• Premiere: Vivamagnolia – 990 Miles

    March 23, 2021 - By 

    Sharing a certain Appalachian sentiment, Ireland’s footing in Americana-steeped rock has traditionally been solid. Someone very much making his imprint on the next generation is Patrick J. Hodgen, AKA Vivamagnolia. The last few years have yielded a string of excellent singles that variously recalled those indie and alt. country masters of the late-90s/early-00s like Mark Linkous, Will Oldham, and Jason Molina, none of whom shied away from experimentation within the form. Following up on his debut EP, new single ‘990 Miles’ sees his work pared back into the kind of soft-focus, vulnerable, Westward-facing indie rock that made Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot an era-definer, elevated by gospel-tinted, George Harrison-worthy slide guitar as Hodgen reflects upon…

  • Watch: Tandem Felix – Nightclub (I Sold My Soul To The Devil)

    July 25, 2019 - By 

    Perennial TTA faves and Americana songwriting masters Tandem Felix are back with their first single in two years, ‘Nightclub (I Sold My Soul To The Devil)’. Pristine slide parts and curveballing synth moments accompany the “tale of a boy who makes a Faustian pact; exchanging his soul for the means to spend every remaining night inside a grotty club”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the band have one-upped themselves once more – ‘Nightclub’ offers a clarity of vision and progression of their country-informed storytelling, exciting us for what’s to come on their long-awaited debut album, Rom-Com. Songwriter David Tapley had this to say of the song: “Over three nights, over three…

  • Giant Sand @ Whelan’s, Dublin

    June 13, 2018 - By 

    No word in the English language sums up Howe Gelb’s ever-mutating life’s work Giant Sand more than idiosyncratic. Threaded through by just one man and his broad-ranging – oft. cowpunk – plays on the idioms of Americana and the topics he’s always held dear: love, death, humour & wanderlust, never straying too far from wryly homespun existentialism. Despite a few of indefinite hiatuses in the last few years, Giant Sand’s original lineup were reconvened for a complete rerecording of their debut LP, a scattershot snapshot of 35 years ago accompanied by members of Gelb’s LA & Tuscon circles at the…