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Extra.ie
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
15 years ago this week: Villagers released Becoming a Jackal
Originally published in Hot Press in May 2010: Mentioned in dispatches by Jon Pareles in the New York Times. A glittering Other Voices set. A much-lauded appearance on Later… With Jools Holland. An upcoming slot at the Richard Thompson-curated Meltdown festival. Hailed by Jape man Richie Egan as embodying 'everything I hold dear about music'. Somethings gone very right for Conor J OBrien since the dissolution of his first band The Immediate left him free to hone his skills as a sideman for Cathy Davey before forming Villagers, an ensemble who, before theyd even released their debut album (more of which in a moment), were opening for acts like Tindersticks and Neil Young. 'Every single step of the way, you're constantly a sponge, trying to take stuff from people, how they sing, how they perform,' O'Brien says on an April afternoon in the Brooks Hotel in Dublin. 'I hope that never ends.' Before we proceed, did he get to meet ol' Shakey? 'I didn't speak to Neil Young. He kind of walked by us in a haze of green smoke and wandered to his dressing room. I spoke to his crew; they were all awesome. They are a mafia, but a very friendly mafia, a very helpful crew. You can tell they've all been with him for years, really old dudes. 'I was very excited watching him. I came to him quite late, I was only starting to listen to him properly at the beginning of writing these songs, which was two years ago. I think I just heard Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and On The Beach and Harvest. Vampire Blues was very important, just the general looseness of it. Tommy (McLaughlin), who engineered the record and plays guitar in Villagers, he's a massive Neil Young fan, so he was very happy about my new love of Neil. We were just trying to maintain the space that's in some of his recordings and copy his drum sound, geeky little things like that. The songs had already been written, but it was more how to present them.' The album Conors is talking about is the extraordinary Becoming A Jackal, due for release on the Domino Recording Company. Says label boss Laurence Bell: Villagers is a powerful and brilliant blend of poetry and melody. Conor has the voice of an angel and performs with a rare intensity. I'm glad our paths crossed when they did. Bells Domino colleague Harry Martin recalls the label's first encounter with O'Brien: 'Myself and Laurence had actually seen The Immediate play at the Dublin Castle in Camden many years ago', he reveals, 'and we enjoyed that, it reminded us a bit of Sebadoh in the way they kept rotating as a band. It seemed like a novelty in a way, but a great performance, great songs. We were busy enough and thought no more of it, but when Cass McCombs came to play in Dublin towards the end of 2008, Villagers were supporting, and (Friction PR boss) Dan Oggly mentioned that I should check it out, that Conor was doing his own thing, freed of the band restrictions. I caught a bit of the set and was really impressed by it. 'And then a few months later, Laurence heard the track Becoming A Jackal and thought it was an amazing song, and asked me if I'd heard of Villagers. And I suppose when Laurence picks up on something, you start to think, I should really pay more attention to that. So I went to a show in Whelans last spring with a more attentive head on and was blown away.' Was the scope of the songs evident in early recordings? 'The early demos we heard were Jackal, Set The Tigers Free, quite a few songs he had knocking around, and he had, of course, the Irish seven and EP (On A Sunlit Stage and Hollow Kind). Conor pretty much had mapped out how it would all happen, up to Donegal with Tommy, he took 15 songs and came back with 15 great recordings, and we had to battle and fight and struggle getting it down to ten or 11. There's four amazing tracks left off the album; if you were to hear them, you'd probably weep. Well, get them out at some point. We're here for the long run. We're very excited about the first lap.' Villagers are, it's worth mentioning, the first Irish act to be signed to Domino, whose roster includes like-minded mavericks such as Franz Ferdinand, the Arctic Monkeys, Bonnie Prince Billy and James Yorkston. 'I remember reading that and going, 'Really?'' O'Brien says of this distinction. 'Maybe it's just a geographical thing.' Maybe it is. There is a strong sense of place about the album, and an even stronger sense of time. O'Brien, a Dun Laoghaire native, found himself looking beyond the pier and into a welter of possible pasts. 'It's a pretty powerful thing, thinking that way,' he admits. 