Greetings from The Wolf & Seahorse
Another busy one to wrap up August. Wunderhorse open the week at CHSq, IDLES follow on Wednesday, Wolf Alice have Saturday and CMAT closes it with two nights.
Emerge fills Boucher Playing Fields for the bank holiday weekend with four stages of electronic music.
Belfast Mela turns twenty and finishes in Botanic Gardens on Sunday. Jack White is at the Telegraph Building on Monday (with the phones locked away), while Mac DeMarco is at the Ulster Hall the same night.
This is our pick of what's on this week. As always for a full event list check out the link at the bottom of the email.
Let's dive in 👇
EVENT HIGHLIGHTS
CHSq: Wunderhorse, IDLES, Wolf Alice and CMAT
Tuesday 25, Wednesday 26, Saturday 29 August, Monday 31 August and Tuesday 1 September · 18:00 · Custom House Square
Four headliners in a city-centre square across eight days, which is a run most cities would call a festival. Wunderhorse open on Tuesday before heading to Cork. IDLES follow on Wednesday with Chalk and Growing Pains, and an IDLES show has become closer to a public meeting than a gig. Wolf Alice take Saturday, still the best British guitar band of their generation at doing quiet and enormous in the same set. CMAT closes the whole square with two nights, with Katy J Pearson supporting, and there is nobody in Irish music better suited to a crowd this size right now.
Belfast Mela: Mela Day
Sunday 30 August · 12:00 to 18:00 · Botanic Gardens
Twenty years of Mela, finishing with the day the whole thing is built around. Five stages in Botanic Gardens, global street food, family activities and performances from around the world, hosted by Carolyn Stewart and Paul Reilly. This year's cultural partnership is with Tunisia, and they are building an immersive medina in the gardens for the first time, with Tunisian music, food, crafts and storytelling inside it. Main entrances on Stranmillis Road and Botanic Avenue. Six hours, and you will not see all of it.
Emerge Festival
Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 August · Gates 16:00 both days · Boucher Playing Fields
Ireland's largest electronic music festival, over eighty artists across four stages for the bank holiday weekend. Hannah Laing headlines Saturday with her doof project, alongside Charlie Sparks, Funk Tribu, VTSS and Basswell. Sunday is handed entirely to blk., who curates the full day with exclusive back-to-back and three-way sets from open to close, which is a considerably more interesting way to programme a day than a list of solo slots. Gates at four. Check the age policy before booking, it is enforced on the gate.
White Denim
Thursday 27 August · 19:00 · Limelight 2
The Austin band have spent fifteen years refusing to settle on a genre, moving between garage rock, soul, jazz fusion and psychedelia sometimes inside a single song. That makes them frustrating on record and consistently thrilling live, because the improvisation is the point. Limelight 2 is small enough to watch them work it out in real time.
Jalen Ngonda with Brooke Combe
Thursday 27 August · 19:00 · Limelight 1
Ngonda sings like a Daptone reissue nobody found until now, and Brooke Combe supporting makes this a genuinely strong soul double bill rather than a headliner plus filler. He plays Dublin the following night, so Belfast gets him first. Seven o'clock at Limelight 1.
Hayley Kavanagh Septet: Mode for Joe
Friday 28 August · 21:00 · Scott's Jazz Club
Seven players performing Joe Henderson's 1966 Blue Note album straight through, which is a bolder ask than a standards set because there is nowhere to coast. Mode for Joe is post-bop at its most muscular and needs every one of those seven parts. Nine o'clock in a proper jazz room.
Gazefest
Saturday 29 August · 14:00 · Oh Yeah Music Centre
Belfast's edition of the shoegaze festival, the day after Dublin's, running from two in the afternoon at the Oh Yeah Centre. A genre built on volume and reverb needs a room that can take a full day of it, and the Oh Yeah has done harder things. All-day ticket.
The Illegals
Saturday 29 August · 19:00 · Empire Music Hall
Eagles and Fleetwood Mac in one set, which is a lot of harmony parts to get right and the only reason to book a band like this. The Empire's old church interior flatters exactly this kind of material. Seven o'clock.
A History of House with David Holmes
Sunday 30 August · 20:00 · The Deer's Head
Holmes, Dilly, Eamon Beagon and Marty McAllister working through the history of house in the Deer's Head music hall, and it went before most people knew it was on. Holmes has spent thirty years being the most interesting person in Belfast music without ever needing to leave, and a night where he is explaining rather than just playing is worth the effort of finding a return.
Mac DeMarco
Monday 31 August · Ulster Hall
His first album since 2019 and his first Belfast show in some time, in a seated room, which will either suit the material or fight it entirely. DeMarco's records have got sparser and sadder while his reputation stayed stuck on the goofball years. The Ulster Hall is the correct venue for the version he has become.
Jack White
Monday 31 August · 19:00 · The Telegraph Building
Phones go into locked pouches on the way in and stay there for the duration, with a designated area if you genuinely need yours. White has run his shows this way for years and the effect on a room is immediate, because nobody is holding a screen up. The Telegraph Building is a good, strange room for this. He plays Dublin the following two nights, both sold out.
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Scratch
Thursday 27 August · Accidental Theatre
Artists bring work that is not finished and the audience tells them what is not working, which is a rare thing to be allowed to watch. Seeing a piece at the stage where it can still change is more interesting than most finished productions. Accidental Theatre has run these long enough that the feedback is useful rather than polite.
Film Devour Short Film Festival 37
Friday 28 August · 19:00 · The Black Box
The thirty-seventh edition of Belfast's short film night, which has been giving local filmmakers a screen and an audience for years without any fuss. Shorts programmes are the best value in cinema because if one does not work there is another along in eight minutes. Seven o'clock in the Cathedral Quarter.
Wonderland
Friday 28 to Sunday 30 August · The MAC
Three days at The MAC across the bank holiday weekend. The building itself remains one of the better arguments for what Belfast did with its arts money, and its programming rewards turning up without knowing much. Check the listing for times.
Proof of the Possible
Tuesday 1 September · Accidental Theatre
First-person accounts from Palestinian, Israeli and Northern Irish peacemakers and activists, each describing the moment something changed for them. Belfast is an unusually well-qualified room for this particular conversation, which is presumably the point of holding it here. Intimate by design.
For a full overview of all events on this week in Belfast check out our event listings page
UNTIL NEXT WEEK
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