Galway date for post-punks with potent political message

Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell

Post-punk is a term that has embedded itself in the Irish music lexicon over the last few years. Many of the biggest and most culturally impactful acts to emerge in that time have fallen under its umbrella – Girl Band, Fontaines D.C., Just Mustard and The Murder Capital are all regularly described as such.

Those bands undoubtedly share commonalities in character and ethos but the sounds and spaces they occupy are individual. It is an earnestness and a willingness to experiment that has endeared them to so many listeners and those qualities are perhaps at the very core of post-punk revivalism.

All four have been important influences for Belfast quartet Enola Gay, who play the Róisín Dubh this Friday, November 26.

The noise-rock outfit are fresh from releasing their debut EP, Gransha, a little over a month ago but it was during the Black Lives Matter protests in May of last year that they first introduced themselves with a spontaneous, bruising debut single The Birth of a Nation.

Guitarist Joe McVeigh and singer Fionn Reilly felt compelled to add their voices to the conversation after an incident occurred in Belfast involving racial attacks against a black girl who gave a speech at a Black Lives Matter protest.

Lyrically, instrumentally, and thematically, the song was raw and full of emotion. It announced Enola Gay as an act brimming with passion and identity.

The words are powerful and unrestrained: “I hear them say get out of their country/ From the same ones who owe us Six Counties/ I don’t remember a witch hunt for Kneecap/ ‘Course not- ’cause they’re not f***in’ black.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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