Concert The Vaselines

With only three Irish dates on their tour in 2025, it's with great excitement that The Oriel Centre, Dundalk Gaol will welcome The Vaselines, a band that Kurt Cobain called his favourite songwriters in the whole world, to its stage on Saturday 22nd March 2025.

The Vaselines were formed in Glasgow in 1987 by singers/guitarists Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain regularly cited the Vaseline’s influence in interviews with the music press and Nirvana would go on to cover the Vaselines' ‘Molly's Lips’ and ‘Son of a Gun’ as well as perform ‘Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam’ on their legendary MTV Unplugged appearance. Kelly would go on to join Nirvana onstage at the 1991 Reading Festival with a performance of Molly's Lips.

Cobain's gospel-spreading no doubt accelerated their rise to cult sainthood, but the Vaselines would have gotten there sooner or later on their own accord. Lewd but naïve and abrasive yet tender, the band's shambling, primitivist squall remains a perfect distillation of pop at its most guileless and euphoric.

Eugene Kelly later went on to front Captain America / Eugenius, while Frances McKee spent the better part of the decade out of sight, resurfaced in Suckle, and released a solo album in 2006. The Vaselines reunited in 2010 to record their second full album Sex With An X which was released on the Seattle label Sub Pop. This was followed by V for Vaselines in 2014. The Ramones inspired album featured many of the same players who helped make 'Sex.....', including Belle and Sebastian's Stevie Jackson, the 1990's Michael McGaughrin and Teenage Fanclub's Francis Macdonald.

Tickets for this intimate, seated show are €25. Doors open at 8pm and onstage at 8.30pm. Please note that the bar will be closed during the performance. There are strictly no refunds except in the event of the show being cancelled.