The title of this blog entry. That's what us Land Lovers ask in the first song of our free download. The song is called The Cinema Bell.
You can get it and 9 other songs for free at landloversmusic.com.
There are 5 songs that we recorded live, as a band bashing away in a room. Then there are 5 songs recorded in our gaffs on rainy Monday nights (and other nights, some perfectly clement).
The whole thing is a bit lo-fi (apart from the hilariously enormous MIDI strings on My Route to Work) and I like it, but then I would say that. I do think it gets close to the heart of what Land Lovers is.

We played our last gig of the year last night. It was the Popical Island Christmas Party, upstairs in Whelan's. Popical Island is a collective of bands who are playing various brands of pop music and share some musical and aesthetic sensibilities that drew them together over the last year or so. We're delighted to be part of the endeavour, and we'll have 'exciting' news coming up involving a Popical Island compilation CD in the new year. Here's what Popical Islanders have put out in '09.

I did an interview a while ago that was put on the internet the other day.

State.ie reviewed our EP Immovable Feet recently.

Happy Christmas, readers!

Look at the poster that is masquerading as our profile image here on MySpace. It has details of a gig we're doing next Saturday, 17th October, as part of the Hard Working Class Heroes festival.
We'll be on early-ish - as the poster says, at 7:50 PM or thereabouts. Lots of other bands and acts on over the course of the weekend, as per usual. Tickets on Tickets.ie.

In other news, I (Pádraig) did a Balcony TV last week and it's viewable now.

Having released our Immovable Feet EP last week, us Land Lovers will dash around the country playing all sorts of gigs this bank holiday weekend. If you're anywhere near Cork, Mullingar, Tullamore or Galway, then we're coming your way.

Copies of Immovable Feet (5 euro) and supplies of our ice-cool tshirts (10 euro) will be available at all the venues. Of course, the CD also can be bought in Road, Tower or Plugd or downloaded from iTunes.

So that's:
Thursday, 30/7: The Pavilion, Cork
Friday, 31/7: The Stables, Mullingar
Saturday, 1/8: Castlepalooza Festival, Charleville Castle, Tullamore (Tickets here)
Monday, 3/8: Roisin Dubh, Galway



In Mullingar and Galway, we'll be joined by the lovely Groom (plus Herm in the west), while in Cork we open for local favourites Cajole & Bully as they launch their own EP.

There's a review of Immovable Feet in the latest edition of the RTE Guide. It goes like this:
""She is the shipping forecast read by the Crazy Frog". This arresting line from Cloudy Girl, the first song on this short, six-track labour of love from Dublin's Land Lovers serves notice that singer Pádraig Cooney likes to skew his songs just like a young Elvis Costello. Fidgety with choppy guitars, some gorgeous melodica and a muscular rhythm section, Immovable Feet, the follow up to last year's well-received debut album Romance Romance, is another collection of strange but infectious pop songs from Land Lovers. Strangest of all is Paddy Works the Maglev a future tale of Irish navvies reverting to national stereotype and slaving on an undersea rail line between London and New York in 2041."

Finally, there's a review of our EPOCHAL Immovable Feet launch gig in Whelan's last week in Connected Magazine.

This serious blog was brought to you by Land Lovers.

It's exhilarating to immerse yourself in the pre-season camp of a team like Land Lovers. The language is coarse and edgy. Every curse expectorated in frustration still retains the power to shock. I'm more used to covering the sedate world of amateur geology. Thrust into the company of these high-achieving rock athletes, I find myself struggling to adjust. It is a steep learning curve.

They told me this:
"Next Saturday, the 18th of July, we release our Very Short Album, Immovable Feet." They persist in calling this EP a Very Short Album. It is maddening, but you must respect them when they go on to annihilate 4 other bands in an afternoon of intense sparring.

"It's a game of inches", says Rob. "That's why our new tshirt is available in small, medium and large sizes for both girls and boys".

I got the final version of our new Very Short Album (yeah, it's a comparatively long EP) in the post today, and with the frenzied lack of composure of a young centre-half presented with a last minute goalscoring chance, I have fired 2 of the songs onto the internet for your cruel judgment.
They are:
Immovable Feet
and
Paul Treacy Probably Knows.

By internet, I mean right here on MySpace - have a listen.

The release will be accompanied by shows in Dublin, Cork, Belfast and Galway; and at some summer festivals, amongst other engagements.

We'll be launching the album in July by playing a load of gigs. The confirmed dates are listed on our profile page.
Included is a pressing engagement at Whelan's (Upstairs) in Dublin's Official Music Performance District (OMPD). Here's the poster:






The electronic files will be downloadable from iTunes. The CD will be available from Tower Records and Road Records in Dublin; from Plugd in Cork; from other record shops around the country; and by mail order from myspace.com/landlovers.

