‘Pleasure’ in store with Le Galaxie at Big Top

Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – tribunegroove@gmail.com

Le Galaxie play pulsating electronic music that’s imbued with melody, and they’re also one of Ireland’s most uplifting live acts.  The Dublin-based band open for The Flaming Lips on Thursday, July 26, at this year’s Galway International Arts Festival, in what should prove to be a winning double-bill.

The band are Michael Pope on lead vocals, keyboards and drums, David McGloughlin on bass and keyboards, Anthony Hyland on keyboards and guitar, Alastair Higgins on drums and singer extraordinaire Mary-Kate ‘MayKay’ Geraghty.

Le Galaxie have wowed audiences at every major Irish festival, opened for dance superstars Faithless in Kilmainham in 2016 and blew Primal Scream off the stage when they played in Leisureland.

They’ll also be returning to Galway in October for a gig in the Róisín Dubh. There are differences between a festival gig as opposed to a club show, but the approach is similar, according to Michael Pope.

“It’s a bigger scale. You have more freedom, physically – the stage is bigger, the audience is bigger,” he says of the Big Top.

“But in terms of how we approach it – no, not really. When you’re playing somewhere like the Róisín, you can probably play for longer. Whereas when you play a festival you might approach it like ‘right this is our one chance. We’ll do a big set with big numbers’. You might leave off your acoustic numbers! In a Le Galaxie set, they would be the ones that are more low-key or subdued.”

May Kay is the newest member of Le Galaxie. The former lead singer with Fight Like Apes made a guest appearance on Le Galaxie’s 2015 album Le Club, duetting on the song, Carmen. It’s a great track, and May Kay sang it with them regularly.

In 2016, Le Galaxie asked her to join the band on a permanent basis.

“MayKay was onstage for just one song, but we thought this was an energy we’d love to utilise,” Michael explains. “And I think she felt like it was a huge anti-climax coming on for just one song. It was after we’d supported Faithless in Kilmainham, and we started recording our third album the next day. I don’t remember the exact conversation, but we said ‘we could work with Mary on all these new tunes. Let’s go for it, let’s ask her to join as a full-time member of the live band’.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.