'I think when you're making art, a lot of that can show itself in a really subconscious way that you shouldn't really be aware of. There's a real power in it, but it's dangerous; you have to preserve the individuality of your own writing to a certain degree. But you can't ignore the surroundings and the history of where you grew up.' O'Brien's songs are steeped in atmosphere, most evident on the album's opener, I Saw The Dead, as extraordinary a piece of music as you're likely to hear all year. Indeed, the term song hardly does it justice. The musical equivalent of a Hitchcock or Polanski film, it radiates the eerie magnetism of a fairytale, or maybe the moment in The Sixth Sense where we see what Cole Sear sees hanging bodies in a school hallway ('That's a really good scene in that film,' OBrien concedes). 'The night we signed the contracts, we were in a bar marking the occasion,' recalls Harry Martin,'a great pub called the Cats Back around the Wandsworth area down by the river. And Conor sat at the piano and started playing the melody line, almost to himself, and it hooked into our head, and then about a month later, this demo came through, and it was that song. The whole thing is timeless in many ways. It could be from any era.' Indeed, I Saw The Dead might be an album unto itself, with its ghostly vocal set to a modernist but melodramatic neo-classical piano line. It's a shoo-in for inclusion on the soundtrack of any Hollywood remake of Let the Right One In. 'I was trying to copy Philip Glass with the music,' O'Brien explains. 'I had this piano piece which didn't have any words for ages. The song is a repetitive chord sequence, which was a small part of a bigger musical piece, which had loads of different kinds of slightly dodgy rock opera parts, and I really needed to make myself edit them out. I was thinking, 'that's a good bit, and that's a good bit, and that's a good bit. Everybody should hear all these good bits, and they should all happen in these four minutes.' Which is not the way to write a song at all, I think the simpler the better.' And what of the creepy-crawly lyric? 'The words were… like all the songs, I was just playing with words. The title was the first thing, and I wrote the rest of the lyrics knowing it was going to be the first song, cos it was the last song I wrote for the album. I wanted to write a sweeping introduction. I knew Becoming A Jackal would probably be the second song, so the idea of scavenging… all these human traits that I was exploring, I wanted to make it almost grotesque and physical with I Saw The Dead, the You take the torso/And I'll take the head bit… I don't know why. I find it really hard to do interviews about these songs to be honest, cos they're all just automatic and a bit subconscious. It's that thing, talking about music is like dancing about architecture. That's my current motto right now. But at the same time, I've had good times figuring it out.' And presumably, he's having fun hearing people's interpretations and misinterpretations of the songs? 'Well, that's the thing. If you're writing a song, you're being playful, you're being childish, there's space, and a lot of people have different ideas about it. Someone will say, 'Is that song about a girl? Well, it obviously is for you. You just said it was!' But the artwork for that song is important as well, it's two old ships on which people had perished. In 1804 or something, Dun Laoghaire harbour hadn't appeared yet, and the only reason it appeared was two particular ships had perished on the rocks and hundreds of people had died, and I just had this image in my head when I was doing the artwork. But that was only after I'd written the song.' If Becoming A Jackal wasn't such a strong collection, O'Brien might have had some serious problems following that tune. Fortunately, the rest of the record is as rich in dramatic irony and emotional potency, sometimes digressing into Arthur Lee territory, as well as exhibiting a fair grasp of pre-rock' n' roll song-forms. The Meaning Of The Ritual, The Pact and Pieces all execute the classic David Lynch trick of juxtaposing doo-wop sweetness with pure horror. 'Transcendental darkness and the weirdness,' O'Brien laughs. 'You're onto me! That's what I was trying to go for in some of the songs. Dark imagery or feelings alongside really mundane domestic everyday things. Let them rest beside each other, peacefully. Or not so peacefully. The first time we saw Twin Peaks' Killer Bob was in the doily-like Palmer household. Which was, perversely enough, far more frightening than if we had encountered him in a cabin in the woods. 'That's true, it's got the total childishness of 50s teenage life. There's a sweetness and beauty to doo-wop music that when you put it in a certain context…' Scare the bejesus out of a soul. That other Lynch favourite, Roy Orbison, had it too. O'Brien, as it happens, is a fan of the Big Os' gothic pop operas. You can hear it in songs like Ship Of Promises and That Day. 'The chord changes, the lyrics, everything works with Roy Orbison,' he enthuses. 