Despite the fact that a large proportion of the gig going crowd seemed to be either press or musicians themselves, Day 1 of Hard Working Class Heroes 2010 proved successful once again. Beginning nice and early in The Button Factory, the Holy Innocents kicked off our festival experience with their low-key alt country stylings. The Belfast group's songs were easy going and inoffensive if not riveting, as they swapped lead vocals between their two frontmen Eamonn McNamee and Mark McCambridge, the latter in particular belting them out with character beyond his years. Despite the fact the most of their audience were toting big f**k off professional cameras, the Holy Innocents were pleased with the turn out for so early of a Thursday evening, and seemed genuinely delighted to be at HWCH, that is, apart from their large, hairy keyboard player, who couldn't have looked more bored if he tried. With a plug for their Tower instore performance on Saturday (1pm if you're interested), The Holy Innocents performed their final song, a slow builder that began with just acoustic guitar before bursting into a full and satisfying finale.

A complimentary bottle of Bulmer's Berry later (yep, give me a free drink I'll give you a plug. Nice to see a drinks sponsor loosen the purse strings. Guinness I'm scowling in your direction), Autumn Owls took to the same stage in the Button Factory. Their distortion heavy rock came across a tad morose and, leaving great gaping holes of awkward silence between songs, someone should probably give these Dublin boys a lesson in stage presence. That said, lead singer Gary McFarlane did attempt to make a joke about their music being "cardigan rock" so points for effort there. Despite all that and what appeared to be some minor problems with the electronics, Autumn Owls did have their moments, mostly when they let rip and allowed raucous noise to take over.

With The Button Factory running slightly late, Yeh Deadlies were already on stage when we arrived in The Grand Social. The bar formerly known as Pravda has been nicely renovated (the toilets are certainly an improvement), with the upstairs reconfigured as a live venue that saw more than one joke about weddings and function room parties. Yeh Deadlies' ramshackle punk rock has a rickety, makeshift quality that's reminiscent of New York anti-folk. Since they had guttural guitar hooks, catchy melodies and personality in spades, we'll assume that's the style they're going for, and it really does work for them. Annie's vocals may not be note perfect, but they're coy and cutesy in a most endearing way. Single 'Magazine' went down a treat but sadly Yeh Deadlies had to cut their set one song short as they got the nod from the back of the room.

Remember Hal? Back in 2005 they seemed on the cusp of big things with their self-titled debut album. That was until 2007 when they went their separate ways, and it appeared to be the end of them until they returned after two years with a host of new songs. It was mostly those new songs, presumably taken from their upcoming second album 'The Time, The Hour', that they played for the HWCH crowd. As ever, its Hal's vocal harmonies that were their strong point, led by brothers Dave and Paul Allen. Apparently, more than Dave's haircut was a tribute to the 70s as the band dedicated a song to the great John Lennon, who would have had his 70th birthday tomorrow. Among their user-friendly alt-pop, the recognisable 'What A Lovely Dance' was greeted favourably with much swaying, before Hal closed their set with old favourite 'Play The Hits'.

By the time Enemies came onstage, The Grand Social was running seriously behind time. The band admitted they had just gotten back from America and always take "about 40 minutes" to set up. Eventually opening with an enormous wall of noise and feedback they segued effortlessly into their debut album's title track 'We've Been Talking'. It was back and forth from sharp math rock riffs to hard-rock guitar distortion, and all as tight as could be. It was a shame that with their late start that was all I got to see, as I'm currently enraptured by Halves' new album 'It Goes, It Goes (Forever and Ever)', and didn't want to miss the start of their set at The Workman's Club.

I needn't have bothered. The new Wellington Quay venue was also almost half an hour behind. But when Halves finally took up their instruments it was well worth the wait. Halves are exceptional at creating dark, eerie atmospheres that creep up on you slowly as perfect post rock should, erupting into enormous, epic, reverb-laden climaxes with butterfly inducing results. 'Darling, You'll Meet Your Maker' was a particular highlight, its high pitched harmonies hair-raisingly creepy and wonderfully contrasted with popping electronics. On top of that, the boys appeared to be having a genuinely great time on stage, constantly swapping keyboard, guitar, melodic, drums and laptop duties between them. A gracious expression of thanks to Steve Reddy for stage managing was warmly applauded, as was a plug for their new album and its launch party at the same venue on October 30th. I'll be the first to admit, there's far too much ambient/instrumental/post-rock in this town, but Halves are streets ahead of the competition.

With two more nights of top Irish music still to come, at that, it was time to call it a day. I'll have a full run down of tonight and tomorrow's happenings on Monday morning. In the meantime, you can check out more photos from last night over in Caught Out. To see the full schedule for HWCH click here or to see my top ten recommendations for the weekend click here.