• Joanna Gruesome – Peanut Butter

    May 26, 2015 - By 

    As a band alleged to have formed at anger management classes, Joanna Gruesome are a surprisingly jovial, albeit dark-humoured group when interviewed.  The band’s guitarist/singer Owen Williams summed this up describing the album when, he said: “This is our second record.  It is about 20 minutes long and aims to expose the radical possibilities of peanut butter.”  This tongue-in-cheek adolescence also runs through the core of the music, which displays glimpses of emotional depth but quickly resorts to bursts of noise, redolent of a teenage temper tantrum. Debut album Weird Sister was a mixed bag that threw up the occasional odd-ball…

  • The Fall – Sub-Lingual Tablet

    May 20, 2015 - By 

    Only a fool writes off The Fall, a band that have had more returns to form than most bands have had records. With the current lineup now being their longest serving as a complete unit (aside from the recent addition of second drummer Daren Garratt), some have accused them of getting too comfortable and being in need of another shake-up like the days of old, since 2011’s sloppy Ersatz GB, a surprising misstep after the back-to-back excellence of Imperial Wax Solvent and Your Future Our Clutter before it. 2013’s Re-Mit then failed to fully compensate, being a mish-mash of greatness…

  • Donal Scullion – Superpowers

    May 12, 2015 - By 

    As an NI Soul Troop mainstay, Donal Scullion is more than familiar with the nuances of jazz, funk and, of course, soul, not to mention the work that goes into arranging tracks that bear those generic attributes.  This is what contributes to Scullion’s grasp of composition and style on his debut solo offering Superpowers; an album that is full of all the tropes of big-band splendour but tows the line quite sweetly between the singer/songwriter and pop-soloist milieus.  In theory, that’s a tall order and not without its pitfalls, but Scullion has obviously approacehed Superpowers with enthusiasm and vigour, and…

  • Not Squares – Bolts

    April 24, 2015 - By 

    For fans of Belfast trio Not Squares it’s been a long wait for a follow up to 2010’s Yeah OK, one of the finest Irish debuts of recent years. With drummer/primary vocalist Keith Winter moving to London in 2012, new material has largely had to be crafted long distance, and so we’ve only been treated to a handful of singles to tide us over in the intervening period. These singles make up almost half of the new album, and other tracks like ‘Can Opener’ will be well familiar to anyone who has caught their sporadic live shows over the last…

  • Ciaran Lavery & Ryan Vail – Sea Legs

    April 22, 2015 - By 

    While people will continue to argue tirelessly about whether the internet has been a good or a bad thing for music, here comes another argument for ‘good’. Derry minimal electronic musician Ryan Vail and Aghagallon alt-folkster Ciaran Lavery first became friends online before finally meeting up at a festival they were both appearing at and decided to collaborate on this mini-album. Regardless of whether or not you think streaming music is as bad as killing elephants like Tom DeLonge claims, the sense of community that the internet affords to bring together musicians from different musical backgrounds to try out collaborations…

  • Villagers – Darling Arithmetic

    April 21, 2015 - By 

    Villagers has always been something of a vehicle for Conor O’Briens creative vision. Early on as a band it enabled him to explore the rich soundscapes we heard on Becoming A Jackal; the arrangements were complex, brooding and gave more than a tip of the cap to Nick Drake’s darkest days and recordings, but was most certainly foregrounded with O’Brien’s soloist vernacular. {Awayland} had a different, but no less focused modus operandi, with O’Brien and co. expanding a sound that ultimately felt like a more colourful, collaborative experience. Now on album number three, Villagers’ Darling Arithmetic goes beyond a back…

  • The Mighty Stef – Year of the Horse

    April 27, 2015 - By 

    Dublin’s The Mighty Stef went for nailed-on quality with the production of The Year Of The Horse, traveling to California to splash out on Arctic Monkeys and QOTSA studio legend Alain Johannes. It’s a solid tactic, and sees the rocker’s tight, clean yet snarling stomp polished to a complex gem of a guitar album. It’s been a long road at a full eight year since Stefan Murphy released his debut, entitled The Sins Of Sainte Catherine. Perhaps that heady sense of an album slimmed down and refined over an extended period is a product of the wait; the outcome of…

  • Shlohmo – Dark Red

    April 9, 2015 - By 

    Up until this record, the first since 2011’s Bad Vibes, Shlohmo existed in that murky area of electronica that throws up morpheme collisions like glitchhop, witchtrap and future-garage. His particular brand of emotive electronica had, on his solo releases, hovered just a few notches over the ambient dissonance line and on his collaborations he exhibited a chameleon like ability that let him lend his talents over the genre boundary without stretching too far out of shape. Just look at last year’s collaboration with Jeremih that saw the LA based producer slip seamlessly into RnB like a seasoned pro. While that…

  • Bee Mick See – The Belfast Yank

    March 18, 2015 - By 

    Does belonging to a location make an album better? Is Springsteen as interesting if you remove New Jersey or Nebraska? What about NWAand Compton? If this is the case, then rapper Bee Mick See’s debut Belfast Yank deserves some serious credit. The album is entirely engulfed in Belfast. Its language, culture and people are the subjects of various tracks ranging from loving portraits (‘Belfast Slang’) to lacerating polemics (‘Natural Scents’). Even his flow, which owes an obvious debt to Slug from Atmosphere, is heavily accented; it could only belong to this city. In spite of its overproduced beats, which bares a welcome resemblance to Malibu Shark Attack, it’s a strangely emotionally honest album. BeeMickSee is surprisingly…

  • Modest Mouse – Strangers To Ourselves

    March 17, 2015 - By 

    Given their track record, the announcement of a new Modest Mouse record should be cause for excitement; lest we forget Lonesome Crowded West and The Moon and Antarctica. While their 2007 effort, We Were Dead Before This Ship Even Sank, was somewhat lacking, the group have such a unique sound and energy that this could be written off as an unfortunate blip in an stellar track record. Sadly, while Strangers to Ourselves does have many excellent tracks it, fundamentally, is a messy and disappointing album. Beginning with a solid one-two of ‘Strangers to Ourselves’ and ‘Lampshades on Fire’, the album…