Kids Near Water

The weekly Club Fandango was to bring the rock again this week (popsters The 45s headlining last week. Would’ve gone, but I was watching EMF). Kalico were first on and described to me beforehand as “Sonic Youth with a female singer”. A fairly accurate description though never been a ‘Youth fan meself. The guitarist with good shoes and Stooges T-shirt knocks over his mic stand twice and pulls out some leads. The singer barely moves but has a stare fixated on the small but appreciative (I think!) crowd. Then they play a cover of ‘I Love Rock And Roll’ and it’s big smiles all round.

Husk follow up with two-girl, one-boy messy rock with mostly a lack of tunes and some twee between-song banter. “This song is dedicated to people who suck,” they say at one point, which causes many a raised eyebrow (watch it, you). Work needed to be done here.

With Kids Near Water headlining, and the word ‘emo’ seemingly fashionable in the UK now, it was a good way to end. They don’t suit the cramped stage and the sound system in the Dublin Castle wasn’t capable of capturing the actual ‘emo’ part of their music – instead it felt like being screamed at for half an hour. Punk rock? Kinda. This seems to rub off on the band and they weren’t as good as they could’ve been, but the obvious potential was showing and one day they could go the same route as Hundred Reasons and sign their lives away to a major. If that’s what they want.