Emerald Warriors

Crikey, what a week. After graduation taking up the best part of Monday and Tuesday, I spent the latter half of the week chasing Marina & The Diamonds around the country.

First stop was her debut Irish headliner at The Academy on Wednesday. For me to review her performance on either night would be pointless as it'd be equivalent of me writing the word 'amazing' 500 times but there are some great write-ups of Wednesday's gig by fellow-Emeralds here, here, here and here. Great photos from kDamo can be found here also.

Thursday then saw myself Patrick and Paula, Eimear, Pops and a few others make the journey down to Carlow for the Heineken Music Green Spheres event in Dunn Rí.

All credit must go to Heineken for the fantastic set-up. The huge club, which features two separate stages, was doused in green light for the occasion and two characters in green full-body lycra suits (that brought to mind the Durex sperm) greeted us as we entered.

Marina was first up to perform and once again delivered a performance worthy of several hundred 'amazings'. Although the audience were obviously not as familiar with her music as those in attendance at The Academy the night before, she gave just as much on stage and no doubt recruited a few more additions to her ever expanding collection of precious stones.

Next came Swedish-American indie-pop purveyors Miike Snow, who arrived on-stage sporting white face masks. I'd gathered from reviews of their shows that they generally play relatively short sets and enjoy toying around with the songs for a live setting so was pleasantly surprised that I got to hear most of my favourite tracks including 'Burial', 'Animal', 'Black & Blue' and especially 'Silvia'.

Miike Snow have expertly adapted their debut album to a live setting and, even if the latter part of the set did descend into a jam session of sorts, it'd have been worth the hassle of a trip down to Carlow and back purely to see them.

Headliners Digitalism performed their set in a separate space. Even if some of the crowd were a bit 'over-enthusiastic' when the German dance act took to the stage, it didn't stop us busting a move to tracks like the indisputably epic 'Pogo', all the while illuminated by some excellent visuals.

Heineken are already working on events in December in both Cork and Dublin featuring White Lies and Neon Indian. I suspect word of mouth from the Carlow gigs will make it somewhat more difficult to get your hands on tickets, so be sure to sign up here pronto.

[Images: Eimear Fitzmaurice (1), Heineken Music (2-4)]