• Exclusive: Floor Staff – Gift Horse (Live)

    Set to perform the Oxjam Takeover in Dublin this evening, we’re pleased to present the first of three exclusive live videos by one of the city’s finest alt-pop bands, Floor Staff. Filmed at Elektra Studios, the video – featuring the band performing the earworming ‘Gift Horse’ – was directed by Bob Gallagher. The music was record by Chris Barry and James Feeney. Go here for the Oxjam Takeover Facebook event page and watch the video below.  

  • Premiere: North Side Drive – Snow//Sea//Sky

    Snow//Sea//Sky, the new release from North Side Drive, the “quiet” solo project of math-pop lads Former Monarchs‘ singing sticksman Jonathan Pearson, is, by his own admission, “weird”. In itself, though, that’s no deviation from the norm in an ever-evolving soundscape, moving from post-rock-inflected piano/cello pieces, to a stint at solo piano in honour of his grandfather in his last EP. His third EP under the name, the release invokes weather and the elements, and the moods Pearson conveys in his songs reflect this perfectly. ‘Snow’, for instance, is a beautiful piece, stark in its beginnings, before building up in a…

  • Caribou – Our Love

    Most adults have, at one stage or another, suffered from a broken heart. A thoroughly miserable life experience, the majority of us deal with it by ingesting copious amounts of chocolate, moping around the place feeling sorry for ourselves and – if you’re The Thin Air, at least – drinking ourselves into pointless oblivion in pubs. Dan Snaith clearly does things a bit differently, channelling what has been – if the lyrics are anything to go by – a period of considerable emotional turmoil into the ten songs that make up his fourth LP under the Caribou moniker (after two…

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles combines two of the least appealing trends in current pop culture. The first is an unearned nostalgia for television cartoons that were already pretty ropey to begin with (only worsened by the recent dominance of the listicle). The second is the relentless grimification of pulpy comic book material for the PG-13/12A multiplex crowd. TMNT is an inexplicable and gormless film, which seems to have been made with some fictional demographic in mind. There’s none of the pulpy stylishness of the comics, or the light-hearted silliness of the television series. It’s a Nickelodeon production but I can only imagine children will be quickly bored by the unending humourlessness…

  • Cork Heads: Shane Nolan (Bartender)

    In this installment of the aptly named Cork Heads -looking at some of the brightest sparks in Cork’s currently thriving scene- Brid O’Donovan meets with Shane Nolan, an experienced bartender with a background in art which informs his creative cocktails. So what cocktail did you just make for me? I was given the typical question of “Give me something limey/lemony” or a really bad description of how to make a drink for someone. This is what a lot of bartenders get but you learn from it. What I just made for you is what I would deem as the perfect drink. In it’s…