Gig clashes, don’t you just hate them? The fact that these situations should arise at all in a city as small as Belfast seems grossly unfair.
However, in two weeks’ time, chart-bothering south London synthpunks Fat Dog return to Belfast for a Friday night show at The Limelight to celebrate their superb second album, Cancel Me (I’m Tired) – which, lest we forget, features one of the best singles of the year in the electropop banger Go and F*** Yourself – while up the road at The Empire, Thames Valley veterans Chapterhouse will be making their belated Belfast debut on a tour marking the 35th anniversary of debut LP, Whirlpool.
I much prefer their second album, 1993’s Blood Music, but I’m still pleased that Chapterhouse even exist in 2026 given the rough ride they got back in the early 90s from the music press and industry.
Shoegaze survivors Chapterhouse will make their Belfast debut this month
What to do? Well, do the double, obviously. It helps that Fat Dog is an early show (doors 7pm) so that The Limelight can get its Friday club night underway asap afterwards, so there is definitely a slim chance of catching both headliners for those who feel like legging it up to Botanic Avenue (where doors are at 7.30pm) with the last notes of Running still ringing in their ears.
Complicating matters slightly is the fact it will cost you north of £50 to attend both events – a spicy meatball indeed given the ongoing cost of living crisis.
Also, both the ‘House and the Dog gigs include good support acts, the former offering value-adding opening sets from Co Down’s own NI Music Prize Album of The Year-nominated Barry Peak and Dublin shoegazers Silk, the latter bolstered by Belfast skronk merchants Stratford Rise.
Sadly, no matter how you slice it, those attempting to see both shows are probably going to miss one and a bit bands.
While you ponder that particular First World Problem, why not soothe your mind by throwing on the new album from Belfast-based Co Antrim artist Arborist, Looking for Love, which Arborist main-man Mark McCambridge will be launching at The Empire with a full band show on Thursday November 19.
Heralded by a pair of cracking advance singles in the Belfast place names-stacked Looking 4 Love and quantum anthem The Taming of Horses, which serve as the album’s opener and ender respectively, the fourth Arborist LP also includes his most recently released single, Bye Bye, Johnny Cash.
Seedy sax, bawdy cowbell and alluring female backing vox abound on this playfully lewd tale of lust in the afternoon.
Looking For Love was largely recorded at Mark’s home studio, which conjures a more intensely intimate vibe than 2024’s excellent, NI Music Prize-winning An Endless Sequence of Dead Zeroes, yet has not meant sacrificing the multi-instrumental sound he’s established in the decade since 2016’s debut LP, Home Burial.
It’s also afforded a lower-pressure opportunity to explore slightly quirkier musical ideas, just because.
That’s maybe why we are treated to the uptempo, indie/math-rockin’ stylings of Fire, a brief samba-beat instrumental interlude called A Dream of A Rose and Sono Io’s impassioned acoustic balladry, a song which explores the fine line between true love and pure hatred with a vocal sung entirely ‘in Italiano’.
These all add flavour to a record laced with memorable highlights, notably I’ve Been a Flaneur, its slow-burning six-minute centrepiece. A gentle but insistent blues drone, it finds Mark lamenting days spent observing the lives of others and televised sports in the hope of sparking songwriting inspiration.
Elsewhere, Exploded View is a woozy, piano-powered and strings-adorned tale of a relationship at the crossroads, perhaps the endgame of the communication breakdown detailed in What Is It You’re Asking?, a deceptively sweet, woodwind and strings-reinforced strum through two people drifting along/apart.
Confusion and disappointment also rear their worrisome heads on Empty Handed, a lush ode to the futility of wanting all the answers when you haven’t even figured out the right questions, while Go Kill The Fattened Calf is a beautiful, slowly unspooling gem of a song about a father imagining a reunion with his son in the far off future he knows will arrive all too soon.
Indeed, while time might well be “all in your mind”, as Mark reminds us on his sublime single The Taming of Horses, it does tend to march on.
For instance, that Belfast album launch show will be here before you know it, so be sensible and get your ticket now via thebelfastempire.com. Full Irish tour dates can be checked at arboristmusic.com.
Looking For Love is another top quality addition to the Arborist canon
As for Looking For Love itself, it’s another top quality addition to the Arborist canon which you should purchase on vinyl and/or CD via fikarecordings.bandcamp.com.
Let’s round off this week with a flurry of other new release activity.
Fans of east Belfast-based singer songwriter Anthony Toner should immediately add his new book Distance & Love to their Christmas lists.
Singer/songwriter Anthony Toner (Ken Haddock /Ken Haddock)
This lovingly presented hardback compendium of selected song lyrics featured favourite tunes from across his career, including Cousins at Funerals, Sailortown, The Road to Fivemiletown, An Alphabet, Good People and loads more.
Published to mark 25 years since the release of Toner’s debut album, the book includes photos, illustrations and the odd song-specific introduction from the man himself, and is a total steal at a mere £15 quid from anthonytoner.net/shop.
File under ‘essential purchase’ – and you might even be able to get yourself a personalised copy at Anthony’s show at the Old Courthouse in Antrim tomorrow night. Full Irish tour details at anthonytoner.net/shows.
Bangor alt rockers Foreign Mornings have a brand new single out: bittersweet indie-jangler Where We Started marks the band’s first ever Irish headline tour, which hits Limerick’s Pharmacia tonight and Fred Zeppelin’s in Cork tomorrow night before a big finish at The Empire in Belfast on November 26, tickets for which can be had from thebelfastempire.com.
Last but not least, there’s the small matter of Somebody Somewhere, the first single from Dublin’s mighty Power of Dreams to feature their classic line-up for a mere 16 years.
Thirty seconds into this melancholic yet anthemic stomper and it’s like Craig, Keith, Ian and Mick were never away.
Tell ‘em they were missed tonight at their homecoming show at Dublin’s Opium, where support comes from Craig’s other band, Spoon Speaker Man, also featuring Dan from Noise Annoys favourites, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin.
Tickets via ticketmaster.ie.