Tundra Rock in Dublin

A short visit to the capital of Ireland to catch Slomosa.

By Rod Loboz

April 20^th, 2025

I caught a morning flight to Dublin. I had come to see Slomosa — a Norwegian stoner rock band whose sound I’d been obsessing over for the past year or so. I was staying for two days. I hated flying. Land transportation at least gave the illusion of safety. That week, there had been a headline about a commercial jet colliding with a helicopter in the U.S. — you read something like that and suddenly you're gripping the armrest, eyes shut, trying to picture the slow, steady ascent of planes as you see them from the ground: small, silent, impossibly smooth. From inside that pressurised shell of rattling plastic and metal, serenity is the last thing you feel.

When I landed, Dublin greeted me with cold wind and a flat grey sky. The city itself felt a little unremarkable at first glance — low, uniform, with few dramatic landmarks. But then there are the pubs — countless, inviting, the kind of places you could spend hours nursing a pint and watching the weather roll by.

After checking into the hotel, I set out on foot — still early, the city quiet under a grey morning sky. I passed the city’s heavy stone churches — more fortress than sanctuary — their dark outlines rising out towards the grey sky. Then to the Guinness Storehouse at St. James’s Gate — more brand museum than brewery now, layered with the polish of a global product. But at the top, in the glass-walled bar overlooking the city, I enjoyed a properly poured pint of Guinness — creamy, bitter, just right. From there, I walked to Dublin Castle. The real surprise was the Chester Beatty Library next door: a collection of manuscripts that reached back through time and across cultures — Chinese calligraphy, Islamic illuminated texts, fragments of Christian gospels on worn parchment. Script as memory, as survival.

At the National Gallery, I spent a couple of quiet hours moving from room to room. There was a Picasso — nothing major — and paintings by Monet and Renoir. I lingered in front of Pierrot by Juan Gris and Max Pechstein’s windswept fishermen. Monet’s solitary sailboat at Argenteuil reminded me of last summer at Cape Ventė in Lithuania. Renoir’s roses seemed to carry a faint perfume. A woman in the gallery — real, not painted — caught my attention: 40s maybe, pale eyes, wavy hair, elegant profile, beautiful features. She reminded me of a portrait by William Leech — A Convent Garden. That uncanny sensation of seeing someone step out of a frame.

Other works stayed with me: The Family by Louis le Brocquy — haunted, spectral, the figures stretched and angular, almost sculptural in their stillness. The Wash House by William Orpen, where it’s all about the shadows — the way the light cuts across the figures, how it shapes space. You could learn to photograph by studying it. Same goes for Sunday Evening Place du Combat by Harry Kernoff — a seemingly ordinary Parisian street scene viewed from under a café awning, but the framing, the angles, the color planes... it's composed like a perfect shot. Then there was A Thunderstorm: The Frightened Wagoner by James Arthur O’Connor — a small man, a startled horse, and nature rearing up in dark theatrical light. The storm cloud rolling over the hills felt lugubrious, almost literary — like something out of Antero de Quental or Poe. A quiet kind of terror.

And then, The Taking of Christ by Caravaggio — thought lost for centuries, found here in the 1990s. A quiet thunder of chiaroscuro in a city corner.

That evening, I made my way to The Grand Social. At street level it’s a small busy pub like many others — warm, dim, people leaning over pints. But you walk through a few corridors, up a staircase, and there’s a venue tucked inside. I arrived early, talked with the bassist from Slomosa, bought a vinyl and left it with her for safekeeping until after the show.

They were loud. They were tight. They sounded just like the records — if not better. The crowd packed in shoulder-to-shoulder by the time they hit their stride. A wall of sound, head-nodding fuzz, the weight of it in your chest and exploding in your ears. Definitely a band to see again.

After the show, I wandered the streets. Temple Bar was buzzing, but it wasn’t just that — it was the whole city center, thick with pubs glowing amber in the night. In another lifetime, I would’ve gone on a proper bender — pint to pint, pub to pub, chasing warmth and music through the cold. But this time, I just walked, letting the noise trail behind me.

The next morning, I walked again — this time along the River Liffey, gulls wheeling overhead in the wind. The streets were still quiet, shops shuttered, the city only beginning to stir. Somewhere near Grafton Street, I stopped in front of the statue of Phil Lynott — tall and lean, guitar resting upright beneath his hand, immortalized in bronze outside a red-bricked building on Harry Street. Frontman of Thin Lizzy, born to a single mother in Dublin, he brought swagger, poetry, and soul to Irish rock. I thought of the lyric from Cowboy Song — “I am just a cowboy, lonesome on the trail…” — and for a moment, he looked like he might step off the plinth and vanish into one of the bars behind him.

From there, I made my way down to Trinity College and stepped inside to see the exhibition. The old library is still breathtaking — a long hall of dark wood and soaring shelves, lined with busts and balconies. There’s a modern globe suspended from the ceiling now, part of the curated experience, but you can still imagine it in its prime: a cathedral of knowledge, heavy with silence, full of men of letters and curious students. The weight of wisdom pressing softly from every book spine.

Outside, the stone courtyards opened wide and orderly. I pictured them a century or more ago, filled with students in long coats, carrying books beneath the crook of an arm, voices echoing off the colonnades. This was the university of Swift, of Wilde, of Beckett — a place that helped shape some of Ireland’s most unruly minds.

Later, closer to the hotel, I came across James Joyce — standing bronze-still, cane in hand, one leg slightly forward, head tilted just enough to suggest a squint into the grey light. He’s frozen like that on North Earl Street, but in truth his presence is everywhere in Dublin — etched into street corners and rhythms of speech, layered through Ulysses, Dubliners, and Portrait. He left the city, famously, but it never left him. And here, you get the sense it still hasn’t.

The trams sliced through the streets as I made my way eastward. I passed The Custom House — a neoclassical façade that glowed pale in the overcast light, elegant and stoic above the water. I never made it all the way to the port. The wind was too sharp, cutting through coat and thought alike. February, after all, wasn’t letting anyone forget where they were.

Back at the hotel, still wired from the night before, ears still ringing, I listened to Cabin Fever again — that wall of fuzz, thick and hypnotic, crashing like waves. It’s one of their best: sun-soaked lyrics full of palm trees, kaleidoscope dreams, and summertime drift. But Slomosa aren’t from California — they’re from Norway. A place of grey skies, wet streets, and long winters. Their sound leans heavy and slow, but it’s not sand and heat — it’s cold air and midnight sun. They call it Tundra Rock. And in that moment, it felt right — palm trees in the headphones, drizzle on the windows, a kind of tension that matched the city outside. Two days, one gig, and a little Arctic fuzz to take home with me.