Singular Artists champion the Wunderhorse and more over a superbly curated series of gigs at Collins Barracks.
At the end of August, the Singular Artists-presented Wider Than Pictures concert series will return to Collins Barracks at the National Museum of Ireland in Stoneybatter. Now in its fourth iteration, Wider Than Pictures has become well-regarded for its cosy, open-air experiences featuring a litany of must-see-in-your-lifetime acts, and this year’s edition is no exception.
From August 19th to 24th, the former military barracks will welcome the British alt-rock band Wunderhorse, the American singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten, the legendary British synth-pop group The Human League, the longtime British indie rockers Kaiser Chiefs, and the American indie-folk artist Father John Misty.
Kicking off the series with two shows on the 19th and 20th is the Cornwall four-piece Wunderhorse, who are making a huge leap from their previous headlining Dublin show at Vicar Street last autumn. “I think we were kind of looking at a venue that was maybe just the next step up, and the first one sold out really quickly, which was a total surprise,” the band’s frontman and founder, Jacob Slater, tells Totally Dublin of their shows. “We thought we’d be lucky if we made the tickets on that one.
“So, we added the extra night, which is very, very surreal, because the first gigs we did in Ireland were the two Iveagh Gardens nights with the Fontaines [D.C.] boys. I remember walking out on that stage and thinking, ‘Fuck me, this is a load of people!’ So, to be doing our own sort of version of that is great. I hope people enjoy it. We aim to deliver on those two nights, for sure.”
Jacob spoke to us on a rare week off, in between completing a headlining tour of mainland Europe and jetting off to begin the summer festival circuit. Since the release of their second album, Midas, last August, the band’s leap in popularity in Ireland has been mirrored across the world (especially in their motherland, where they played to a sold-out Alexandra Palace in May).
“It’s hard to view objectively when you’re in it,” Jacob says of their success. “I definitely have noticed a change in the last year or eighteen months. For me, obviously, this is something I’ve had my eye on since I was sixteen/seventeen, which was ten years ago. So, it definitely feels more gradual to me, because I’m the one who’s done the foundational work, but I can definitely understand, to an outsider, how it looks like it’s happened quite quickly.”
Thanks to some highly coveted support and festival slots, Wunderhorse required little acclimatisation for these larger headlining shows. “Back in the early days, we were lucky enough that artists who are much better established saw us or heard about us and said, ‘Hey, you should come on the road with us,’ which was sort of a baptism of fire, but it was really great,” Jacob says.
“People like Sam Fender picked us up, Fontaines, Pixies – and to see people doing something at that level…it was a very well-oiled machine…it was like, ‘OK, cool. Well, this is where the bar is for our live stuff.’ So, I’m very grateful that those people picked us up and took us under their wing, even if it was just for one or two tours, you know? Very valuable lessons learnt there, for sure.”
Having already played eighteen shows across Dublin, Limerick, Galway, and Dingle in their five-year career, Wunderhorse are accustomed to Ireland, so we asked Jacob how the punters treat them when they’re over. “Really good,” he responds. “Especially playing the shows in Ireland with the Fontaines boys first, it was a really good introduction for us to the Irish audiences, and people seem to want to come and see us, over in Ireland, which is all you can ask for, really.
“And it’s always a good crowd; we’ve never played to a bad crowd in Ireland. They seem to all come to shows with the intention of seeing music and getting lost in the moment. There seems to be…and maybe I’m imagining it…but less phones and stuff at Irish concerts than in London and stuff, you know? That’s my kind of thing: The less screens, the better. The more people are just in the moment, going for it.”
While Wunderhorse will spend the rest of 2025 fulfilling their live commitments (which will also see them hitting New Zealand and Australia for the first time), Jacob teases that fans can expect some new music next year. Until then, he concludes by telling us what they can expect from their larger experiences.
