Wallis Bird to gig in Navan

Wallis Bird will return to the area she spent her childhood in when she gigs in Navan on Sunday 21st October, at Swan Lane. A double Meteor Award winner, Wallis Bird's new eponymous album is her third and follows her debut 'Spoons' and 2009's 'New Boots,' both of which saw her garner critical acclaim and tour with the likes of Billy Bragg, Gabrielle, The Feeling & Rodrigo y Gabriela. Bird has also played some of Europe's biggest festivals, with her recent appearance at Paris' Rock En Seine Festival prompting one of France's biggest daily papers, Le Monde, to hail her performance as one of the highlights of the festival alongside Arcade Fire. An exceptional guitarist, her unique playing style only adds to the intrigue of her performances. Following a childhood accident which permanently damaged her left hand, Bird learned to play her instrument flipped back to front, thus having to create her own bafflingly complex chord fingerings, much to the bewilderment of any musicians in the audience. The new album 'Wallis Bird' marks another progression, a record deliberately self-titled to mark it out as the defining statement of her career so far. So the confident strut that opens the first single 'Encore' nestles alongside the astonishing vitriol of 'Who's Listening Now', the folky pledge of 'In Dictum' and the almost carefree 'Heartbeating City' - all disparate musical elements that go towards creating the whole that is Wallis Bird as a songwriter. The intimacy of the recordings captures the sound and smell of an acoustic guitar being pushed to its physical limits, the sense of a packed-out local bar being conducted in time and in thrall to the energetic, captivating presence who marshals every element.