The Goo 1
Reviews Live Reviews PIER Borderline Festival 202
4 The Workman’s Club/Cellar Borderline Festival brought a ton of interesting and diverse artists to Ireland, who otherwise may not have the opportunity to grace our shores. Day one of this year’s festival opened with Kai Bosch, the Cornwell-based dark and dramatic but minimalistic pop act. Next was University, a bizarro technical-fourpiece from Crewe. The “technical” qualifier is there because one of the band’s members holds up signs with the song’s name before the rest of the band launches into their metal-inspired noiserock, and then plays video games on the screen behind them as they perform. The game on this night, for those interested, was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Meanwhile, the London-based Sans Soucis made the dancefloor of the Cellar bounce with her idiosyncratic “Congolese pop.” As she finished, the Brighton tough-as-nails queer punkers Lambrini Girls got a packed main room to mosh, stagedive, crowdsurf and do a wall-ofdeath to their unapologetically political jams. The Tallaghtraised, London-based Spider then endeared the crowd with her lyrically-vulnerable rockin’ dance tunes. The wild, genredefying and much-publicised London fivepiece Fat Dog blew the roof with 45 minutes of utter chaos. For those who could still stand afterwards, the Mancunian Antony Szmierek capped off night one by decelerating its mayhem with his chill hiphop-folk numbers. AK Friday night in The Workmans provided one of the highlights of an excellent two day festival in the capital as Belfast post-punk four piece PAGE 28 Enola Gay headlined the main room. Not long after the band took to the stage mosh pits were opened and pure chaos ensued. Adoring fans head-banged like there was no tomorrow to singles like ‘Sofa Surfing’ and ‘Birth of a Nation’ as frontman Fionn Reilly paraded around the stage showing his qualities on the mic combining genres like hip-hop and punk to provide one of the most impressive performances I’ve seen from a frontman in a long time. After a high octane performance of single ‘Scrappers’ the band closed the night out with ‘For God & For Ulster’ with the chorus being echoed around the room as the band left the stage. I can’t stress enough how good that set was. JMcB In the main room of Workman’s stood a group of five black leather and navyclad men, stony-faced and seemingly synergistically aligned. But when the music started flowing, a true spell came over the room – they felt rather much like a new age The Cure, albeit with more poignant lyrics. A personal favourite was the spoken word rendition of ‘Amsterdam’ they did; the poetry-style presentation along with the live accordion truly sealed the deal on Cardinals being one of the top performances I’ve seen so far this year. DS (SPIDER) .. LYRICALLYVULNERABLE ROCKIN’ DANCE TUNES .. JACK MCBAIN / DIANA STOKES / ADHAMH O’CAOIMH / AARON KAVANAGH / SHAR DULLAGHAN SPIDER AT THE WORKMAN'S