“We’ve definitely added some elements to our staging and our lights and stuff,” he says. “That’s definitely been stepped up in a way that befits a bigger production and bigger stages, but we try not to go too over the top with that stuff because it’s new territory for us, and also because we want to keep it about the band, and try to do as much of the grunt work, in terms of creating a spectacle as we can, just by our own energy being up there. So, hopefully, sparks will fly with the music, and then if there can be a bit of production elements to add that seasoning to it, then great, but we’re going to try and keep it just about the band as long as we can, and push that as far as we can go.”
To complement the headliners, Wider Than Pictures affords local acts an opportunity to show themselves to the crowds there to see the next big things and the already-renowned acts. The Kaiser Chiefs gig on the 23rd, for example, will feature the enduring Kilkenny grunge outfit Kerbdog and the fun-focused, experimental Dublin rock band Really Good Time as support.
“We work a lot with Singular Artists, who are incredible,” Really Good Time’s drummer, Adrian “Ado” Garvey, says as the rest of the band nod and vocalise their agreement when they spoke with us. “Great agency. And, yeah, Fin [O’Leary] from there just reached out to us and was like, ‘Would you like to do this show?’, and we said, ‘Yes, we’d really like to play this show.’”
He continues, “I think, as well, Singular has such a taste-made selection of gigs, and it all aligns very much with the kind of stuff that we do, most of the shows that they put on. So, it’s really great for them to put us on bits like this – or, like, we supported a band earlier in the year called The Spirit of the Beehive, who are fantastic – onto those kinds of things, where you’re being put in front of people who like a band that are in the zone that you’re in. So, it’s a really good way to make new fans.” “Excellent matchmakers!” lauds bassist Jack “Le Coque” Hitchcock.
“It’s amazing,” guitarist and vocalist, Diolmhain “Dully” Ingram Roche, says of the opportunity to play Wider Than Pictures. “There’s an intent with a lot of the tunes that are made for that big show, and to get to road test them out like that is fantastic. It just feels like a different thing, I guess.”
“We’re built for the big stage, and that stage looks rather large,” Le Coque says. “The last time we were there, actually, we supported Franz Ferdinand, and I thought it was going to be the last time that we’d get a gig with them, just because I went halfway up the rafters and there was a lot of angry security men shouting at me, and Fin from Singular with hands over his eyes!”
For the first time since their formation in 2021, Really Good Time are playing as a three-piece and are currently re-jigging their tracks to fit their new ordering after their guitarist, Alex “The Duke” Conway, left on amicable terms in March after finishing a run of gigs at this year’s SXSW in Austin.
“It’s moving in a little bit more of a dancier direction,” Ado says of reorienting their sound. “Not necessarily that it’s lost any of the bite of the rock stuff or anything, but it feels a little bit more in that zone. A bit more club. Club hits.” “Allowing a bit of extra space to be, I guess, has been interesting,” adds Dully. “Just changing the arrangements. It’s fun. It’s kind of like being in a new band.
“I mean, it is a new band that, obviously, is a continuation of the old one! It has all the influence of our dear Duke, because you can’t write and play with someone for so long and not be shaped by them, inherently. But, yeah, there’s kind of a real excitement that comes with new terrain, as well, that’s coming through in the new stuff. We’re all getting very buzzed, and that’s just coming out in the writing, I think, in a really fun way.” “I think it’s some of the best stuff we’ve ever written, for sure,” concurs Le Coque. “I’m really proud of it.”
When we spoke, the band had just come back from Wicklow, where they’d been crafting some of these new tunes. While they’re being quite tight-lipped at the moment, they tease that the results will begin to emerge around September and encourage their fans to sign up for their mailing list to stay informed. Until then, the newest iteration of Really Good Time has begun performing some of their latest crafts live, so if you want to hear it before September, get to Wider Than Pictures!
Wider Than Pictures takes place from August 19th to 24th. Tickets and the schedule can be found at widerthanpictures.ie.
Words: Aaron Kavanagh
