Crayonsmith were a cheerful bunch this morning and rightly so: Nick T of Islands has asked Ciaran Smith, Ruadhan O’Meara and Ronan Jackson to tag along on a fourteen date tour of the United States! Kicking off in Seattle on June 12, the bands will work their way down the west coast into Texas and Georgia, with the possible announcement of more book-ended gigs to follow. The Dublin band are no strangers to North America: much of 2007 was spent wagon trail-blazing after signing to Out On A Limb Records in February. Support requests from big bands are not uncommon either and have come from Sparklehorse, Quasi and Mt. Eerie. Maybe Islands’ Diamonds is hooked on White Wonder, the brand-new follow-up to 2006’s Stay Loose - a brief explanation of developments in sound between recordings can be found on MySpace - or perhaps he was in attendance at the IMRO Showcase on Friday night and got over the sound hurdles marring the trio’s set…. I thought they were grand but levels never seemed to reach the band’s requirements and there was a lot of relaying to the engineer’s box.  Their songs sounded brilliant, choppy mix of layers and recordings beaten to a sweet batter of timely instrumentals. However Crayonsmith are a band involving precise ingredients and better to see on their own billing. Yer man rocks out on guitar in the shadows while Smith plinks a glockenspiel and you just can’t tear your ears away. How deadly is it then, that Crayonsmith have six nationwide dates coming in the next few weeks?

April 10th: Dolan’s Upstairs, Limerick (Guests: Bats)
April 11th: The Whiskey, Cork (Guests: Private Underground Residence)
April 12th: Roisín Dubh, Galway (Guests to Fight Like Apes)
April 16th: The Limelight, Belfast (w/ Two Door Cinema Club)
April 19th: The Academy, Dublin(Guests: Cap Pas Cap & Bats)
April 26th: Andrew’s Lane Theatre, Dublin (Guests to Why?)

The Academy Show will be an absolute riot. I’d strongly recommend selling Granny’s prize bonds and lashing your faith and fortune into this gig ‘cos it’s gonna rock with or without you! The Anticon band Why? from Oakland will be well worth the effort too (check out 2005’s Elephant Eyelash)…

Here’s some Crayonsmith pics from IMRO Showcase in Sugar Club on Friday 4 April…Don’t come back without a ticket!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 11:43 am and is filed under Albums, Music, News, Tours, gigs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.