Dinah Brand

Dinah Brand is a band from Dublin, Ireland – four people all playing different musical instruments, sometimes in harmony, sometimes not. In thrall to The Byrds, Lee Dorsey, The Replacements, Little Feat, Go Betweens, Neu, Big Star and Michael Hurley, they also would like to think that songs governed by enigmatic sentiment and songs that long to be films have a place in the present global soundworld.

Like Frankenstein’s sad monster, Dinah Brand are made up of parts of old bands exhumed and re-animated: Dylan Phillips of Pet Lamb, Stephen Ryan of The Stars Of Heaven and The Revenants, Gavin Ward of Jackbeast and David Lacey of Three Ring Psychosis, Legion Of Two and The Jackson 5. Sometimes they are graced by the presence and skill of the artist John Hegarty.

Long term resident in the Dublin Heritage City Experience, Dinah Brand songs go like this: personal intimacies and universal anxieties hidden in obscure, confusing word bunches; combined with warm and erratic electric guitar tones; and all— usually, but not exclusively—shifting at mid-pace drum time.

Way back in 2002, they released Pale Monkey Blues, a classic piece of Dublin noir. In 2010 or so, it was second album I Can Walk Through—another sad and lovely suite.

Their latest album (also a record) is Thank You Driver. This one, perversely, is as positive and angry as a natural melancholic can be—as sweet as it is dyspeptic.

Never belonging but always available, three albums deep, Dinah Brand songs are your friend if you want it—you need never feel lonesome again.