PORTMARNOCK BEACH BOY BLUE

(Liver on fire, singing kum-bye-ah)

I’m missing you, swimming nude

I’m frozen through, Portmarnock beach boy blue

Pretty drunk, I’m pretty young

Pretty sea salt on my tongue

I’ve got a black bag of wool in my head

I’ve got a fist full of songs in my chest

You know the sky bleeds blue not red

It fills the sea like a vein from crest to crest

Pretty drunk, I’m pretty young

Pretty sea salt on my tongue

Silver life boy, silver sun

Silver sea salt on my tongue

Guggenheim Grotto continues to impress

What do The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkle, Radiohead, and Coldplay have in common? All fantastic bands, brilliant live and masters of the studio? They’re all acts who have been mentioned when trying to describe The Guggenheim Grotto’s sound.

The Guggenheim Grotto are Kevin May, Mick Lynch and Shane Power, all multi-instrumental and completely at home in charge of a breathtaking array of instruments both in the studio and onstage. And to cap it all they can create some of the finest vocal harmonies.

Live, the band is supplemented by Billy Bergin on upright and electric bass.

The Guggenheim Grotto made its appearance in April 2003.

Their first EP, recorded at home in Kevin’s bedsit, was mastered by Shane, who liked the band so much he joined.

Shane has had a varied career as a percussionist with everyone from the RTE Concert Orchestra to The Quarrymen under his belt and it was an ideal match for The Guggenheim Grotto’s eclectic stylistic wash.

The band has gigged extensively supporting Christy Moore, Mundy, Damien Dempsey and The Walls along the way as well as those heady Dublin solo gigs where the crowd realised they knew the words and sang along.

With debut album Waltzing Alone released on September 9, The Guggenheim Grotto took another step up the ladder.

The lead single from the album was Ian Dempsey’s ‘single of the week’ on his Today FM breakfast show.

January of this year saw the band head to the BBC in London where they recorded a live session for Nic Harcourt’s show Morning Becomes Eclectic during the normally LA-based show’s week-long visit to the UK.

The session was recorded in the same Maida Vale studio in which The Beatles recorded their 1963 BBC series Pop Goes The Beatles and this was a tremendous buzz for the band.

February will be taken up with some intensive touring in Ireland and, in March, the band travels to Austin, Texas.

Sligo Weekender February 07, 2006

Waltzing Alone - Guggenheim Grotto

Somewhere across the vast spectrum of the music industry there has to be an award for best album cover and if there is then the Guggenheim Grotto deserve to win it.

Their new album is presented in the kind of hardback cover you’d expect wrapped around your favourite Dickens novel. Instead it holds a veritable biography of the band, with comments, a graphic novel, lyrics and explanations of each song.

Fortunately, all this gloss comes with substance, because the Grotto have been one of the most innovative Irish bands of the past five years.

Their influences range from straightforward 60s pop like The Beatles and The Beach Boys to the harmonic fusions of Simon & Garfunkel, Clannad and Pink Floyd. The album opens with the karmic “Philosophia”, which focuses on our perpetual pursuit of some meaning in our lives.

From there, “Portmarnock Beach Boy Blue” brings the universal back to the parochial, again typified with some well worked harmonies between Kevin May and Mick Lynch. “Told You So” is a more generic affair, but of good enough quality to be included on this album. Indeed it puts many of Damien Rice’s and Paddy Casey’s recent releases to shame.

When the Guggenheim Grotto do stretch themselves, for the likes of “The Wonderful Wizard” and “Ozymandias”, the effects can be breathtaking. “The Wonderful Wizard” harks back to the dark introspective era of Irish music typified by The Stunning and A House.

“Ozymandias” could have come from the inspired pen of Paul Simon. A folky lament on death and love, it never sounds as dark as its lyrics intend because of tremendous harmonies.

“Rosanna” takes a step towards Irish troubadors like Luka Bloom, Kieran Goss or Tommy Fleming. Female backing vocals add to the Gaelic tint of the song. And as if to prove that no music style is beyond them “I Think I Love You” sounds like the latest wave of pop-poisoned Americana coming across the Atlantic. It is a sound too far for the group, for although they manage to pull it off, the song becomes lost in an anodyne haze of twangy guitar and Yankee accent.

Thankfully the album returns to form before the close. “Koan” benefits from an ethereal sound and spidery guitar, “Vertigo” is a piano/percussion tour-de-force with more than a hint of 80s romantic ballad.

“Cold Truth” is one of the finest and simplest songs on the album, but fittingly the closing “Tromboner” is just left of centre with echoes of Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen.

Sligo Weekender Wednesday, September 21, 2005