Heathers

Last night I went to see Dublin twin duo Heathers at Death by Audio. And yes, the band is named after the killer '80s movie (sorry I couldn't resist) starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater and Shannon Dougherty. They even have a song called "What's Your Damage?" But no, their names are not Heather - it's Louise and Ellie.

I'm sure they get this comparison a lot, so hopefully they think of it as a good thing - Heathers is the next Tegan & Sara, but Irish (and therefore even cooler). They are cute twins who utilize stellar vocal harmonies and whose primary (or well, only in this case) instrument is an accoustic guitar. Their voices even have similar timbre to Tegan & Sara's voices at times. Their music has a pretty quality to it, but is also quite catchy and a little gritty at the same time. I really enjoyed their set, although it felt WAY too short. They played without any amplification, which was cool. And they looked at each other instead of the audience because Louise said that if they look at the audience, they start cracking up. They even played a song that was written mostly in Gaelic, which I really liked (although I really liked almost every song to be fair). Their album, Here, Not There, is one of those rare albums that I legitimately like every single song just about.

The band after Heathers was called Ghost Mice, who was a lot of fun. Their fans are the least disinterested hipsters I've ever seen at a concert and the show quickly turned into a giant sing-a-long. While I actually agree with Ghost Mice's own assessments that they weren't doing all that well at this particular show, I still saw the potential and can understand why they seem to have a pretty large following (although a few songs were a little too preachy for my tastes).

Let me finish off by saying Death by Audio is a bizarre space. Even though it's on myspace and appears with very little searching on Google Maps, it is apparently not a "real" venue (and yet they carded us?). I'm all for the DIY/renegade feel of the place, though I do wish that maybe the ceiling didn't look like it was going to fall down around you (see photo above).

Slices of Palama [mp3] - (iTunes)

Photos by Jason Kruczynski