The Da Club, could this place be the smallest club in the world? With the smallest selection of drinks in the world? Well not to worry, Venus Envy were headlining so what more could you want really? But before The Envy could startle us with their wares, some people who I'd never heard of before called The Great Western Squares took to the stage, in all their folk-group-non-drummer-or-bass-player glory. After a bit of trouble with faulty leads (blame it all on the sound engineer) they belted out a few mediocre hum alongs that wouldn't go astray at the Temple Bar Singer Songwriter nights. Following some hard staring at the lead singer, I remembered that I saw some video of theirs being played on No Disco, and on 2TV too!! High profile or what? And then, in a blink of a big yellow eye, Palomine jumped on and lashed into some Sonicy Youthy sounds that everybody seems to be trying to emulate nowadays around Dublin. (except for the punks that've just learnt off their power cords) S@E have mixed reactions about Palomine actually. Bob didn't really like their use of the warbled keyboard (It's a moog, ya thick shite), Stripe thought they were pretty darn good, Singer loves them, but he doesn't count because he's mates with them. And I thought that the lead singer avec le Fender Jaguar was a big ride. So, quickly moving on........ To Venus Envy who we've all seen before and we all love 'em, so big biased review time here. *grin* Once again, I recognised a load of the songs from before, a lot of which have yet to be released. One little quibble of mine would be that even though the sound system in The Da Club is loud (that's actually because it's so bleedin' small that wherever you stand, you're beside a speaker), VE's sound was kind of muffled in places, especially Maura's voice, which we want to ring bright and clear form the church towers of Dublin every morning so as to soothe and calm all those who listen. Why can't all Dublin bands be as original and innovative as this crowd eh? But despite all this good musik, the highlight of the night was for me, when Stripe lost one of his manky scumbag gold rings, but it turned out that pierced-eyebrow-boy-Dave had it lodged in his hoodie. Fools the lot of them........