Club
Sketchy
Limelight, Belfast, 11pm, £5/£4
limelightbelfast.com
When it comes to big nights out, this weekly carnival has been doing the business week in and week out for some years. Helmed by BBC Radio Ulster’s alternative/indie music maestro Rigsy (right) and stocked with a galaxy of guests, Sketchy is your one-stop shop when it comes to beats with bass, fun and the extra-large ooomph factor. Add in a blast of confetti cannons, giant balloon drops and Neon Kool Aid and you’re elected.
Indie
Strange Brew
Róisín Dubh, Galway 11pm, Admission free
roisindubh.net
Since 2002, Gugai’s Strange Brew night out has worked off a simple notion: put on a host of Irish and international acts in one of the best live rooms in the land and then lash out a bunch of past, present and future indie anthems until it’s time to go home. The night works week in and week out so well that there’s rarely need for a reboot, rebrand or gimmicks.
Disco
Toast
Lost Society, Dublin 11pm, €7/€5
Two rooms of party flavours to get a head-start on the weekend. In the Party Shack, you’ve disco, funk and house music from DJs such as Mark Dillon, James Hannan and Manners, while it’s deeper tech and house in the basement from a selector list that includes Conor Hanson, Ryan Healy and Emaleigh Kelly. What you put on your toast is up to you.
New Band Festival
Whelan's Ones to Watch
Whelan's & Opium Rooms Dublin, 8pm, €10/€5
whelanslive.com
Beginning today and ending on January 11th is the fifth year of Whelan’s Ones to Watch Festival, a gathering of some 60 emerging bands that aim not only to impress, but do their best to stick around for this year and beyond. Expect acts to cover a wide range of styles, from folk to hip-hop, from indie to experimental.
Art
Renew
Green on Red Gallery, Park Lane, Spencer Dock, Dublin Until Jan 31
greenonredgallery.com
North of the Spencer Dock Luas stop, Green on Red has reopened its doors with a busy group show, including colourful new works on metamorphoses by Alice Maher; Gerard Byrne's photographs Kodak Wratten Filter Systems; new paintings by Mark Joyce; and "a delicately playful" sculpture by Niamh McCann. Plus Mary Fitzgerald, Caroline McCarthy, Ronan McCrea and Bridget Riley.
Theatre
My Name Is Saoirse
Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin Jan 8-10 8pm €12
firstfortnight.ie
You have to admire the light touch and vivid detail of Eva O’Connor’s latest solo performance (below) – others might have caved under the pressure of the story. Saoirse O’Brien grows up without a mother in a protected Limerick childhood, where sex is learned from a friend and consequences, while serious, need not be destructive. O’Connor gives two excellent performances – as the gauche narrator and her complex pal Siobhan – but the deftness of her writing is the real star. An involving and moving start to the First Fortnight Festival.
