Grand Pocket Orchestra For Pancake House

This Saturday in Cleere’s sees the return of Problems At The Pancake House and with them arrive Grand Pocket Orchestra, Hola Manana (played back in early June) and locals Indie Kids Can’t Dance.

You got your dark times and you got your happy times. Grand Pocket Orchestra are somewhere in the middle: they write happy songs about not so happy things, with the intention of making the awful seem not so bad.

Call it indie-pop, art-rock or just musical mayhem, but GPO are a band like no other.

2007 saw the group rise continually through the Irish indie scene, playing festivals from their formation, winning Hotpress’ Magazines Music Video contest as well as creating a scene in themselves. 2008 is set to be a huge year for the band after releasing their debut EP to great reviews, and featuring on US compilation ‘Future Sounds’. GPO released their debut EP in Ireland on February 1, with an extensive Irish tour as well as promotional dates in the UK and Germany.

Hola Mañana are a mostly instrumental group, drawing influences from the likes of the Penguin Café Orchestra, Amiina, the Album Leaf, Beirut and Sigur Rós. Combining pianos, synths, guitars, hushed vocals, glockenspiels and ukuleles, Hola Mañana manage to make the type of music that you fall asleep to, before jumping out of bed in a fit of dance.

So far, the group have enjoyed many a fun-filled show with more planned in the coming years and centuries. For now, they are still hacking away at their recordings, hoping to eventually get some sort of release out.

This will be their second gig in Kilkenny, having played at the last Problems at the Pancake House night in Ryan’s to a packed audience with the River Valley Band. This time however, the group will also be performing under a slightly altered line-up.

Getting things underway on the night are Kilkenny outfit Indie Kids Can’t Dance, consisting of Liam Doyle, Michael Nolan, Lee Shanahan and David Doyle. As they go into their 4th year as a quartet, the band are constantly evolving and adapting their sound.

Admission is a mere fiver and there’s a limited supply of free hand packaged CDs for the first few in the door.