'He's a master. Although I'm not too sure about Drove All Night! That's kind of weird. But still kind of cool.' O'Brien, for all his impeccable sensibilities, is not afraid to occasionally go OTT. There are moments in his songs when, bizarrely enough, I'm reminded of Richard Harris doing Jimmy Webb's MacArthur Park. 'I don't know that,' he confesses, 'but I saw The Field recently for the first time. Amazing. I'd never read it or seen the play. I thought Harris was phenomenal, I was completely in that film, his acting, the ideas that it raised, it was mindblowing. It gives you really strong ideas about power and lust and the sadness of the whole thing, how it turned him into a complete monster. And that scene where he's fighting the sea, it's like Lear in a storm or something.' If there's an equivalent operatic moment on the Villagers' record, it's at the end of Pieces, when O'Brien abandons language and howls at the moon. A great moment, precisely because it dares to go beyond indie-schmindie notions of restraint. 'I remember recording the demo for that,' he says, 'and it was about three or four in the morning, and I was on a break from touring with Cathy Davey. Pieces was written in about five minutes, but the arrangement took about a year, and when I came upon that doo-wop version with the different time signature on the piano, it opened the song up for me. I remember having this moment of epiphany, howling as I was recording it, really excited and joyous, the most joyful experience I've ever had, which contrasts with the song's meaning or feeling. That jackal howl.' That jackal howl. A phrase to put hair on your chest. And an atmosphere not a million miles away from Elvis' Blue Moon. 'I think it's just blues,' O'Brien concludes. 'A lot of people in interviews have gone, (adopts Euro accent), 'What exactly is Pieces about? What was happening to you in your life at that time?' And I can't remember, it's just like a blues song, you're singing, and you hope whoever is listening to it knows what you mean in their own terms. You're not trying to focus on your ego, you're not trying to get everyone in the room to listen to your problems, you're putting it out there so it can make a general connection. You can just howl. Everyone's going to understand that.' Listen to Becoming a Jackal below:
AsiaOne
21-05-2025
- AsiaOne
Stolen memorial bust of Jim Morrison found, Entertainment News
A stolen memorial bust of Jim Morrison has been found. Thieves nabbed the statue that adorned the grave of The Doors frontman in 1988, and now French police have tracked it down in the country's capital city in a fraud investigation by the police's financial and anti-corruption department that was unrelated to the original theft. The Direction de la Police Judiciaire de la Prefecture de Police posted a statement on its Instagram account on May 17, which said: "After 37 years of absence, the bust of Jim Morrison, stolen in 1988 from the Pere Lachaise cemetery, has been found! "During an investigation conducted by the Financial and Anti-Corruption Brigade of the Directorate of Judicial Police of the Prefecture of Police, under the authority of the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office, this iconic symbol for the singer's fans was recovered." Despite the statue now having been recovered, it is not clear when it will return to Jim's grave in the cemetery, which is also the final resting place of Oscar Wilde. The cemetery's curator told Le Figaro: "The police haven't contacted us, so I don't know whether the bust will be returned to us." The force released an image of the found memorial bust — which was hand-carved by Mladen Mikulin in 1981 to mark the 10th anniversary of Jim's passing — with its nose and mouth missing, as it was when the bust was stolen, as well as it being covered in graffiti. It is not clear who stole Jim's statue back in 1988, but the Morrison estate are "happy to hear the news" that it has been found. A spokesman for the Morrison estate added to Rolling Stone: "Obviously it's a piece of history, and one Jim's family wanted there on his grave, so it's gratifying to see that it's been recovered." Jim died from heart failure brought on by alcoholism at the age of 27 in Paris, France, in 1971. He was found in the bathtub in his Paris apartment when he and his bandmates — Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore — were recording The Doors' seventh album Other Voices. [[nid:718002]]
The Advertiser
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
Jim Morrison stolen memorial bust found after 37 years
