MacD on Music: The Suite Life

It may be winter outside, but the gig scene in Derry is as hot as ever

It may be winter outside, but the gig scene in Derry is as hot as ever.

October ended with the always brilliant Not Really in Bennigan’s and Crash Test Dummies with show-stealing openers Polar Bolero, in the Guildhall. November has already gotten off to a great start too, with this past weekend featuring not one, but three brilliant gigs from Gush (Friday night in the 7Twenty), TomCat (also Friday in Bennigan’s) and GETNER (Saturday in the Casbah).

This coming Friday (November 15) will see the Nerve Centre playing host to yet another amazing night of music when the Suite take the stage for their biggest headline gig to date, with support from Sombre and Cora Harkin.

The Suite, made up of Jack McGinn (vocals), Caoimhin Duddy (drums), Cian O’Dowd (guitar) and Shay O’Kane (bass) have been on a roll in recent months, releasing a string of singles and making a name for themselves on the live circuit, including playing at August’s Gig for Gaza. I caught up with the group recently to talk about the Nerve Centre gig:

“This is our biggest gig we’ve done so far and our first proper headline. Before that, we’d just been doing charity headlines, and this is how we’ve laid the groundwork and got our own opening acts and all that there. It’s quite a big deal for us. We’re glad we got the opening acts we did, especially with Sombre.

“They’re doing really well on Spotify, and they’re growing around the city and loads of people are hoping to see them. Cora has always just been a stronghold.

“Really consistent in bringing numbers in, so we struck gold there.”

“We’ve got a lot better in the past couple of months, and especially our gig with Klyda in the Nerve centre, even our photographer Michael McGlinchey said that from the last gig, he thinks we’ve gotten a lot better. We’re going to focus on getting the whole performance in, setting a scene and putting an effort in to make it special.”

“Ticket sales are going well. Normally, with young people especially, they buy closer to the time, but they’re actually doing well considering we were doing a Nerve gig in August. We’re doing a lot of promo for it and we hope it’s a sell-out.” [If you haven’t got your ticket yet, go get it now. Don’t worry, I’ll wait]

[Done that? Good. Let’s get back to the interview] Next, we spoke about their most recent single, ‘Wanna-be’: “I think it’s our best single so far. It’s definitely more sophisticated. The novelty’s gone a bit with our band. The first two singles were kind of like ‘here we are, this is what we did’. ‘Keep in Mind’ did well on Spotify. The second one didn’t do so well but it wasn’t the end of the world. That was the novelty, it was just a bit of fun. ‘Wanna-be’ is a bit more serious. We put more effort in. We’re quite proud of it.”

Finally, we talked a bit about their future EP: “The EP will be released fully next year. We don’t have a date for it, but we’ve started to get artwork for it. Our best track on the EP is yet to be recorded, for sure. It’s still in the works.”

And that’s it for the Suite. They’ll be playing the Nerve Centre (with support from Sombre and Cora Harkin) this Friday (15th). As well as this, they will be releasing a new single, ‘Can You Feel It’, that day, with a video to be shot at the gig that night. Tickets are available at nervecentre.org and cost £4 plus booking fee. Doors are 7.30.

Also, this Friday, The Marra will be releasing their new single ‘I Can’t Sleep’. I’ll be talking to them about it in next week’s column.

Finally, to round up our trifecta of singles, Parker will be releasing their new single ‘Holy Communion’ this Wednesday (13th).

The group, recently seen as the Killers in Bennigan’s on Halloween night, have been on a roll this year, with the brilliant ‘Generic Indie Bands’ and ‘Eleanor’ already out. They’ll also be making a return to Bennigan’s, this time as themselves, on 29th November. ‘Holy Communion’, along with ‘I Can’t Sleep’ and ‘Can You Feel It’, are available for pre-save now on Spotify.