Biird at Vicar Street review: Consummate musicians deliver radical trad for the TikTok generation
Biird
Vicar Street, Dublin
★★★★☆
'We represent the best of Ireland,' says Lisa Canny, harpist, banjo player and frontwoman of the 11-strong trad girl group Biird.
At a sold-out Vicar Street on Saturday night, their easy confidence is intoxicating as this huge group of musicians dressed to the nines play some hair-raising trad.
The girl group formed in September 2023, when they were invited to perform at one of Annie Macmanus's literary nights at London Irish Centre. A little over a year and a half later, having already played around the corner earlier in the day, at Guinness's Lovely Days Live festival, they're performing to more than 1,000 people with not so much as a single released. It's a sight to behold.
'What I loved about the girl-band thing growing up is that it was a group of girls who looked like they were having the time of their lives, doing the best things of girlhood well into their adulthood, dressing up and playing tunes,' Canny says.
READ MORE
The concept behind Biird is a combination of consummate musicians and clever marketing for the TikTok generation: it's cool, it's slick and it's young – as demonstrated by a highlight of the gig, the group's reimagining of Gypsy Woman, the house track by Crystal Waters. The la-da-dees of its chorus are not dissimilar to the nas of lilting.
The band also deliver several sultry lilts in a set list punctuated with Irish-dancing accompaniments from performers as gorgeous and styled as the band.
At one point Canny turns to the crowd and says that Biird visualise a new type of Irish music, with 'none of this paddywhackery and green rivers'. Certainly, between the international success of Lankum and the emergence of bands that are rethinking what it means to play the fiddle, such as The Scratch, they're part of the radical rebrand of trad.
The only things lacking tonight are original songs. Biird play the three tunes that they've written themselves, but none of these has been released yet. If this is the kind of crowd the group can pull, and the energy they can create, based on nothing more than posters and word of mouth, what could they achieve with an album?
This is a huge production from start to finish, and not only because of the 11 players on stage. Biird have proved the concept: make trad accessible to a new audience and it will come. The crowd at Vicar Street is young and stylish, a distinctly more urban and hipster listener.
There's something admirably ballsy about Biird's unabashed ambition, a trait that is distinctly un-Irish, even if their music is as Irish as bread and butter.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Irish Times
Pulp at 3Arena review: Jarvis Cocker, storyteller in corduroy, builds to a glorious climax
Pulp 3Arena ★★★★☆ Ten songs into Pulp 's set, the feather boas flutter on screen, Jarvis Cocker adopts his most louche pose yet atop a brown leather armchair, and the cinematic creepiness of This Is Hardcore starts to build. This six-minute epic, laced with pornographic despair, seemed gratuitous when it was released, in 1998, but here it becomes the Pulp classic that most benefits from this being an indoor gig. There's no open sky to dissipate the effect as the lighting, a friendly 1970s orange for the preceding songs, turns a sordid crimson. We're no longer in the disco. This is Pulp in their red era, Pulp at their most menacing, and their frontman delivers its final act with the kind of theatrical conviction for which he is still, perhaps, underrated. This night at 3Arena is only the second date on the You Deserve More tour, which coincides with the release of More , their first album for 24 years. READ MORE The set, elevated by the presence of a string section, begins with the album's opening track, Spike Island, an effortless shimmy back to peak Pulp in which Cocker slips in his personal manifesto that he was 'born to perform', then tempers that grandiosity by defining performance as 'shouting and pointing'. Tonight he is a storyteller in corduroy, here to anchor a generous show separated by a civilised 15-minute interval so that the audience's ageing bladders can obtain some relief and Cocker can do the most Jarvisesque of costume changes. Pulp: Jarvis Cocker and the band on stage at 3Arena in Dublin. Photograph: Chris Maddaloni The length means that the inclusion of seven songs from More doesn't come at too much cost, with Underwear and I Spy, two imperial-era songs from Different Class, Pulp's 1995 album, the only regrettable casualties compared with the band's greatest-hits foray into St Anne's Park in 2023. It is 32 years since Pulp first played Dublin – which Cocker details before sliding into Do You Remember the First Time? – and 29 years since they headlined a bill featuring Cast and Super Furry Animals at an earlier iteration of 3Arena. None of us has got any younger since then. Cocker plays into this, incorporating a couple of lie-downs while speak-singing and asking the audience for help with a high bit in the chorus of Help the Aged. 'Everybody's got to grow up,' he sings on the band's new song Grown Ups, though in Pulp fashion this is swiftly followed by whispered doubt. 'Everybody? Are you sure?' In the intervening decades, none of the poignancy of songs such as Something Changed and Disco 2000 have lessened – if anything, as the crowd sings 'let's all meet up in the year 2000″, it has become more acute. Pulp: Jarvis Cocker on stage at 3Arena in Dublin. Photograph: Chris Maddaloni Mis-Shapes, 'dedicated to pretty much everybody in this room', retains its reliable highlight status, but the truly celebratory portion of the show arrives courtesy of the poppy 1993 song Babies, the most likable story of teenage voyeurism ever written, and then we're on track for an outsize eruption. Common People, both danceable triumph and pointed dissection of the British class system, hits different. The song, the last before a 'soft' encore, remains Pulp's crowning glory. As at St Anne's Park, its furious climax on Tuesday night is delayed by band introductions and is all the more satisfying for that. It's an achievement worth reliving. Let's all meet up in, say, the year 2029? Why not? We deserve more.