A stolen memorial bust of Jim Morrison has been found. Thieves nabbed the statue that adorned the grave of The Doors frontman - who died from heart failure brought on by alcoholism at the age of 27 in Paris, France, in 1971 - in 1988, and now French police have tracked it down in the country's capital city in a fraud investigation by the police's financial and anti-corruption department that was unrelated to the original theft. The Direction de la Police Judiciaire de la Préfecture de Police posted a statement on its Instagram account on May 17, which said: "After 37 years of absence, the bust of Jim Morrison, stolen in 1988 from the Pere Lachaise cemetery, has been found! "During an investigation conducted by the Financial and Anti-Corruption Brigade of the Directorate of Judicial Police of the Prefecture of Police, under the authority of the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office, this iconic symbol for the singer's fans was recovered." Despite the statue now having been recovered, it is not clear when it will return to Morrison's grave in the Pere Lachaise cemetery - which is also home to the final resting place of Oscar Wilde. The cemetery's curator told Le Figaro: "The police haven't contacted us, so I don't know whether the bust will be returned to us." The force released an image of the found memorial bust - which was hand-carved by Mladen Mikulin in 1981 to mark the 10th anniversary of The Lizard King Jim's passing - with its nose and mouth missing, as it was when the bust was stolen, as well as it being covered in graffiti. It is not clear who stole Morrison's statue back in 1988, but his estate was "happy to hear the news" that it has been found. A spokesman for the estate added to Rolling Stone: "Obviously it's a piece of history, and one Jim's family wanted there on his grave, so it's gratifying to see that it's been recovered." Morrison died in 1971 aged 27, with his cause of death officially being registered as heart failure. He was found in the bathtub in his Paris apartment when he and his bandmates, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore, were recording The Doors' seventh album Other Voices. A stolen memorial bust of Jim Morrison has been found. Thieves nabbed the statue that adorned the grave of The Doors frontman - who died from heart failure brought on by alcoholism at the age of 27 in Paris, France, in 1971 - in 1988, and now French police have tracked it down in the country's capital city in a fraud investigation by the police's financial and anti-corruption department that was unrelated to the original theft. The Direction de la Police Judiciaire de la Préfecture de Police posted a statement on its Instagram account on May 17, which said: "After 37 years of absence, the bust of Jim Morrison, stolen in 1988 from the Pere Lachaise cemetery, has been found! "During an investigation conducted by the Financial and Anti-Corruption Brigade of the Directorate of Judicial Police of the Prefecture of Police, under the authority of the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office, this iconic symbol for the singer's fans was recovered." Despite the statue now having been recovered, it is not clear when it will return to Morrison's grave in the Pere Lachaise cemetery - which is also home to the final resting place of Oscar Wilde. The cemetery's curator told Le Figaro: "The police haven't contacted us, so I don't know whether the bust will be returned to us." The force released an image of the found memorial bust - which was hand-carved by Mladen Mikulin in 1981 to mark the 10th anniversary of The Lizard King Jim's passing - with its nose and mouth missing, as it was when the bust was stolen, as well as it being covered in graffiti. It is not clear who stole Morrison's statue back in 1988, but his estate was "happy to hear the news" that it has been found. A spokesman for the estate added to Rolling Stone: "Obviously it's a piece of history, and one Jim's family wanted there on his grave, so it's gratifying to see that it's been recovered." Morrison died in 1971 aged 27, with his cause of death officially being registered as heart failure. He was found in the bathtub in his Paris apartment when he and his bandmates, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore, were recording The Doors' seventh album Other Voices. A stolen memorial bust of Jim Morrison has been found. Thieves nabbed the statue that adorned the grave of The Doors frontman - who died from heart failure brought on by alcoholism at the age of 27 in Paris, France, in 1971 - in 1988, and now French police have tracked it down in the country's capital city in a fraud investigation by the police's financial and anti-corruption department that was unrelated to the original theft. The Direction de la Police Judiciaire de la Préfecture de Police posted a statement on its Instagram account on May 17, which said: "After 37 years of absence, the bust of Jim Morrison, stolen in 1988 from the Pere Lachaise cemetery, has been found! "During an investigation conducted by the Financial and Anti-Corruption Brigade of the Directorate of Judicial Police of the Prefecture of Police, under the authority of the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office, this iconic symbol for the singer's fans was recovered." Despite the statue now having been