Sweet Bird Of Untruth

The Walle gang…

It was pretty much one year ago to the day that Nicolaas Walle – Greystones’ answer to Mike Oldfield – won our Battle Of The Bands 2019 competition.

Here was a teenager who could seemingly play just about any instrument, had built his own recording studio, and was already on one-man-band album number 3 when he snatched a somewhat-unsurprising victory.

This annual platform for local musicians to have themselves heard, photographed, recorded and even interviewed for a Guide cover story has brought some incredible talent out into the light over the past three years. And one or two shit ones too, of course.

Sponsored by those good people at Greystones Municipal District Council, that this year’s Battle Of The Bands had to be put on hold due to Covid-19. Until now, that is. With Nicolaas releasing his latest single today, we reckoned it was time to relight that particular fire. Now that everyone’s got the time to write and record their bedroom masterpiece.

Talking of which, young Saint Nic has put together a band for Never Untrue, with long-time collaborator Emily Lannin on vocals (plus lyrics, and sleeve artwork) alongside drummer Sam Shepard and multi-instrumentalist (and solo artist) Jack Joyce.

The name of the band is Vvolla, which is, we’re assured, the correct way to pronounce Nic’s oft-mangled surname, Walle.

As part of that winning prize package, we present below the rather fine video for Never Untrue, shot at The Whale theatre by GG’s favourite director, Never Meant’s Oscar Hackett, the man behind all those groovy Dylan E. Crampton videos…

You can grab your copy of Never Untrue on iTunes right about here, check it out on Spotify here, and check out Nicolaas Walle’s back catalogue here. Oh, and enter Battle Of The Bands 2020 right over here. Now.