Event of the week
All Together Now
Thursday-Sunday, August 1st-4th, Curraghmore Estate, Co Waterford, €199-€249, alltogethernow.ie
With five notches on its belt, All Together Now, winner of IMRO 2024 festival of the year award, is a three-day celebration of music and the arts that most other festivals can only dream about. Smaller than Electric Picnic yet rammed with music acts (including Kiasmos, The National, Róisín Murphy, The Prodigy, Mathman, Slowdive, Øxn, Nealo, Ezra Williams, Anamoe Drive and The Mary Wallopers) and nonmusic events (comedy, spoken word, public interviews) that tease the creative spirits, ATN looks set to run and run. If you’re looking for a hideaway in the woods, seek out the Hidden Sounds stage, which features low-key performances from the likes of Niamh Bury, Oisín Leech, David Kitt and Niamh Regan. If you’re looking for enlightening conversations, check out the All Curious Minds stage. As for the festival site location? Sublime.
Gigs
Cormac Breatnach and Martin Dunlea
Saturday, July 27th, Farmleigh House, Phoenix Park, Dublin, 7.30pm, €20, eventbrite.ie
Two traditional Irish musicians for the price of one seems too good an offer to refuse, so dig out your skates to get to this special concert that will feature tracks from the duo’s acclaimed album, Music for Whistle & Guitar, as well as individual contributions from their respective back catalogues. The concert will take place in Farmleigh House’s elegant ballroom, so polish your shoes before entering, thank you very much.
Pierce Turner and the Terrible Good Band
Saturday, July 27th, the Nook, Wexford, 7pm, €32, eventbrite.ie
Pierce Turner, who straddles a geographical divide between Wexford and New York, always takes time out to visit the oul sod for several shows each year, most recently gigs that he describes as the “postal-code picnics”. One of these takes place about 5km outside Wexford town in a bespoke barn venue with, says Turner, “friendly people and no brusque security guards”. He’s a dab hand at fashioning fine songs, and, with a band that includes members of Basciville, this one should be a particular treat. How to get there? If you don’t know the place, tap “Y21 Y8AO” into Google Maps and follow the directions.
Ardú: A Decade of Acapella
Button Factory, Dublin, 7pm, €30/€25, eventbrite.ie
The award-winning vocal ensemble Ardú celebrate their 10th anniversary with a fully amplified concert featuring songs from their three albums, 2018′s Gravity, 2020′s Live and 2022′s Songs From Here, which has been nominated for a Contemporary Acapella Recording award. Expect a seamless blend of rich harmonies, remarkable solos and funky rhythms.
Waxahatchee
Thursday, August 1st, Vicar Street, Dublin, 7pm, €34.50, selectivememory.ie
The American singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield has been performing as Waxahatchee (named after the creek in her home state of Alabama) for almost 15 years, releasing albums that have successively increased her profile to the point that she is now headlining shows at significant venues such as Vicar Street. Her sixth and most recent album is Tigers Blood, which the online magazine the Line of Best Fit describes as elevating “the Americana genre, and asserting a panoramic vision, radiating wisdom”. Waxahatchee is in Ireland to perform at All Together Now next weekend, but if you’d prefer to see her up close, now’s your chance.
Stage
Content
Friday, August 2nd, and Saturday, August 3rd, Mill Theatre, Dundrum, Dublin, 7.30pm, €18/€16, milltheatre.ie
Social-media companies pay content moderators to sift through mountains of online toxic waste each day so that what we view comes with the tiniest amount of moral responsibility attached to it. Sometimes, however, something that should be deleted triggers investigation by the moderators that can lead to a labyrinthine blend of ambiguities and too many questions. So it is when Alan and Alannah view a video that will have life-altering consequences for them. Ross Dungan writes, Sara Joyce directs, with a cast that includes Joshua McEneaney, Genevieve Hulme-Beaman, Aidan Moriarty and Janet Moran.
Comedy
Georgie Carroll
Sunday, July 28th, Laughter Lounge, Dublin, 7.30pm, €27, ticketmaster.ie
Georgie Carroll used to be a nurse. Switching to comedy has proved to be a wise move, as in the past five years the Australia-based Mancunian has graduated from support slots to widespread recognition (mostly via a run on Britain’s Got Talent), headline shows, a healthcare-related podcast (The Swab, now in its third season, with more than 125,000 listeners) and a bestselling book (Off the Charts, shortlisted last year for Australia’s Russell Prize for Humour Writing). Your sides? Yes, they’ll ache.
Talks
What’s on the Telly?/Eclipse of Peasant Life
Saturday, July 27th, O’Donoghue Theatre, University of Galway, 2pm, €10, giaf.ie
Notwithstanding the number of streaming platforms overloaded with things to watch on screens of every size, and despite its recent governance and financial issues, RTÉ still holds a key place as Ireland’s national broadcaster. As part of Galway International Arts Festival, the Irish Times writer and critic Patrick Freyne, the Irish Independent TV critic Ann Marie Hourihane and Dr Roddy Flynn of the school of communications at Dublin City University discuss the ways, whys and wherefores of hanging on to viewers. On Sunday, July 28th (same venue, 12.30pm, €10), Freyne is in conversation with Patrick Joyce, author of Remembering Peasants: A Personal History of a Vanished World.
Still running
Yvonne McGuinness: What’s Left Us Then
Until Sunday, July 28th, Festival Printworks Gallery, Galway, 11am-6pm, giaf.ie
The community-based artist Yvonne McGuinness presents a travelogue film work that focuses on random concrete structures that, she says, are “oddities in the landscape”. As part of Galway International Arts Festival (which also ends this weekend).
Book it this week
Marc Almond, 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin, September 26th, ticketmaster.ie
Contempo Quartet, NCH, Dublin, September 15th, nch.ie
Dara Ó Briain, Vicar Street, Dublin, January 22nd-25th, ticketmaster.ie
Gracie Abrams, 3Arena, Dublin, March 10th, ticketmaster.ie