recovered, it is not clear when it will return to Morrison's grave in the Pere Lachaise cemetery - which is also home to the final resting place of Oscar Wilde. The cemetery's curator told Le Figaro: "The police haven't contacted us, so I don't know whether the bust will be returned to us." The force released an image of the found memorial bust - which was hand-carved by Mladen Mikulin in 1981 to mark the 10th anniversary of The Lizard King Jim's passing - with its nose and mouth missing, as it was when the bust was stolen, as well as it being covered in graffiti. It is not clear who stole Morrison's statue back in 1988, but his estate was "happy to hear the news" that it has been found. A spokesman for the estate added to Rolling Stone: "Obviously it's a piece of history, and one Jim's family wanted there on his grave, so it's gratifying to see that it's been recovered." Morrison died in 1971 aged 27, with his cause of death officially being registered as heart failure. He was found in the bathtub in his Paris apartment when he and his bandmates, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore, were recording The Doors' seventh album Other Voices. A stolen memorial bust of Jim Morrison has been found. Thieves nabbed the statue that adorned the grave of The Doors frontman - who died from heart failure brought on by alcoholism at the age of 27 in Paris, France, in 1971 - in 1988, and now French police have tracked it down in the country's capital city in a fraud investigation by the police's financial and anti-corruption department that was unrelated to the original theft. The Direction de la Police Judiciaire de la Préfecture de Police posted a statement on its Instagram account on May 17, which said: "After 37 years of absence, the bust of Jim Morrison, stolen in 1988 from the Pere Lachaise cemetery, has been found! "During an investigation conducted by the Financial and Anti-Corruption Brigade of the Directorate of Judicial Police of the Prefecture of Police, under the authority of the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office, this iconic symbol for the singer's fans was recovered." Despite the statue now having been recovered, it is not clear when it will return to Morrison's grave in the Pere Lachaise cemetery - which is also home to the final resting place of Oscar Wilde. The cemetery's curator told Le Figaro: "The police haven't contacted us, so I don't know whether the bust will be returned to us." The force released an image of the found memorial bust - which was hand-carved by Mladen Mikulin in 1981 to mark the 10th anniversary of The Lizard King Jim's passing - with its nose and mouth missing, as it was when the bust was stolen, as well as it being covered in graffiti. It is not clear who stole Morrison's statue back in 1988, but his estate was "happy to hear the news" that it has been found. A spokesman for the estate added to Rolling Stone: "Obviously it's a piece of history, and one Jim's family wanted there on his grave, so it's gratifying to see that it's been recovered." Morrison died in 1971 aged 27, with his cause of death officially being registered as heart failure. He was found in the bathtub in his Paris apartment when he and his bandmates, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore, were recording The Doors' seventh album Other Voices.
Irish Examiner
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
'There was no one around': Cian O'Connor on his lockdown images of Dingle
Five years on from the first COVID lockdown, of March 2020, many look back on the pandemic years with a certain nostalgia. They remember the Great Pause, the first time in their adult lives they had the chance to step off the treadmill and reassess their values and priorities. For Cian O'Connor, it was something else entirely. Having recently completed his degree at the National Film School in Dun Laoghaire, he had moved home to Dingle, Co Kerry while he tried to figure out what to do next. 'I had terrible job prospects, and most of my relationships and friendships had broken down,' he says. 'I had existential malaise. I was like, I've got to move to New York. I'll start a new life and become a new person. I was getting all geared up for that. I'd bought my visa, I was about to buy my plane ticket, I was just going to get the hell out of Ireland. 'And then the pandemic happened. And there I was, stuck at home with my parents. You can't imagine how upset I was.' As the days and weeks crawled by, O'Connor realised he had to find something to occupy his mind. 'I had an old film camera, and I decided to take photos of the town and its people,' he says. 'Tourism is the lifeblood of Dingle, and we had a heatwave for two months. It was beautiful, the perfect tourist weather. But there was no one around. The streets were empty, and all the businesses were closed, with signs outside saying, sorry, hopefully things will change. I just couldn't get over it. It was too interesting not to document.' O'Connor arranged to interview many of those he photographed around the town. 