M(h)aol / Junk Drawer / Cola

Name: M(h)aol / Junk Drawer / Cola
Start: 2025-05-28T19:30:00+01:00
Location: 18-22 Hill Street, BT1 2LA Belfast, United Kingdom

Schedule

Wed, 28 May, 2025 at 07:30 pm

UTC+01:00

Location

18-22 Hill Street, BT1 2LA Belfast, United Kingdom | Belfast, NI

TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY 31st 10am
Tickets on sale from this Friday 31st at 10am
M(h)aol / Junk Drawer / Cola
28th May 2025 | £18 | Doors 7.30pm
M(h)aol
Based in Dublin, Belfast, and London, Irish intersectional feminist firebrands M(h)aol — Constance Keane (She/Her), Jamie Hyland (She/Her), and Sean Nolan (He/Him) — have built a reputation for thrilling live performances, fostering an atmosphere that encourages community and catharsis regardless of where they play. Signed to Merge after an electric SXSW set, the unit follows the North American reissue of Attachment Styles and February single “Pursuit” with “Snare”, a noisy and driving song that springs loose from gender expectations with sneering wit.
Junk Drawer
Incorporating the imprint of Krautrock, post-punk, and psychedelia, Belfast's Junk Drawer's intuitively loose and idiosyncratic brand of indie rock mines anthems from their crate-digging tendencies. Featuring four multi-instrumentalists & vocalists fluid in their roles, they're driven by the inevitable harmony and discordance that comes from the sibling creative rivalry at the helm, and remain one of the most dynamic, exciting bands you’re likely to catch live.
They've won 3 Awards at the prestigious Northern Ireland Music Prize - Best Live Act & Best Video in 2022 & Best Single in 2019 - making them the prize's most prolific band. Following an early pair EPs, the band spearheaded the grassroots Irish music community with their part in regular sell-out independent vinyl compilation A Litany of Failures.
Their 2020 debut LP 'Ready For The House’ came out through Art For Blind Records. It placed on The Quietus’ Best of 2020 albums list, and saw Junk Drawer named by leading US-based outlet PASTE Magazine as one of the Irish Acts to Watch in 2020. Their latest EP ‘The Dust Has Come To Stay’ came out on March 11, 2022 via Art For Blind. Its singles were acclaimed by the likes of Paste, KEXP, Brooklyn Vegan, Bandcamp, Stereogum, The Quietus, and were added to playlists from the likes of Sub Pop & Spotify. Junk Drawer have played with acts like Built To Spill, Suuns, Mclusky & Jeffrey Lewis, have toured across the UK & France off the back of their recent EP.
Cola
The Gloss is the second album from Cola. From their inception Cola have expanded on the d.i.y. ethic of the Dischord and SST eras, creating potent sounds from a minimal palette of drums/bass/guitar and lacing their songs with winsome one-liners and societal commentary. What’s another word for commentary? Gloss, apparently. Never basic, the lyrics reward repeated listening for deeper meanings. David Berman’s poetry-via-garage light pennings are an inspiration, as equally so are the lighter side of UK first-wave New Wave and the Dunedin sound. The results are in the pudding: at times sparse and poetic, at others a thrilling, hook-laden good time, as with the cheeky romantic sketch of a one-night stand that is so overflowing with innuendo-cum-journalism talk that it almost teeters over into self-parody. But the results are the right combination of lightheartedness and sincerity. Romanticism is never far from laughter, and equally never far from righteous anger in the music of Cola: “Pulling quotes now in the dark/Our outlook is restrained/Your tongue might weaken to be-fit your smile/Til nothing ill remains.” ‘nuff said. It's an album bursting with energy and wit and ideas–filled to the margins. Out June 14th 2024 on Fire Talk.