Here's what I said about things when I was trying to impress journalists:

"Beginning with the low-vis litany of Cloudy Girl and continuing to Trouble for TV’s Favourite Couple’s euphoric coda, a reasonably diverse range of pop inclinations is expelled from their system: Everything I Ever Did Wrong moves from early spikiness to an enormous, crashing instrumental refrain; Immovable Feet exhibits some latent affection for miserable old showtunes; Paul Treacy Probably Knows is a rollicking 60s pop number brought to you via the attendant influences of Guided by Voices and Squeeze; Paddy Works the Maglev confuses the past with the future amid jangling guitars and Space Invaders synths."

Where am I? Who are you? What do you want? Turn the bloody light off!

Anyway, here we are in May and it's been a whole 8 months since Land Lovers released anything. How lazy can one band be? Eh? That's what you're thinking, isn't it? Well you're wrong. Land Lovers are back with a scintillating Very Short Album (VSA) called Immovable Feet.

You'll be privy to choice cuts from the VSA right here on the internet in a few short weeks. We in the band are finalising the infernal thing over these next few days with the help of Peter Sisk (30) from North County Dublin.

It will put some noses out of joint in the boardroom of Charm School Inc., but I'm going to leak the tracklisting to you, dear reader.

It is as follows:

1. Cloudy Girl

2. Everything I Ever Did Wrong

3. Immovable Feet

4. Paul Treacy Probably Knows

5. Paddy Works the Maglev

6. Trouble for TV's Favourite Couple

You may have heard some or all of those songs if you've seen us play this year.

To accompany this deadly VSA, we decided to look our best for a certifiably rapid photo-shoot conducted by Ms. Ruth Medjber. Examine the photos section of either our MySpace or Facebook pages for some of the results. Variations on these snaps appear in the album artwork for Immovable Feet, lovingly designed by Emma Wilson.

Ploughing ahead, it's been said that the one thing we've lacked as a band is a tshirt. And a line of unique numbered prints. These will follow shortly. Indeed, we'll be carting around merchandise to beat the band on our UPCOMING SUMMER TOUR OF IRELAND!

But that's another day's blog.

Fare thee well.

Land Lovers will play on this year's IMRO Showcase Tour, on the night of Wednesday 1st April in Andrew's Lane Theatre, at roughly the same time as Ireland encounter Italy in Bari.
I plan to channel all my two-timing self-disgust into a series of songish declamations powerful enough to add 10% to the speed of Richard Dunne, the trickery of Aiden McGeady and the sniffery of Robbie Keane.
Come along. It's free if you contact us/me with your name.

http://www.state.ie/blog/imro-showcase-tour-2009/

This interview previously appeared in hard copy in The Event Guide just as we were releasing "Romance Romance" (that's September '08), but now it is on the internet, thanks to the blogging efforts of the original questioner, Aoife Barry AKA Sweet Oblivion. Thanks, Aoife.
Reading it back, it's amazing how incoherent and bland I was during that immaculately dialled phonecall. The only explanation I can offer is that I forced my younger brother, Clement, to 'field' this one and he was nervously approximating my personality and opinions.
Remember, the musical act discussed within is on stage this coming Friday (23/1) at the Lower Deck in Dublin, and the following Thursday (28/1) at Whelan's in the same city.

Words: Pádraig Cooney, Ireland.

Oh it's you.
You were asking about the Land Lovers end of year poll.
So I went and told the other band members to give me their top five albums of 2008. The results were shocking, so shocking that I tore each of their slips up and played a defamatory guitar solo upon the illegible remains.
In place of a democratic exercise, now utterly ruined, here is my list of albums I liked:
- Wolf Parade: At Mount Zoomer
- Michael Knight: I'm Not Entirely Clear How I Ended Up Like This
- So Cow: I'm Siding With My Captors
- The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock
- Jay Reatard: Matador Singles '08
- Vampire Weekend
- Deerhunter: Microcastles

In fairness, I haven't heard a huge amount of new albums (the world is too wide and too deep to pay attention to everything new), but I haven't been that impressed by too many of the critically-lauded ones.

Anyway, onwards we go - come to see us in Andrew's Lane on Sunday 21st December. As I write, it's two evenings from now. We'll be on at about 9, and we're followed by Babybeef, RSAG and finally You're Only Massive.

Excitingly, we'll be back with 2 gigs near the end of January to showcase our new songs, and hopefully our new keyboarder. See details in the gigs section of this very sub-website.

Finally, and bearing only a tenuous relationship with actual Land Lovers news, here is a clip of me and members of Large Mound, The Dudley Corporation, Pantone 247 and Night on Earth. Together, we are Voided By Ponces, Ireland's greatest Guided By Voices tribute act:




Singing off for '08, I have been Pádraing Joseph Cooney, humble welder and blogger to the stars.
Happy Christmas.