Donal Dineen intro’d me to his music years back, and it’s amazing to see he’s still making music and touring. He has a new album “Faithful Man” out in March (follow this link for a free download of the lovely lovely album track”You’re the Kind of Girl”), but the below is a live performance of one of my all time favourites “Honey Dove”.

The single is the first from their new eponymous album which gets its launch in Twisted Pepper on April 7th. See their facebook for more details

This Saturday (Feb 18) sees the album launch of stranded favourite Deaf Joe at Block T in Dublin with special guest Jennifer Evans (and tonight before in Waterford’s Soma Gallery with special guest Burrows). After three glowing EP’s it’s wonderful to see Joe’s album getting released by those clever folks at Delphi, and even better to see that stranded fave “Joanna” has made it into the final cut as the album closer. It’s a beautiful album, have a listen below (and buy buy buy)

Then Tuesday of next week (Feb 21) those wonderful Young Hearts have lined up a terrific event (fb event page here) around the themes of friendship and radio.  Featuring both Donal Dineen and John Kelly, alongside musical perfomances from the great Uillean piper Leo Rickard, the gifted Aidan Wall (Hipster Youth, Soil Creep) and just added to the bill is the mighty Groom-and there might be another special guest announced before too long.

The gig is at the Unitarian Church and all proceeds go to the Simon Community as usual. Word also  reaches me that the gig will be followed by a little afterparty in Whelans where both Donal and John will be spinning the decks – something I don’t think they’ve done together since their Radio Ireland days. I have a strong feeling this will be quite the night.

Delighted to see that Myles’ O’Reilly’s documentary about The Cave gigs is getting it’s premiere very soon – Feb 16th in fact – in Cork Opera House. They were exceptionally special gigs (my review here), and from the look of this trailer Myles has captured them perfectly. It’ll be fascinating to see the whole story of the Caves revealed on film, and what a wonderful resource for them to have – this beautiful document of a very special place, at a very unique moment in time.

and so it’s Meteor Choice Music Prize time of year once again.  The lucky 10 this year in the running for Irish Album of the Year are

And So I Watch You From Afar “Gangs” (Richter Collective)
Bell X1 “Bloodless Coup” (Belly Up Records)
Cashier No 9 “To The Death of Fun” (Bella Union)
Lisa Hannigan “Passenger” (Hoop)
The Japanese Popstars “Controlling Your Allegiance” (EMI)
Jape “Ocean of Frequency” (Music Is For Losers)
Patrick Kelleher & His Cold Dead Hands “Golden Syrup” (Osaka Records)
Pugwash “The Olympus Sounds” (EMI/1969 Records)
Tieranniesaur “Tieranniesaur” (Popical Island)
We Cut Corners “Today I Realised I Could Go Home Backwards” (Delphi)

(thanks to OTR from where I robbed the list and linkages!)

As always it’s a great indication of the rich variety of sound in irish music – it would be hard to listen to these 10 albums and come up with a conclusive “irish” sound – and is a great expression of the strength and quality of irish indie labels, with Popical Island, Osaka, Richter Collective, Music for Loosers and Delphi all illustrating the strength of the irish indie industry.  There are some Choice stalwarts on their; with re-noms for Jape, Lisa Hannigan and Bellx1, but it’s great to see so many newbies and debut albums on the list. As always there are some that I agree with, some that surprise me and many more that could have been included, but I’d be happy with a winning result for most of the above. Of course I don’t have to make the choice, but the (un)lucky 11 who have to make the ultimate choice this year are

Brian Adams (Today FM)
John Barker (98FM)
Stuart Clark (Hot Press)
Siobhan Maguire (Sunday Times)
Naomi McArdle (Harmless Noise)
Lauren Murphy (The Irish Times)
Nadine O’Regan (RTE/Phantom FM/Sunday Business Post)
Colm O’Sullivan (Red FM)
Ed Power (Irish Independent/Irish Examiner/Metro Herald)
Rigsy (BBC 1 Northern Ireland)
Penny Rose-Hart (RTE Radio 1)

If you want to get your spoke in the best place for the debate is usually Jim Carroll’s On the Record blog – the choice post has only been up an hour and there’s already a heap of comments. Another good link is Nialler9′s blog of course- post here>, and if you want to get a listen to the albums @mrjamesfoley has made 7 of them into a Deezer playlist here>, and the others are on soundcloud – We Cut Corners, Patrick Kelleher and Tieranniesaur.

Tickets for the live award show on March 8th (at the Olympia) go on sale on Friday.