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En route for Grattan Bridge, they rattle down Mea
th Street, shouting to a pair of Gardaí outside a bakery, “give us a meow.” The lounge sound has been replaced with an amped up techno number about catching an STI at the Reichstag. Any trace of mindless good sense has been left behind in Block T along with the wedges. The sheer energy being spent encourages the odd passer-by to let loose, shouting in delight at this brazen, but steel cart. An individual strolling by stops to drop his trousers. He is wearing a pair of Acid Granny underwear with the words ‘Smells Great’ emblazoned across the rear-end. It is Eric FitzGerald, the electronic musician and producer who performs under the moniker Qwasi. FitzGerald’s label Ecstatic Intervals released the band’s 2021 single, I Love the Brits and I Love the Queen, and later he says, “I feel like we’re in a kind of golden age of Irish independent music.” “Avoiding the fucking norms of what is expected is always a good thing,” he continues. “And I think Acid Granny really represents that going against the grain.” Their DIY ethos, he argues, embodies the defiant spirit of Dublin’s underground artists presently. “With venues now, a lot of them aren’t receptive towards an act like them,” FiztGerald says. “But they just decided, ‘fuck it, we can just do this on our own.’” Katie Freeney, who directed the bondage, Babestation-inspired video for I Love the Brits…, says that there’s a “real freedom” in their non-commercial output. “Acid Granny are a wonderful example of artists who do whatever the fuck they want and don’t care about money, listens or views and they’ve inspired me to do the same.” In his reality-bending 1937 memoir, As I Was Going Down Sackville Street, Oliver St. John Gogarty conveyed his sense of disgust at the state of 1930s Ireland by portraying Dublin as a city moving backwards in time while its characters move forward. Everyone appears oblivious to this inversion of the entropic process, bar one outsider, known as Endymion. A real-life city icon, named James Farrell, Avoiding the fucking norms of what is expected is always a good thing and I think Acid Granny really represents that going against the grain Louise Butler 18