• Manic Street Preachers @ Olympia Theatre, Dublin

    December 14, 2014 - By 

    You sometimes have to wonder if people do these “Let’s play the album everyone likes” shows in order to destroy the album. If you’ve made one truly significant album in your lifetime, fair deuce to you, but after a while it must feel like a noose. If you were to do such a show, how would you do it? Could you do it in such a way that puts this awful beauty that hangs over you to rest, while not screwing over the people who’ve connected themselves to the record and provided the opportunity for you to perform this show?…

  • Foo Fighters – Sonic Highways

    November 28, 2014 - By 

    Having started from such humble beginnings, the Foo Fighters really have come a long way. Who honestly could have called it, that the drummer from that band where the lead singer killed himself would eventually become one of the more vital figures in mainstream rock? The thing about Dave Grohl is that the man actively seems to want us all to be better. He wants us to know about the bands and the sounds that shaped his music, partially to help us appreciate his records in a whole new light, but mostly to make sure that some of the more…

  • Classic Album: The Dismemberment Plan – Emergency & I

    November 24, 2014 - By 

    “The only thing worse than bad memories, is no memories at all” – Travis Morrison, “Spiders In The Snow” Emergency & I is a legitimately great record. It’s one of those rare, incredibly charitable records that just keeps on giving and giving. Repeat listens reveal so many layers and nuances to each of the songs. Musically, everything seems to work. Eric Axelson’s basslines are genuinely inspiring, so good in their own right that they could carry the songs on their own, and often do. This is offset by Joe Easley’s drumming acting perfectly as Axelson’s foil and sliding effortly between…

  • iamamiwhoami – Blue

    November 12, 2014 - By 

    Sweden’s iamamiwhoami are a curious wee thing. Self releasing electronic albums every year with corresponding YouTube videos providing a unique visual interpretation of the  soundscape the band creates. Their third album, Blue, is not different. For the sake of this review, we’ll be stripping away all of the multimedia whizzbang flashiness and looking at the album in isolation. In this regard, Blue is an interesting but ultimately straightforward synthpop album. The thick, deep bass synths cover the low of the mix, like some kind of heavy musical butter or a laboured simile. The vocals range from the silky and ethereal…

  • Thom Yorke – Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes

    October 20, 2014 - By 

    Listen Thom­­, we need to talk. It’s not me, it’s you.  You’ve decided to release your new record, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes via Bittorrent. Conceptually, it’s neat wee idea, using the model which the industry has railed against for the last 15 years. It’s cheeky and somewhat clever, but a bit ‘too little too late’ considering the success of services like Bandcamp. The album’s release model is also stuck with being compared, quite fairly, to the ‘Pay what you want’ model of 2007’s In Rainbows. The thing is, that album legitimately challenged how we experience and release music in the modern…

  • Interview: The Hold Steady

    October 2, 2014 - By 

    Having released their stellar sixth studio album, Teeth Dreams, back in March, Brooklyn indie rock heroes The Hold Steady are experiencing something of a much-deserved resurgence as of late. Formed back in 2004, the Craig Finn-fronted band will stop off in Belfast and Dublin on October 17 and 18 respectively, as part of a forthcoming European tour to promote the aforementioned album. Ahead of those dates, Will Murphy has a chat with Finn about the band’s songwriting process, the recording and release of Teeth Dreams and his support for – wait for it – Queens Park Rangers. It was about…

  • 20000 Days on Earth

    September 22, 2014 - By 

    It’s important to understand that we all have our own biases. So before I discuss the new documentary 20000 Days On Earth, I feel it is important to establish that I’m a firm believer in Nick Cave and the strange, almost Lovecraftian shape his career has taken. From the apocalyptic noise of Birthday Party to last years pretty excellent  Bad Seed’s release Push The Sky Away and all of the films and novels in between, Cave has taken a journey filled with drugs, violence and religion which is just screaming to be explored cinematically. Anything that can give me more…

  • Manic Street Preachers – Futurology

    July 16, 2014 - By 

    Twenty-five years is a long time to be doing anything, especially making music. One of the biggest problems facing a group lasting this long is that of progression. Where do you go? It comes down to a simple choice: keep pushing forward or stagnate and reiterate. There are pros and cons for both. If you keep advancing you could discover new styles and sounds and be a modern 1970s Bowie but you could also look ridiculous and fail spectacularly like 1990s Bowie. With repetition you end up tying your hands behind your back and locking yourself into a single inescapable…

  • Classic Album: Hüsker Dü – Zen Arcade

    June 19, 2014 - By 

    From the moment you press play, you know that you’re in for something special. Those drums, militaristic and intensely precise, ushers you into this false sense of rigidity and form. Then that bass comes in with its thick tone and fuzzy edges, blurring the sound and removing focus while never losing time. We have a second to breathe and adapt before that guitar comes in. Phasered and distorted to all hell with a piercing shrill undertone, its presence is pushing this carefully constructed structure to brink collapse. This wall of sound is finally scaled by an almost nonsensical barking vocal…

  • Fucked Up – Glass Boys

    June 18, 2014 - By 

    Fucked Up are a band living in the shadow of some powerful things. In 2008, the band released their second record, Chemistry of Common Life, an immensely satisfying and exhilarating album that challenges the very essence of hardcore and distills it into something new and exciting. In 2011, they followed it up with David Come To Life, an ambitious, grandiose concept album which explores love, betrayal and metatextual analysis in Thatcher’s Britain over its seventy-eight minute run time. These records can be mentioned in the same breath as Refused’s Shape of Punk To Come or Husker Du’s Zen Arcade as vital punk albums…