• Sea Pinks @ Roisin Dubh, Galway

    I sometimes wonder how often, if ever, bands think about how the sound they craft in a studio translates to a live stage. Some groups are simply ‘studio bands’ – they sound better when they can endlessly and obsessively tinker with the sonic possibilities of technology. Others see the live setting as a different set of circumstances altogether, something with the living potential for a more sensory collective experience, something that can become a genuine reason to senselessly roar at your friends in a smoking area. While this is all pretty vague stuff to be beginning with, I promise it…

  • Interview: Sea Pinks

    Ahead of the launch of their stellar fifth (and second studio) album, Soft Days, at Belfast’s Lavery’s tomorrow night, Cathal McBride chats to Neil Brogan of Belfast guitar-pop trio Sea Pinks about progression, variation and recording their most emphatic record to date. Soft Days sounds like the most varied Sea Pinks album so far, was that a conscious choice when you were writing and recording it? I think the songs just came out that way, but I did want it to sound more varied. I’ve been doing this band for five years so you have to try and keep it interesting…

  • Stream: Sea Pinks – Yr Horoscope

    Launched at Belfast’s Lavery’s this Friday night (January 8) Soft Days by Sea Pinks sees the Neil Brogan-fronted trio in rudest of health. A highlight from the album – their fifth to date – the band have unveiled single ‘Yr Horoscope’, a twanging, surf-laced earwormer. Read our review of Soft Days here. Stream ‘Yr Horoscope’ below.

  • Sea Pinks – Soft Days

    With five albums in little over five years, Neil Brogan’s work ethic is admirable. And that’s just with Sea Pinks – add to that the albums and EPs he drummed on with Girls Names before his 2013 departure, an excellent recent EP with post-punk quartet Cruising and a low key solo EP as Winterlude early this year and you wonder where he finds the time. With more and more small bands operating part-time in today’s unsteady music business, longer gaps between releases are increasingly common, but the release of Dreaming Tracks in late 2014 still feels like only yesterday, and…

  • Watch: Sea Pinks – Depth of Field

    First shared last month – just over a year on from the release of the stellar Dreaming Tracks – we reckoned ‘Depth of Field’ by Belfast three-piece Sea Pinks was “yet another masterfully sanguine slice of melancholia from the Neil Brogan-fronted band, relating ambivalence and doubt in ways they mastered many moons ago.” Now the track – one of our favourite Sea Pinks’ tracks to date – has a video, which you can check out below. Sea Pinks’ new album, Soft Days, will be released via CF Records on January 8.

  • Monday Mixtape: Neil Brogan (Sea Pinks)

    Ahead of the release of their new LP, Soft Days, via CF Records on January 8, Neil Brogan of Belfast band Sea Pinks talks us through some of his current favourite tracks, including the likes of Robert Wyatt, Broadcast and Van Morrison. Little Wings – By Now I don’t buy vinyl very often because I can’t afford to, so when I do buy a record I either end up getting obsessed if I like it or bitterly resenting it if I don’t. Explains by Little Wings is one I bought a little while ago and thankfully it’s one I don’t hate. I like the…

  • Stream: Sea Pinks – Depth of Field

    Just over a year on from the release of the stellar Dreaming Tracks, Belfast threesome Sea Pinks have re-emerged with new single, ‘Depth of Field’. Yet another masterfully sanguine slice of melancholia from the Neil Brogan-fronted band, the track – relating ambivalence and doubt in ways they mastered many moons ago – is the first taste of what to expect from their forthcoming new album, Soft Days, which is set for release in January via CF Records.

  • Stream: Cruising – Cruising EP

    One of our collective favourite Irish bands, post-punk supergroup Cruising – featuring current and former members of Girls Names, September Girls, Sea Pinks & Logikparty – have unveiled their eponymous debut EP. Released through Tough Love Records on August 14, the first 100 of the 300 12″ pressings have been printed on hot pink vinyl, available to pre-order here. The EP was recorded across two nights in Dublin’s Guerrilla Studios and mixed in Belfast’s Start Together, where much of the Cruising membership have previously recorded. Blending garage & psych riffery very much through the filter of early ’80s post-punk – à la Joy Division, Magazine…