• Glassjaw – Material Control

    Oddly specific as this is, 2017 might be the year for semi-defunct post-hardcore bands from the early 2000s to release long-awaited followups. At The Drive-In dropped In•ter a•li•a in May after a 17-year gap. Before the news of Jesse Lacey’s alleged history of sexual exploitation saw the band being rightly cancelled, Brand New released Science Fiction. Even Quicksand released Interiors nearly two decades after their last broadcast. Now, almost out of the blue, Glassjaw who, aside from a few scattered EPs, have been silent since 2002’s Worship and Tribute have quietly released Material Control. Glassjaw were never as influential as ATD-I or inspired quite the level…

  • Penguin Cafe Orchestra – Union Cafe

    Fact: penguins are not festive. Don’t be fooled every time you see one stuffed into a garish Christmas jumper on the front of your greeting cards, and join me and my national campaign in returning them to the sender with a ‘must do better’ message attached. Some species live in areas as tropical as the Galapagos Islands, whilst none, whatsoever, live in the northern hemisphere, supposedly the headquarters of Father Christmas’ operations. Every time we see the ludicrous line up of one fuzzy friend between the big man himself and a polar bear part of my zoological soul dies, and…

  • U2 – Songs of Experience

    When was the last time you were really excited by anything U2 did? You could say The Joshua Tree tour, but really that was just multimillionaires hawking nostalgia at exorbitant prices. Musically, U2 haven’t crafted anything of real weight in over a decade. The last album that most people seem to unambiguously like is All That You Can’t Leave Behind, but all that should be cited as is the ultimate example of playing it safe. Consider their previous LP, Songs of Innocence. What do you remember? Odds are the only thing that comes to mind from that fustercluck of a…

  • Björk – Utopia

    A concise title is such lovely gift. Being able to neatly summarise a complex and expansive piece of art is a pure form of poetry. Björk’s latest LP has one of those titles: Utopia. Of all the words that she could pluck out of her expansive multilingual dictionary, why did a word which such loaded connotations leap out at her? On a global scale, any form of utopian ideal is running threadbare as pretty much everything around us falls into a state of disarray. In the context of Björk though, this is her first album after the emotionally raw exploration…

  • Five to Two – How Tall Do You Think You Could Grow (If You Wanted to Be So Tall)

    Crudely speaking, size can be determined by a multitude of factors including environment, competition and space to grow into. Handily, for the sake of this review, the same biological principles can be transferred to culture, and as a subsection, music. Let’s put the Dublin jazz scene under the microscope here for a minute. In terms of environment, JJ Smyth’s has consistently flown the flag for Dublin’s jazz and blues scene for years, but is limited by its size and accessibility, whilst Sugar Club is arguably the best suited venue but is a challenge to book for jazz promoters amongst events…

  • Sufjan Stevens – The Greatest Gift Mixtape

    The release of Sufjan Stevens’ last album proper, 2015’s Carrie & Lowell, proved him to be an artist still very much at the top of his game. A decade on from the breakthrough of Illinois, the album saw him swap that record’s lavish arrangements, and follow up The Age of Adz’s oddball electronics, for a return to the hushed folk and introspection found on 2004’s Seven Swans, this time themed around his parents in the wake of his mother’s passing. The album’s tracklisting seemed so perfectly formed – he tended to play all eleven tracks at subsequent live shows, as…

  • Hüsker Dü – Savage Young Dü

    We should all be eternally grateful to the Numero Group. Their tireless efforts to ensure that some of the great quasi-lost nuggets of our popular culture get rediscovered and granted a level of respect that they were deprived of upon their initial release. Their reissues and remasters are rich and varied, encompassing the likes of hardcore luminaries Unwound as well as forgotten soul star and transgender icon Jackie Shane. While the label has been working at an awe-inspiring level, they’ve recently outdone themselves. Savage Young Dü is a 69 track tome tracking the early years of the seminal Hüsker Dü, one…

  • Morrissey – Low in High School

    To say that Steven Patrick Morrissey is a different artist to the one so many of us flocked to in our teens seems a platitude at this stage. In The Smiths, Morrissey’s marriage of equal parts teenage melodrama, small town misery and genuine wit struck a chord somewhere between Paul Weller, Oscar Wilde and Holden Caulfield. There have been plenty of smart-arsed indie singers since, but not one can hold a candle to what this man was when at his best.  The persona of a sensitive, working class and vehemently anti-Tory frontman is long gone though, and has given way to an increasingly…

  • Yung Lean – Stranger

      Yung Lean is the kind of artist that only could have achieved fame with the aid of the Internet. He lives in between the lines of meme and artist so effectively that it’s hard to know whether he exists as parody or not. He is the rap game equivalent of an imitation Picasso painted by a golden retriever. If it looks like a Picasso and feels like a Picasso does it really matter? The answer depends on how seriously you take your art… Lean rose to prominence in the last hay days of Tumblr. Like a last wish before…

  • Exploded View – Summer Came Early

    Exploded View’s self titled debut was easily one of the finest albums of last year, even if it did fly a little further under the radar than it deserved to. Then again, it did come seemingly from nowhere. Vocalist Anika had already put out some promising solo material with the members of Beak but her work had been dominated by covers so its shelf life seemed limited. After finding a natural chemistry with a backing band assembled for some shows in Mexico, Exploded View were born, and the resulting, all-original album – self-described as being “for fans of Can, dub…