'We did the interviews by Zoom, which was really new back then. Everything was so uncertain for people, they told me loads. Stuff they wouldn't normally talk about at all. A lot of people looked forward to getting back to work. Jimmy Flannery, who ran the boat tours to see Fungie the Dolphin, said something like, 'I still go out and see Fungie, just to check in on him.' "But then, on the other side, some people found that the lack of tourism was maybe a good thing. It was a reason for us to reflect on how Dingle is going because, with tourism being the biggest industry, a lot of other things have fallen by the wayside.' Cian O'Connor, photographer. One of those interviewed was Finn Mac Donnell, the fourth generation of his family to work at Dick Mack's Brewhouse bar. 'Finn felt that the town is too expensive now. Young people can't live there anymore. And that was back in 2020, before the cost of living crisis.' Another interviewee was Philip King, producer of the Other Voices television music series that has become synonymous with Dingle. 'Philip brought up this analogy of the hare's corner, a part of a field that wasn't ploughed, so the hare would have a place to live. He compares that to Dingle. You need an arts and culture centre in the town, he says. You can't just be maximising every square foot of land for profit. A lot of people feel that way, to be honest.' O'Connor finally got out in November 2021. He'd befriended a music producer and record company executive named Steve Ralbovsky, who has a holiday home in Dingle. 'Steve's a music guy,' he says. 'He signed the Strokes and Kings of Leon. He helped me get an internship with a script consultancy in New York, a company run by John Coles, who directed House of Cards and Sex and the City.' O'Connor now works full time with the company, Talking Wall Pictures. 'I make short films as well,' he says. 'The last one is called An Chathair Mór/Big City. It's a low-budget film, which we funded ourselves. I flew over my two best mates from Ireland to act in it. It was post-COVID, so we got cheap airline tickets, a €300 round trip. They stayed at my apartment, and we shot it in Woodlawn up in the Bronx.' An Chathair Mór/Big City tells of a young man who arrives in New York and forms a connection with a distant relative, an older woman who shares her love of the Irish language. It is, says O'Connor, the first film in the Irish language shot in New York. 'We got good press here on account of that,' he says. The film premiered at Galway Film Festival, and has since been screened at the Newport Beach Film Festival. 'And it's screening this month at the Fastnet Film Festival in West Cork.' It was O'Connor's mother who encouraged him to revisit the material he'd shot in Dingle during COVID. 'One of the first people I photographed was Kathleen O'Sullivan at the Phoenix Cinema. I remember she was very nervous, but the photo came out really nice. There's a Facebook group called Dingle Photos Past and Present. I stuck the photo up there and said I'd see how it goes. People loved it. Even the first day, it got hundreds of likes.' Another image from Cian O'Connor's exhibition, entitled 'Dingle 2020: The Year the Tourists Never Came'. The response encouraged O'Connor to approach Féile na Bealtaine with a proposal to showcase his work. The result is Dingle 2020: The Year the Tourists Never Came, an exhibition of twelve B&W images, along with a selection of audio recordings, at An Díseart. 'It's five years on from that first lockdown,' he says. 'Which is really not that long, but it does feel like a long time ago, so much has happened since. The people in the photographs have never had a chance to see them before. The same with the interviews; no one has heard them. The main thing for me is, I just want to give this exhibition back to the town. I hope it'll make people think about the resilience we had during COVID. Everybody was freaking out about the lack of tourists, but I'd never seen the town so bound together. I don't think I would have been able to take these photos if the community wasn't so strong.' O'Connor is busy making plans for his next short film, about a woman who's forced to move back to her hometown after she loses her job. O'Connor himself has no plans to return to Ireland just yet. 'Here in New York, there's a lot a talk of a recession,' he says. 'But I have a job, for now at least. And to be honest, I'm paying the same rent here as I'd be paying in Dublin.' Cian O'Connor's Dingle 2020: The Year the Tourists Never Came exhibition is showing at An Díseart, Dingle as part of Féile na Bealtaine, until Thursday, May 8. Further information: Read More John Patrick McHugh: 10 of the books that have influenced me through the years
Sunday World
22-04-2025
- Sunday World
These are the eight most Instagrammable spots in Ireland
