• Douglas Dare – Aforger

    Whelm, the 2014 debut album by London-based songwriter Douglas Dare, was a bold opening statement. It was held together by Dare’s powerful voice in spite of its musical idiosyncrasies; a voice that was immediately striking in its delivery and cadences, but which later revealed a fragility that suggested it was the tenor of a man in emotional distress. He has always written from a personal place, but his second album, Aforger, amplifies that to the nth degree. It’s an album in which the music is complex (almost to a self-conscious degree) and whose lyrics speak of deep personal strife; a struggle against…

  • Robocobra Quartet – Music for all Occasions

    Take some seedy post-punk jazzy brass, heavy anchored basslines, sporadic nuanced drum fills, and the expressive vocal stylings of the beat generation’s slam poets and you’re left with a vaguely accurate depiction of Belfast’s own Robocobra Quartet. Music for all Occasions is a fascinatingly fierce attack on the Irish music scene. The nine track collection is refreshingly ambitious and entirely bold throughout, with wandering variations of song length, style, and approach. It’s a very complete record designed to be listened to and appreciated from beginning to end. Lead single ‘Correct’ opens the record and immediately sets the tone for everything…

  • Bayonne – Primitives

    There is a delicate, reserved complexity in the opening of Austin, Texas multi-instrumentalist Roger Seller’s third album Primitives. The LP, which was originally released in 2014 was recently re-issued on Mom + Pop Music to coincide with Seller’s newly adopted pseudonym, Bayonne. As the intro builds with cascading layers and loops of guitars, keys and vocals, the rhythm manages to be dizzyingly off-kilter while maintaining a enthralling punch. And that is by and large how the album plays out. It is an LP of measured technicality, celestial melody and an infectious pulse. While its perfectly polished production and careful restraint may prevent it from being…

  • We Cut Corners – The Cadences of Others

    The first time I saw Dublin’s We Cut Corners was on a nasty, raining evening in October 2014. I’d never heard of them but a friend dragged me out and I was in the mood to be distracted. They had just released their sophomore effort Think Nothing. Each song they played that night was a masterstroke of brevity, every line smacked with authenticity, sitting gingerly on top of John Duignan’s clanging guitars and Conall Ó’Breacháin’s drums. By the end, lyrics like “You live by the sword and get hit by a bus” and “Maybe in the future I will say more…

  • Bell X1 – Arms

    It’s been 16 years since Bell X1 released their severely overlooked debut Neither Am I and began a steady ascent towards their current status as one of Ireland’s most reliable bands.  They’ve existed in a curious niche since their inception, their sound too broad for the quick-fix pop set with whom they found favour with singles such as ‘Rocky Took A Lover’, ‘The Great Defector’ and ‘Velcro’: crowd-pleasers all, but as the trio have grown as musicians, their modus operandi has become more difficult to pin down. They’re much more of an albums band than most people realise, and since…

  • Bantum – Move

    With a three year gap since Legion, his debut full-length album, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Bantum (aka Ruairi Lynch) would want to execute a fairly insular, idiosyncratic affair with his latest effort. Instead, it’s the relationships that Lynch has formed in the interim that sees Move thrive as an essential addition to the 2016 Irish release calendar. Having enlisted the likes of CC Brez, Loah, Rusangano Family, and a few more familiar names to inject proceedings with a veritable feast of homegrown talent, Lynch’s vision becomes one of celebration and appreciation. Move feels like one of those records…

  • Leonard Cohen – You Want It Darker

    After 82 years of experience, a hundred thousand cigarettes later, and more than a few near-perfect words of love, life, death, and every notable human occurrence between, Leonard Cohen has returned with You Want it Darker – the 14th studio album from the “Godfather of Gloom”. Regardless of the album’s suggestively bleak title and the monicker the poet and author established for himself back in ‘71 with his controversially downbeat yet critically acclaimed album Songs of Love and Hate, this record as a whole is actually more sombre and settled. It sounds entirely certain of itself. The songs are notably sparse in their…

  • American Football – American Football (LP2)

    There was a lot going on back in 1999. Will Smith was declaring the next thousand years for himself, everyone was waiting for that big party Prince had promised and there was far, far too much clip art around. So it’s no wonder that some people missed a very quiet yet incredibly important moment in music history. Like the proverbial ripple in the pond (or butterfly hadouken) the release of American Football’s debut started as a small, localised wonder but since has proved to be a landmark and touchstone, for many reasons, but most notably for its influence on nascent genres like emo and post-rock. The…

  • Ilenkus – Hunger

    Galway’s Ilenkus returned this month with their first release since 2014’s EP The Crossing. Hunger sees the quintet moving from the sludgy Neurosis-leaning sound of their previous work into a considerably more frenetic, uninhibited direction. This has done them plenty of favours, the tracks on this 15 minute offering being a step up both in terms of technicality but also in its immediate appeal. While it is by no means a re-invention of the wheel, it is a triumphant chunk of energy that deserves to stand front-and-centre within its realm. Written as a single piece, Hunger‘s four sections flow into one another with hurricane ferocity. From…

  • Two Door Cinema Club – Gameshow

    Having struggled to find their place in society, both musically and personally over the past number of years, it was only going to be the hope that Bangor’s Two Door Cinema Club, who were previously so emblematic of indie-pop, would return with an exciting and re-energized collection. Distancing themselves from the indie scene, they have still managed to stay true to their original fun style of twitchy, undeniably danceable, electro-pop. This third musical endeavour, Gameshow, sees the trio curiously venture into new genres, digging into the 80s for inspiration and injecting a splash of colour to the record with the retro revival of disco, neo-soul and funk.…