• Wavves – You’re Welcome

    May 30, 2017 - By 

    There was a moment in time when suggesting that Wavves would have a sixth album was laughable. Such was the breakdown of main man and songwriter Nathan Williams following the breakout success of their first album that led to most presuming that Wavves was going to be a short lived experiment. Yet Williams did manage to make the groups second album King of the Beach; to date the most perfect crystallisation of the groups wailing, bratty skate-punk. Now its seven years later and there’s been four albums in between, all of them decent but none of them truly great. There…

  • (Sandy) Alex G – Rocket

    May 25, 2017 - By 

    When Philadelphia based multi-instrumentalist Alex Giannascoli was eight years old his older brother, also a musician, enlisted the youngster to play drums in his band. This early exposure to performing persisted into adolescence and Alex would eventually turn his hand to writing and composing his own songs. Giannascoli revealed in a recent interview that he found it extremely difficult to be himself around his peers, growing up. He concluded that the only time he felt truly comfortable in his skin was when he was making music. In 2010, Giannascoli transformed into Alex G and he released his debut album Race…

  • Jawbone

    May 19, 2017 - By 

    There is no doubt that Jawbone, director Thomas Q. Napper’s debut, follows many of the usual tropes that most of the boxing/fighting movies out there fall into. You could even say that its subplot, dealing with first time writer and star, Johnny Harris’ (Gangster No 1) alcohol addiction, is a formula that has been flogged to death in this genre. However, what gives Jawbone an edge over the rest is its superb cast and acting, the brutally honest and realistic manner in which it deals with addiction, depression and societal decay, along with a refreshing lack of glorification surrounding its premise.…

  • Video Premiere: Aaron Shanley & The Horrortongues – My Mind Ain’t Pretty (At The Minute)

    May 17, 2017 - By 

    Primed to release his debut album, Metal Alligator, at Belfast’s Voodoo on May 24, Northern Irish artist Aaron Shanley now has a full band in tow in the form of the excellently named Horrortongues. Ahead of that, we’re pleased to present a suitably tripped-out live video for ‘My Mind Ain’t Pretty (At The Minute)’, a track we said was “a really tidy, very promising taste of things to come from the wanderlust-smitten artist” upon its original release back in 2015. Filmed at Millbank Studios in Lisburn, the well-honed, scuzzed-out lo-fi aesthetic of Shanley and the Horrortongues is laid bare in fine fashion Pre-order the stellar…

  • April Verch Band @ The Old Courthouse, Antrim

    May 15, 2017 - By 

    Antrim’s The Old Courthouse was a fitting venue for the April Verch Band, which brought its vibrant, fiddle-based Americana to a building that dates to 1776. Fitting because, in a way, fiddler and step dancer Verch was bringing the music home. In the seventeen hundreds over a hundred thousand Irish left home to begin a new life in North America, bringing with them their fiddle music, songs and dance traditions, and these roots — amongst others — were evident during a captivating ninety-minute show. Of course, along with the Ulster-Scotts/Irish came the Scottish, French and Polish — amongst multiple nationalities…

  • The Divine Comedy w/ Lisa O’Neill @ CQAF, Belfast

    May 8, 2017 - By 

    It’s a while since Neil Hannon has toured with a full band version of The Divine Comedy, having toured last album Bang Goes The Knighthood solo back in 2010 (including a date in this same faux-starlit CQAF marquee) and having made most appearances since – such as his Mandela Hall performance upon winning 2015’s Oh Yeah Legend Award – with a stripped back trio of acoustic guitar, piano and accordion. The days of endless major label money having long since dried up, a return to the era of bringing along a full orchestra seems unlikely, but the promise of a…

  • Lady Macbeth

    May 4, 2017 - By 

    Like a tightly wound corset ready to explode, Lady Macbeth is masterfully controlled period piece with a rebellious, cruel heart. Based on Nikolai Leslov’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk, which imagined Shakespeare’s play from the perspective of the Scottish king’s much-maligned wife and cheerleader, the film applies its own interpretative reorientation to 19th-century England’s landed gentry, a social world the English imagination clings to in dusty, wistful, National Heritage nostalgic, a cosy image of class harmony imminently worthy of subversion (the film has been called an ‘anti-Downton Abbey‘). Lady Macbeth is a bold and confident debut work from screenwriter Alice Birch…

  • Playlist: TTA is 4

    May 2, 2017 - By 

    Today is our 4th birthday and to celebrate we have compiled a playlist of 40 of our favourite Irish tracks from the years we have been operational featuring Adebisi Shank, Sleep Thieves, Oh Boland, Girls Names, No Monster Club, Documenta, Bantum, Katie Kim and many more. Music and culture has exploded over the last four years here and we’ve been proud to cover that throughout. We’ll be relaunching The Thin Air magazine and website later in the year but in the meantime we’d like to thank our contributors, everyone who has supported us, picked up the magazine, clicked on the website,…

  • AAA: Therapy? acoustic tour

    May 4, 2017 - By 

    In this installment of AAA, we go behind the scenes with Therapy? on their acoustic tour taking in the Empire in Belfast and the Roisin Dubh in Galway. Photos by Liam Kielt and Sean McCormack. The Empire, Belfast by Liam Kielt Roisin Dubh, Galway by Sean McCormack