are encouraged to wear masks while not actively drinking*
8PM - Doors
9PM - Show
ALEX CAMERON
There is the directness of Cameron's delivery oftentimes. I don't mean blunt or, rather, not blunt in a bad way. It is an artful bluntness, if anything, in as much as it's deliberately so. Alex Cameron reminds me of The Smiths’ way of doing things, wherein the matter-of-fact lyrics that characterized the vocals of singers from the punk scenes was adopted to a style in which the lyrics were delivered without the aggression that characterized punk rock. Serge Gainsbourg comes to mind, too, although this may cause a bit of an anachronistic issue for my theory, come to think of it. Anyway, like with Gainsbourg or The Smiths, with Cameron the threat–the anarchy, if you please–is not in the voice, but in the directness of the words, the indifference to their reception. Oxy Music is a record that challenges. Not in the sense that it's aspiring to be clever, nor in the sense that it aspires to be something comparably full-of-shit to clever. It is a thinking person's record, however, in as much as it's long on questions and short on answers (hence: plenty to think about). The ongoing pandemic shaped this record as far as how it was made. Yet–in my view: thankfully–it resists most any temptation to incorporate said pandemic into marketable content. There is a reference to "this vaccine" on the track Sara Jo–wherein Cameron asks "Who told my brother that his kids are gonna die from this vaccine?"–and that's about the end of it.
AOIFE NESSA FRANCES
On the eponymously titled final song of her debut album Land of No Junction, Irish singer-songwriter and musician Aoife Nessa Frances sings, “Take me to the land of no junction/Before it fades away/Where the roads can never cross/But go their own way.” It is this search that lies at the heart of her music, recalling journeys towards an ever shifting centre, where maps are constantly being rewritten. Pitchfork said of the album, “Her voice shines like a headlight in fog, luminous and ambiguous in equal measure."
Aoife grew up swimming in the Irish Sea on the southern coast of Dublin, and the ocean’s shifting sense of loss and discovery is a constant presence in her songwriting. She started playing gigs when she was 15, accompanying her flamenco teacher to small venues in Dublin. She played bass in the Nina Hynes band and the Cian Nugent band, and wrote and played in the Dublin band Princess. Aoife's second album, Protector, will be out in 2022.