Whatever part of the country you're in, you'll find somewhere beautiful to capture with your camera. The Cliffs of Moher - Source: Getty Images Regardless of what you use your phone for – be it swiping on dating apps, or playing online slots, or listening to your favourite podcast – chances are you're also using it for Instagram. With over two million users on the platform each and every month, the odds are really good you've got an account on there and are looking for some travel inspiration. And where better to get some inspiration than from some of the most Instagrammable spots in Ireland? And so, in alphabetical order, let us begin with… There are around 1.5 million visitors to the beautiful Cliffs of Moher each and every year, and if you've never been, then we fully recommend you do check them out, because you'll quickly understand why they are one of the most photographed places in the entire island of Ireland. Running along the coast for a little over 14 kilometres, reaching a maximum height of 214 meters above sea level, and on a good day, you can spot the Aran Islands and the Twelve Pins mountain range. Connemara - Source: Getty Images To be fair, this is a bit of a cheat because Connemara is such a huge region; we could be talking about anywhere from Ballynahinch, to Cliffden, to Spiddal, to Inishbofin, and it would all still count as Connemara. What they all have in common, aside from the geographical location in the extreme west of Ireland, is their shared natural beauty, with every part of the area unveiling some jaw-dropping visuals to the visitors. The landscape goes from mountains to beaches, and they're all worthy of your grid. Dingle - Source: Getty Images Late November and early December see this sleepy town transformed into the national hub for musical talent as tens of thousands descend upon the area to enjoy the Other Voices festival. But even outside of this very busy week, Dingle (once home to the locally famous dolphin, Fungie) is housed within a peninsula in South West Kerry, one of the last large populations on the island before we give way to the Atlantic Ocean. There is a lot to take in when strolling around this picturesque town, from the neo-Gothic chapels to the colour-coded building exteriors. Giant's Causeway - Source: Getty Images At peak busyness, the Giant's Causeway can see up to 5,000 visitors each and every day coming to check out nature work its wonders. Volcanoes did their stuff and created over 40,000 hexagonal basalt columns, and in the process gave us one of the most unique and savagely beautiful vistas on the entire planet. As one of only three UNESCO World Heritage Sites on the entire island of Ireland – the other two being Skellig Michael in Kerry and the Boyne Valley Tombs in Meath – you can mark that off your bucket list now, too. Glendalough - Source: Getty Images Deriving its name from the two lakes you can stroll or hike around, Glendalough brings thousands of visitors each week, all with different ideas of how they want to spend their time here. Bringing a blanket and a picnic basket and just want to soak up the views? Have at it. Want to walk around and take in the historic sites and monuments in both the Upper Lough and the Lower Glen? There for you to enjoy. Or maybe you want to get even more active and partake in some rock climbing or bouldering? There is plenty of that here for you, too. And regardless of what you decide to do, it will all look fantastic on Instagram. Howth - Source: Getty Images Based at the very outer limits of Ireland's capital, Howth is almost entirely surrounded by the Irish Sea, with the hustling suburb nestled within its very own peninsula. Howth Head is found right at the top of Dublin Bay and also includes the island of Ireland's Eye, which is both a Special Area of Conservation and a Special Protection Area, thanks to the wildlife and plant life found there. An incredible place to take a stroll, thanks to the cliff and coast paths, you'll also happen across Howth Castle, one of the oldest occupied buildings in the country. Killarney - Source: Getty Images Much like Connemara, this too is a bit of a cheat, but there is simply SO MUCH Insta-inspo to be found in Killarney. The Kerry town is on the world-famous Ring of Kerry, and it is home to the beautiful Killarney National Park, as well as Muckross House and Abbey, MacGillycuddy's Reeks, the Gap of Dunloe, Purple Mountain, Torc Waterfall, and loads more besides. And that is without mentioning the fantastically picturesque town itself. Phoenix Park - Source: Getty Images Twice the size of Central Park, and the largest enclosed city park to be found in Europe, there is a lot to enjoy in Phoenix Park. From the Dublin Zoo, to the Papal Cross and other monuments, to where the wild deer roam, and even where the President of Ireland lives, there is so much to check out within the 11 kilometres of wall that house Dublin's outdoor gem.
