Gigs round-up: February 19-25

Fat White Family, The Limelight 2, Whelan’s, Dublin, Tuesday, & Limelight 2, Belfast, Thursday.
Fat White Family said recently they’ve “tried to go to the extremes of what’s tasteful” on their new album, and they’ve got there in the end.
Songs For Our Mothers smugly mocks German fascism, Mussolini, Auschwitz victims, Tina Turner’s domestic abuse and Brit serial killer Harold Shipman, while sounding like Throbbing Gristle, early Laibach and monochrome cold wave 80s acts you’d find down a YouTube wormhole.
It’s a step on from their ragged debut Champagne Holocaust, but it still revels in lo-fi psychodrama and lines nicked from Mark E Smith’s back pocket.

Lethal Dialect, Whelan’s, Dublin, Tonight.
Dublin rapper and producer Lethal Dialect tested out some new material at the recent Childline charity gig at the Olympia earlier this month — and he’ll be bang on point with his own crowd tonight in Whelan’s.
Paul Alwright has been on tour with likely peers like Maverick Sabre and even Le Galaxie, but he’s also joined a bill with Damien Dempsey — which isn’t as leftfield a move as you’d think.
Damo was one of the guests on Lethal Dialect’s third album 1988 — the first to nail his sound and the biggest attempt yet to get Dublin hip-hop out of the underground.

BLONDE, District 8, Dublin, Tonight.
District 8 is taking a break from techno this week — even if house hero Jackmaster has promised to hit a bit harder at his show tomorrow.
Tonight though, Blonde won’t be going anywhere near the hard stuff.
Their UK garage house has made a few inroads into the charts — notably with All cried Out and I Loved You — so they’ll be dropping plenty of those donk garage bass summery vibes, making you think festival season is way closer than it actually is.

JACKMASTER, District 8, Dublin, Tomorrow.
Jackmaster has been in these pages a few times in recent months, but I can’t help mentioning him every time he passes through.
From jackin’ house sets at Electric Picnic to playing a load of 90s classics at Rise Festival in the Alps at Christmas, Glasgow’s Jack Revill is always the best ticket wherever he lands.
He’s generally up for a back-to-back session with whoever’s near him, but he’s going solo tonight in District 8.
Get there early though — Dutch producer Fatima Yamaha is playing a rare live set over here, showcasing his new album Imaginary Lines.
His cult underground hit What’s a Girl To Do has been rinsed by Jackmaster for years and got a more recent repress on Dutch label Dekmantel, after its original release Dublin’s own D1 Recordings. Full circle then.

Slum Village, The Sugar Club, Dublin, Tomorrow.
Hip-hop fans worldwide marked the 10th anniversary of iconic producer J Dilla’s death last week, so it’s a good time to welcome back his one-time crew to Dublin.
Slum Village caused a minor ruckus at last summer’s Beatyard Festival in Dun Laoghaire, but the early afternoon slot was against them.
Back in a club setting, founding member T3 and Young RJ won’t shy away from the past, throwing in Dilla and Madlib beats and some old school nostalgia shout-outs.

Wet Wet Wet, 3Arena, Dublin, Tuesday, & SSE Arena, Belfast, Wednesday.
You’ll do a double-take at the new Wet Wet Wet gig poster — with Marti Pellow airbrushed so much he looks like a Ken doll or a Kraftwerk mannequin. Still, he’s not looking too bad for 50-odd — but will Love Is All Around still hold up?
The Glasgow act announced this tour on the 20th anniversary of their album Picture This, so there’s a bit of a theme for the ‘Big Picture’ tour. Over the last 30 years the Glasgow act have been hard to pin down — not quite pop, not quite rock (Wikipedia settles on ‘soft rock’) but their PR blurb assures me they’ve played to “over 5 million people across the globe”.
They should get a decent crowd then, bumped up by all those who couldn’t get a babysitter on Valentine’s weekend. Bonus schmaltz points for exWestlifer Markus Feehily on support.