• BNQT @ The Button Factory, Dublin

    November 6, 2017 - By 

    The initial seeds of BNQT were planted by Midlake’s Eric Pulido while touring their Antiphon album back in 2013. He hoped he could convince several of his favourite vocalists into a collaboration of sorts that mirrored something akin to the Traveling Wilburys crossed with The Band, with vocal and songwriting duties being shared. Fast forward to April of this year and BNQT’s debut Volume.1 finally blossomed, with Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle, Travis’ Fran Healy, Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapronas and Band of Horses Ben Bridwell joining Pulido and some of his fellow Midlake colleagues; Jesse Chandler, Joey McClellan and McKenzie Smith. With…

  • Open House Festival 2014

    May 13, 2014 - By 

    We’re big fans of Open House Festival and how they do things here at the Thin Air. With an extraordinarily tasteful penchant for the very best in folk, roots and Americana, the team have brought us some unforgettable shows ranging from the likes of Bob Log III, Deer Tick, John Grant to Lower Dens, Cold Specs and Old Crowd Medicine Show. As well as one-off shows and happenings scattered across the years, Open House really flaunts its wares with its annual festival events. This summer they will present two festivals, a Belfast festival and a Bangor Festival. The former, taking place from June 18…

  • Label Mixtape: Bella Union

    January 24, 2014 - By 

    In the second installment of Label Mixtape, we take a look at one of the UK’s finest ever independent record labels, Bella Union. Initiated in 1997 by Cocteau Twins‘ founder/lead guitarist Robin Guthrie and the band’s bassist Simon Raymonde, the label has went on to put out records – many of them debut releases – by some of the greatest songwriting voices of the last twenty years. With a implicit penchant for artists masterfully meddling in the realms of indie rock, alt-folk and dream-pop, the label won the 2010 Independent Record Company of the Year – an accolade very much coinciding with releases…

  • John Grant – Pale Green Ghosts

    May 29, 2013 - By 

    What happens to the elephant in the room when somebody talks about it? Contrary to popular opinion, it does not vanish in a puff of grey smoke. Rather, everyone is abruptly made aware of said elephant as it crushes their toes, pokes them with its tusks and snuffles about in their pockets for polo mints. And nobody appreciates the impact of proverbial elephants more intimately than John Grant, once of The Czars and Midlake, whose penchant for revealing his most secret desires and guiltiest pleasures knows no bounds. Infamously, at last year’s Meltdown Festival he announced onstage that he had…