Larry Beau
Beau selecta: The Irish music landscape has had its fair share of dissolute, doomed romantics, but there's always room for one more. And when Larry Beau takes the stage, the landscape suddenly starts looking weird and phantasmagorical. A vaudevillian vampire of the senses, Larry takes you to places your mother would never let you visit; once there, he will seduce you with his heartrending, histrionic ballads and macabre musical cabaret show. Beau's influences range from O'Carolan to Othello, Brecht to The Beatles; on July 30th, the Wildean wandering minstrel will perform at Dublin's Sugar Club, accompanied by his band and a troupe of scantily clad vixens armed with whips. Get your front row seat early - it's gonna be lots of craic.
Cod fishing: Larry Beau was always lurking inside the body of Declan Burke, but it took years of fantasising before Burke's flamboyant alter-ego could find his way out into the real world. Born in Kilchreest, Co Galway, Declan attended school in Loughrea and by all accounts was a bookish, sensitive young chap who read Shelley and was enthralled by local storytellers and musicians. His teens were filled with dreams of Dracula and ambitions to become a travelling troubadour, walking the earth and searching for the meaning of life. He went to the US on a J-1 visa and hooked up with one of his heroes, Edward Gorey, writer and illustrator of macabre children's books. In Cape Cod the two discussed life, the universe and everything, but eventually Declan had to say so long and thanks for all the fish, and head back home.
Robo hop: Another trip to the US found our hero hitch-hiking and taking a Greyhound bus across the country, where he lived out his meandering minstrel fantasy. Along the way, he had a close encounter with Johnny Cash on the streets of Boulder, met the man who turned Dylan onto the dreaded weed, and whistled naked for a bottle of whiskey in Salt Lake City. Declan finally fetched up in San Francisco, where he got a gig playing in a place called Omnicircus, a nonstop erotic-robotic cabaret filled with androgynous androids and virtual vamps. He slept in the rafters among cats and spiders; it was the perfect place to begin writing his twisted torch songs about ghosts, prostitutes, euthanasia and innocence lost.
Beau peep: When he returned to Ireland, a changed man, Declan settled in Dingle and became Larry Beau. Last year's Karma Blue EP gave punters a bittersweet taste of Beau's musical style, an absinthe- flavoured cocktail of 19th-century song and modern day pop-rock. But you can get the full Larry lowdown on his just-released debut album, Peepshow Stars, which features the yearning single Addicted to You, the louche lullaby Sleeping Valentine, and the hymnal murder ballad, The Lost Streets of Ado.
