• The Best Releases of 2015 So Far

    July 6, 2015 - By 

    We’re halfway through the year so we asked our contributors to select five of what they believe to be the very best releases so far, picking out personal sonic highlights from each of the great albums and EPs of 2015. Some reoccurring favourites include Courtney Barrett, Young Fathers, Kendrick Lamar and Sleater Kinney. Niall Cregan Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp A Butterfly A true great rap album that will be remembered years down the line as a game changer, with such a varied instrumentation, the complexity of each song is proportional to how hard to dive into the record.   Turnover – Peripheral Vision A…

  • Amy

    July 1, 2015 - By 

    I really didn’t want her to die. I mean, it’s a ludicrous thing to say: this is Amy Winehouse. We know how the story ends. But as Asif Kapadia’s scrupulously chronological film unspools we follow this charming, bolshy North London girl from a friend’s 14th birthday party (filmed in the unfailing fawn and sage colour scheme of 90’s video footage) through to the first few steps of her recording career and onto a success that she didn’t want and couldn’t withstand. “I don’t think I’ll be at all famous,” she offers in an interview. “I don’t think I could handle…

  • Alden Penner & Michael Cera @ Hangar, Dublin

    July 1, 2015 - By 

    Has realisation dawned that the drummer from the support band is the guy – the other guy – from the main band, the guy who’s not in the movies? Probably not. Alden Penner, he of The Unicorns and Clues – both of whose albums are respectively mercurial and wondrous, collaborative and eponymous – and Michael Cera don’t actually seem an unlikely pairing. When tickets for their initial Workman’s Club gig sold out quick smart the gig was duly upgraded; ambitiously it turned out, to Vicar Street, before finally settling in Hangar. The Adam Brown warms up an already roasted crowd,…

  • Russian Circles w/ Val Normal @ Hangar, Dublin

    June 29, 2015 - By 

    The Hangar, formerly Andrew’s Lane Theatre, is fast becoming the best place in Dublin for punk and metal gigs. Grimier, in all the right ways, than the Academy and much more spacious than Whelans, it’s a place that bands like Fucked Up and Titus Andronicus should be playing. So it makes sense that U:Mack, a thoroughly great group, would use the Hangar to host the Instrumental noise makers Russian Circles. The night kicks off with Dublin’s Val Normal, a math rock group. Val are very much a touring band. They’re the kind of group that you’d see on bills throughout…

  • Fleetwood Mac @ 3Arena, Dublin

    June 23, 2015 - By 

    So I’m back / to the 3 arena / back to the band that I love… Ok, so I may be biased… no hang on, I AM biased because I believe Fleetwood Mac are the greatest living, breathing and touring band in existence. They’re a band who have never mired in talent, their songs are astronomically timeless with all present members accounted for and individually influential. It’s an absolute privilege to watch them perform together with a never-waning enthusiasm for songs you’d expect them to be tired of by now. Consider this: the band are all pushing 70. Stevie announced…