Grounds For Invasion Gig Review Workman's Club

Thursday night saw hotly tipped act, Grounds For Invasion leave the comfort of the West coast and make their highly anticipated debut in Dublin. The gig took place in The Workman’s Club. The duo took to the stage at 10.15pm after support from Cloud Culture and The Objectives. The crowd were nicely warmed up on a wet and windy evening.

They began with an appropriately titled song, “Beginning” in which Tracy Friel’s nervousness was evident. She soon grew into the gig though and her performance got stronger and stronger with some funky dance moves thrown in for good measure. Next up was ”Let Go” which allowed Will O’Connor to show off his skills on the synth on a song which boasts a beautifully syncopated backbeat. Despite this being a launch party for their debut album “Dying Stars”, we were also treated to a couple of tracks from their self titled EP with “True Romance and “Dance Alone”.

The brilliant “Run” was next on the setlist, a song with an intro that could easily be the intro to any Faithless song. The music builds and builds brilliantly but unfortunately doesn’t explode into life as you might hope. Another issue I had is that Will doesn’t play the guitar nearly often enough because when he does, he really shines. The man known as Willow Sea has some serious ability and it would be nice to see him explore that area more.

The gig came to a close with one of our favourite songs so far this year, the kung fu electro classic that is “Bruce Lee”. The crowd responded to this track with some dancing that may have occurred due to the temporary legalisation of certain drugs. It was the perfect way to end a slightly short set but everybody seemed to have such a good time that the short set wasn’t a problem.

Grounds For Invasion definitely justified their slot at this years Body And Soul festival and will be one of the bands to look out for. Hopefully we will see them around these parts again very soon.

By: Dave McMahon

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