Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell

Dublin four-piece Kippax take their name from the terrace at Manchester City’s old ground Maine Road, which was demolished in 1994 when all-seater stadia became mandatory in English football. It is a fitting anachronism for a band that likes looking backwards in its sound. Informed by a love for jangly sixties guitars and a slew of new wave and Britpop trailblazers, Kippax’s slick, distinctive style is evident even on the basis of what is currently their only single, New Orleans.

This Friday, November 28, they play a free midnight show at the Róisín Dubh, with support from local indie outfit Sakura. It is a first Galway gig for Kippax.

Guitarist Ewan Ramage explains that the band sprouted in his schooldays, initially owed to shared tastes between himself and bassist Daniel Lynam.

“We all like the same music,” Ramage says. “A lot of nineties bands. Britpop era, and then the Smiths and the Stone Roses and that. That’s a lot of stuff we actively listen to when we’re all getting together. But our overarching theme always goes back to those first bands in the sixties – the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.”

“Specifically the Rolling Stones,” frontman Cameron Wolfe adds. “Some of the stuff Keith Richards would’ve been doing guitar-wise bleeds into a lot of our songs.”

Wolfe’s vocals are a standout feature on New Orleans, flat and conversational in points and powerfully stretched in others. It was a song Ramage penned on the idea of “something different and better”, partly related to his own family’s story of moving to Ireland from Manchester when he was young.

“I wasn’t particularly sure about it,” Ramage says. “The vocals are very fast compared with other stuff we do. But everyone liked it. I wrote it after watching the Princess and the Frog with my girlfriend, the Disney film which is set in New Orleans. I had bits and pieces of lyrics.

“I really love the New Orleans jazz scene. I play the saxophone as well. It’s a city that holds a bit of mysticism for me. It’s a song about being disillusioned and working hard to get somewhere, and finding out it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s a good city for that in my mind. I’ve never been but it holds a lot of dreams, I guess. I don’t know what it would be like if I actually went.”

Pictured: Kippax at the Róisín Dubh…(from left) Daniel Lynam, Ewan Ramage, Cameron Wolfe and Conor Duffy.