Music
Press
SXSW - The Austin Chronicle – 17/03/06
The Walls offered one of the more convincing sets of big rock and graceful punk, including “Drowning Pool”, an excellent take on the music biz. The lead singer nailed music’s emancipating power: “The most important thing at the end of the day is to rock out!.”
WHAT THE PRESS SAID ABOUT ‘NEW DAWN BREAKING’
“it contains the best work of their career” – SUNDAY TIMES
“an immediately impressive record on almost every level....well worth the wait” – HOT PRESS
“The Walls have always possessed an organic aura that makes them so darn likeable and they’ve successfully imbued this glow into the making of the record giving it that homely Wilco feeling…an album full of hooks, catchy choruses and stomping tunes”. - TOTALLY DUBLIN
“New Dawn Breaking should put this hard-working band back where they belong - bringing down the house, as well as holding up the ceiling. The Stunning? No way, this is more of a first time buyers' investment”. – ENTERTAINMENT.IE
“Super-charged with the idea of starting afresh, at its best 'New Dawn Breaking' has an urgency about it which proves infectious. Beginning with 'Open Road', a song that convinces you to treat life as a blank page, the brothers and bandmates Rory Doyle and Jon O'Connell power through so many great songs on the first half of the album that every dawn yields a different favourite - whether it's the state of the nation address 'Romantic Ireland's Dead and Gone', the rocky 'Passing Through' or the sweet centrepiece 'Know Your Love'. Even 'To the Bright and Shining Sun', which you've heard to distraction on TV, sounds new. The wait was worth it”.
- RTE ARTS REVIEW
“Long-awaited and highly anticipated, this album is all it was promised to be. The twelve tracks bring us from sheer ecstasy to extreme sadness and right back again”.
– LIMERICK EVENT GUIDE.
“So at an important point in their career, The Walls have made a great album. Two guitarists, bass and drum’s - music just doesn’t get any better than this.”
– SUBCULTURE MAGAZINE http://www.subculturemagazine.com/reviewdetails.php?id=21
“Steve and Joe Wall are nothing if not resilient. Less strong-willed souls might have quit the business had they been confronted with the fact that a former associate stole all their royalties. The Walls have always had a knack for writing rousing, hook-laden songs that appeal to the daytime-radio programmers and booze-soddled gig-goers. New Dawn Breaking won’t disappoint with its mix of the introspective and anthemic. The raw, rocking Drowning Pool proves the band isn’t just raking over old ground, while The Bright and Shining Sun’s quality has survived its near-constant airplay on that AIB ad.” - IRISH INDEPENDENT
- Various newspapers and online.
Discography
SINGLES AND EP'S:
The Night I called it a Day - single
Something's Wrong - single
Broken Boy - EP
Some kind of a Girl - single
Bone Deep - single (radio and internet only)
To the Bright and Shining Sun - single
Drowning Pool - EP
Passing Through - single (radio and internet only)
Black and Blue single (radio and internet only)
ALBUMS:
Hi-Lo
New Dawn Breaking
Photos
Bio
THE WALLS biography
There are some people for whom making music is a vocation and the ups and downs that go with the business are just part of a necessary journey. Previously the main-men in one of the most successful Irish bands ever - The Stunning Steve and Joe Wall know all about going from multi-platinum success to re-inventing themselves and starting all over again. Theyve weathered the storms of the dance craze, the unplugged phase and now in the do-it-youself days theyre still writing hits. Brewing up a Storm, a massive hit in the nineties for The Stunning, is almost an unofficial Irish national anthem. Every Irish person in the world knows it and even the Irish International Rugby team walk onto the pitch to its rousing chorus. The Walls To the Bright and Shining Sun was one of the most played songs on radio by an Irish band in the summer of 2003 and brought them to the attention of U2 who offered them a support slot on their second sold-out show in Slane Castle. Always a hit with radio, recent singles from their 2005 album New Dawn Breaking include: Passing Through; Drowning Pool and Black and Blue and have helped the album reach Gold status in Ireland. The band are currently writing material for their third album.
The Walls played their first gig in Dublin in 1998 having returned a few months earlier from a two-year label stint in London. The band included new members Carl Harms and Rory Doyle.
They set up their own label, Earshot Records (later changing it to Dirtbird Records) and recorded and released a string of singles. A remix of one of the album tracks, Bone Deep, finally clicked with radio and put the band on the map.
Their debut album Hi-Lo was released in May 2000 to brilliant reviews and has since outsold Gold status in Ireland. Many of the songs have featured on a number of TV series and feature films such as Dead Bodies, Goldfish Memory and On the Edge (starring Cillian Murphy).
In the summer of 2001 a rare occurrence happened. The band sent four copies of the album to U2. Bono loved it and offered The Walls a slot at their second sold-out concert in Slane Castle.
To the Bright and Shining Sun was the bands next single and the most-played track by any Irish act that summer, reaching No. 11 in the Irish charts. That June the band were also invited to support the Red Hot Chilli Peppers in Landsdowne Rd. stadium in Dublin.
In February 2004 original member Carl Harms left the band. They recruited bassist Jon OConnell just before a two week tour of the new EU accession states.
For the next album they went to Studio Black Box in France to record with producer and ex-The Frames guitarist David Odlum. The band loved the sound of recent albums by Wilco and Kings of Leon and they concentrated on capturing the magic of a great live performance - four guys in a room doing take after take and trying not to lose the soul of the music in the process.
In Oct 2004 they released a taster, The Drowning Pool EP. Drowning Pool, a blistering, spleen-venting, blues explosion, two minutes fifty two seconds in length, took people by surprise and divided opinion - exactly what the band wanted. They supported Bob Dylan to a capacity crowd in Galway that summer and played a storming set that showed there were changes afoot in The Walls sound.
By March 2005 the album was finally finished. They called it New Dawn Breaking after the final and longest track on the record. The album went straight into the Irish charts at No.5 in the first week of June 2005 and has since reached Gold status in Ireland.
In March 2006 The Walls visited the US where they played to full houses in New York, Los Angeles and at SXSW in Austin Texas. Nic Harcourt invited the band to perform a live session on Morning Becomes Eclectic, his flagship radio show on KCRW in LA.
The band are currently in the studio writing and recording material for a third album.
New Dawn Breaking is now available as a digital download from I-Tunes, Napster and a host of others.
Web: www.thewalls.ie MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/thewallsband
Email: hq@thewalls.ie
SXSW - The Austin Chronicle 17/03/06
The Walls offered one of the more convincing sets of big rock and graceful punk, including Drowning Pool, an excellent take on the music biz. The lead singer nailed musics emancipating power: The most important thing at the end of the day is to rock out!.
WHAT THE PRESS SAID ABOUT NEW DAWN BREAKING
it contains the best work of their career SUNDAY TIMES
an immediately impressive record on almost every level....well worth the wait HOT PRESS
The Walls have always possessed an organic aura that makes them so darn likeable and theyve successfully imbued this glow into the making of the record giving it that homely Wilco feeling an album full of hooks, catchy choruses and stomping tunes. - TOTALLY DUBLIN
New Dawn Breaking should put this hard-working band back where they belon
Links