Irish Times
3 hours ago
- Irish Times
Ed Sheeran: ‘I identify culturally as Irish'
Pop singer Ed Sheeran has said he identifies culturally as Irish . Sheeran was born and raised in England . The Galway Girl singer (34) who was brought up in Suffolk, has a large Irish family and said he would spend his holidays in the country as a child. 'I class my culture as Irish. I think that's what I grew up with,' he told The Louis Theroux Podcast. 'My mum's family is very, very small, it's her and her parents, and my dad's family is ... he's got seven brothers and sisters. READ MORE [ Ed Sheeran has the closest thing to a song of the summer. Is that a 'recession indicator'? Opens in new window ] 'We'd spend all of our holidays in Ireland. My first musical experiences were in Ireland, I grew up with trad music in the house. So I identify culturally as Irish, but I was obviously born and raised in Britain. 'I do feel like my culture is something that I'm really proud of and grew up with and want to express. 'And I feel like just because I was born in Britain doesn't necessarily mean that I have to just be (British), there's loads of people I know that are half this or quarter this.' He said : 'I don't think there's any rules to it. It should be how you feel and how you were raised and what you lean into.' Asked if he gets 'a lot of love' in Ireland, he said: 'I'd say it's basically my second home musically. I'd say Ireland is the place that I am most successful musically.' Sheeran previously told BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs that he has Irish family and spent most of his childhood summers, birthdays and Christmases in the country. Also on the podcast, Sheeran reflected on the drawbacks of fame and said he is 'really sensitive' to people taking pictures of his children. 'My first daughter, six weeks after she was born, we hadn't sent any photos of her whatsoever, but there was paparazzi outside our house that got a photo of her, and it was in the paper and I just found it weird that some strange old man that I'd never met was the only person with an image of my kid on their device. 'It's a strange trade-off because, obviously, to be successful in the music industry, you end up being rich, famous and successful, and those things are things that people go, 'Well, that's the trade-off.' 'But my kids have not signed up to that, and I find it weird that it's normal to take pictures of other people's children if they're famous.' Sheeran is married to Cherry Seaborn and the couple have two children. The four-time Grammy-winning singer also revealed that he does not own a private jet and likes to travel via train. 'I like the environment, I like trees. I'd find it hard to justify. No one's perfect. When we're doing intense promo trips, there will be the odd time [taking a private jet],' he told Theroux. – PA
The Irish Sun
5 hours ago
- The Irish Sun
‘This must be a first?' – Ireland fans puzzled by RTE's scaled back coverage for Luxembourg friendly
LUXEMBOURG vs Ireland was an instantly forgettable match with about the only standout aspect to it being RTE's scaled back coverage. There was no studio coverage before, during or after 2 In the second half Troy Parrott scored with a delicate chip but it was ruled out for offside 2 Some viewers also reported the sound was out of sync with the picture on their TVs Curran and Whelan were on commentary and also filled the half-time break by narrating 'highlights' of what chances were created by both sides. O'Donoghue was at least present in the stadium as he conducted interviews with Heimir Hallgrimsson, Player of the Match But the main talking point generated throughout the entire evening was that there were no pundits in studio talking things over. Among the tweets posted on X about the significant break from the norm, Indo Sport podcast host Joe Molloy posted: "No RTE studio panel for the match?" Read More On Irish Football The replies to his post were broadly critical of the national broadcaster. Barry fumed: "Shameful drop in standards!! Niall Bergin posited: "Surely cost-cutting from RTE but Most read in Football Finally, someone else pondered: "This must be a first?" However, others didn't think it was that egregious of a decision given last night was about as close to a meaningless international game as you're ever going to see. Inside Arsenal's Ibiza holiday as Katie McCabe and teammates pop champagne to celebrate Champions League win Mick Finn argued: "A meaningless, nothing game…lucky to have it shown." Lastly, one fan used what a dreadfully poor spectacle it was to crack an amusing gag. He quipped: "Is it possible they had one and they just all fell asleep? Understandable enough." HEIMIR HUFF Head coach Hallgrimsson The birthday boy admitted: 'Let's be honest, we're not happy with this performance. 'It's good to keep a clean sheet but we all felt that in the first half we were sloppy, the game was boring in the first half. "All the good things we did against Senegal were missing, all the quick movement, the press, the ball speed - so sloppy. 'We were so different from all the things we want to represent. We lost duels, we lost ball, our rotations were slow, our pressing was more individual than collective. 'It was not tactical, I think it was just focus. We were not doing the things we did four days ago. 'We changed in the second half, we had more tempo, and won more duels. 'But it was not good enough. We always like answers to questions and this one is a negative one, so we at least know that. His side will begin their World Cup qualification campaign with a similar double-header in September, hosting Hungary before travelling to Armenia.
