Ok, I’ll admit it. I’m biased. In a lock-in, in a bar on an island, I was once witness to The Gold Standard’s Muireann stunning the whole raucous place into silence with her amazing voice, and I’ve been a huge fan ever since. Cork band The Gold Standard are Patrick, Dom, Muireann and Steve. They play lush, harmony-laden guitar pop, quilted together from all the loveliest musical bits and pieces - “contemporary indie rock on both sides of the Atlantic, late seventies post-punk, the melodramatic excesses of the eighties and the occasional snippet of fuzzed-out shoegaze” … Oh gosh, doesn’t that intro just make you want to kick up your heels to match the buzz in your tummy? Ah, it does. The group have just completed a nationwide tour supporting Ham Sandwich, inspiring Podge Sandwich to describe them as “scary musicians”. I have to assume he means scarily talented, because … There’s more →