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If you live anywhere north of London it seems you’re in the flight path of one airport or another. Windsor, despite having a great big castle, is no exception and a number of flights flew over in the few hours we spent in the town.
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Tags: airplane, alone, Canon 10-22, Canon 40D, flying, irishblogs, Look up, Photography, Photos, plane, Sky, United Kingdom, Urban, Windsor
Mangan Jewellers’ clock. Founded in 1817, they erected the clock on St Patrick’s Street in the 1850s.
Cork City, Ireland.
A photo taken a few weeks ago at Enniskerry Crossroad, Dublin, Ireland
On the road from Garryvoe to Cloyne, just before Shanagarry I believe, we came across this field for which I had to stop and get a few photos. Quite happy that I did stop now!
Kitty and the Can Openers are a band for those who appreciates the sounds of folk/pop with a lot of acoustic; female vocals, guitar plucking, brilliant bass and rolling drums. The sounds of Fleetwood Mac and Nick Drake, Ani DiFranco and Elliot Smith quickly come to mind.
The band officially released their first, self-titled, EP on Thursday 13th November in McHughs Bar, Belfast and is available through the band’s website, as a cd or free download.
They were interviewed in the latest issue of AU magazine. The full interview is available below.
There is a graceful, understated charm to the indie-folk of Kitty and the Can Openers. The endearing melodies of their eponymous debut EP are sun-dimples but hint at rain clouds on the horizon. It’s sweetness tempered by the realisation that all good things really do come to an end. Here, the group details their journey to date.
First off, I have to ask, where does the band name come from?
Ciara: The pairing was chosen literally at random from a children’s story book and we adapted it to make it sound like a Fifties style rock ‘n’ roll band - Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Johnny Kidd & The Pirates etc. We wanted something retro but wit ha kind of youthful sparkle to it. We like it. It’s pretty, playful and unpretentious.There is a lot of local colour in your music - ‘Roll On Yesterday’, the opening track on the EP, finds you name-checking Carnalea and Helen’s Bay. Is it important to you to retain that sense of place in your music?
Ronan: Yeah, we wanted to for Bangor what ‘Born To Run’ did for New Jersey! I think using specific places is a great way of coaxing the listener’s imagination. ‘Georgia On My Mind’ and ‘Scarborough Fair’ are just two examples. It’s important to relate a feeling to somewhere real - you make the listener feel at home as you draw them into your world.The pull of nostalgia is apparent in many of the songs - the backwards glance, the sharing of memories and moments. Is that one of the main lyrical inspirations?
Ronan: Definitely. Our songs are about hanging out, getting drunk, falling in love - things that don’t qualify as extraordinary at the time. You need that bit of distance to appreciate what an experience does for you. Songwriting is a great way of quantifying what has happened to you in your life, however you choose to disguise it. What we love about the best pop music is that you can get drawn in with a hook without realising you’re stealing a part of that person’s inner existence for three minutes. It’s like telepathy.In a song like ‘Cold Wind’, the guitar playing is somewhat reminiscent of Nike Drake. Would he be an influence to any degree?
Ciara: Of course! The acoustic guitar is a big part of our sound. We also use a variety of Drake-esque tunings, and Ronan has adapted that predilection for making up his own - the lazy man’s way of getting the pretty sounds flowing!For every act, the debut release is a milestone moment. What do you hope to achieve with your forthcoming EP?
Ciara: We have made the record downloadable from our website, so the aim of the launch is to get stuff out there, hope people enjoy it, and essentially pave the way for the next one. We’re planning it already - we’ve got more material than we know what to do with.Would you say that this release represents your proudest achievement to date?
Ronan: We’re like parents watching our kids shuffle off to college! Yes, it’s nice to finally get some exposure for the music we’re grafted out over these past few years. Recently, and by sheer chance, we heard ‘Roll On Yesterday’ on Steve Lamacq’s show on BBC Radio 2. That was a pretty proud moment.
While fumbling with my camera in the teeming rain I nearly got blown off my feet by this huge bolt of lightning which touched down a couple of hundred metres from me. The flash and bang was just awesome! Of course the downside was that we were then without power for 10 hours. Ah well.
