• Gifted

    June 14, 2017 - By 

    Let’s do the sums. You have a precocious little girl, a child prodigy who speaks to adults with cute sassiness + a custody courtroom battle with emotional speeches + an aggressively insistent soundtrack + the director of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Marc Webb). When you run the numbers, Gifted should be insufferable. But it’s not. It’s a minor movie, sure, but a sweet one. Chris Evans plays Frank, a salt of the earth guy who wears baseball caps and fixes boats on the Florida coast and looks after his niece Mary (McKenna Grace), thrust into his care as an infant…

  • Stream: Kieran O’Brien – Only A Dream

    June 14, 2017 - By 

    Last October we wrote about Galway ambient-folk artist Kieran O’Brien‘s After The Storm EP, a heartfelt, raw and honest exploration of personal rediscovery, nature and memory. Returning now with ‘Only a Dream’ taken from his forthcoming EP, O’Brien continues to explore similar themes with an added verve and a wealth of vibrant atmosphere. Stylistically, the track shifts slightly from the folkier leanings of After The Storm and instead takes a swing at the dream-pop pace and textures of Real Estate, The War on Drugs and fellow Galway artists like New Pope. It is a path that is well-trodden by upcoming artists and one that is all too often…

  • Jefre Cantu-Ledesma – On The Echoing Green

    June 14, 2017 - By 

    Chaos is everywhere. Politically, ecologically or economically speaking, you can’t look far without longing for a friend humanity has never been too well acquainted with: Order. Timely, then, is the return of Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, widely regarded as the apotheosis of ambient drone rock. So frequent are his trademark chaotic turns into rhythmless noise-scapes that comparatively 2017’s Fyre Festival looks like an extremely well organised event. On The Echoing Green, however, promises more overt pop elements at the fore, experimenting in clarity and collaboration and in doing so showcasing a whole new side to Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Prior to going solo in…

  • Inbound: Silverbacks

    June 13, 2017 - By 

    Having just released one of our favourite Irish EPs of the year so far, Sink The Fat Moon, Dublin indie rock five-piece Silverbacks chat to Will Murphy about lo-fi aesthetic, the imprint of the 90s on their sound and their plans for the rest of the year. Your sound picks up where the likes of Pavement, The Pixies and other fuzzier 90s groups left off. What about that era appeals to you so much? Everyone in the band is drawn to guitar bands and I quite like when that’s paired with lyrics of a humorous nature. You find bands like…

  • My Cousin Rachel

    June 13, 2017 - By 

    The fiction of mid-century English author Daphne du Maurier has inspired some of cinema’s most sinister highlights, the most admired being Hitchcock’s Rebecca and The Birds. Written and directed by Roger Michell, this new adaptation of her 1951 novel My Cousin Rachel is the first film treatment since Richard Burton and Olivia de Havilland’s romance a year after publication. Michell is maybe best known as the director of rom-com smash Notting Hill, and much of his work since, like frothy breakfast show comedy Morning Glory or Bill Murray’s FDR turn in Hyde Park on Hudson, has stuck to middle of…

  • Watch: Malojian – Some New Bones

    June 13, 2017 - By 

    Having released one of the Irish albums of last year in the Steve Albini-produced This Is Nowhere, Stevie Scullion’s Malojian have spent the last while working on its follow-up, the brilliantly-titled Let Your Weirdness Carry You Home. The lead track from that, ‘Some New Bones’ is a spirited return that marries psych-dappled textures and a Motorik groove with swaggering guitar patterns and brief passages of sublime orchestration. Adding another dimension to the release is Colm Laverty’s stellar video, which comprises archive footage from BFI’s digital archive and newly-shot footage from Malojian’s recording sessions at Rathlin East Lighthouse in February. Combined, the…

  • Bon Iver Set For Sounds From a Safe Harbour

    June 13, 2017 - By 

    With The National already announced, it’s been revealed that Bon Iver will play Cork’s Sounds from a Safe Harbour festival on Friday, September 15. Set to return from September 14-17, more acts for the annual festival – which is curated by Bryce & Aaron Dessner, Cillian Murphy, Enda Walsh and Mary Hicksonare – are yet to be announced. Tickets go on sale via the Cork Opera House website on Wednesday, June 21 at 10am.

  • Album Premiere: Bear Worship – WAS

    June 13, 2017 - By 

    Back in January last year, we were pleased to share ‘Our Friends’ by Dublin’s Karl Knuttel AKA Bear Worship. A track we said “evoked everything from the chamber folk balladry of Department of Eagles to the floaty dream-pop of Candy Claws” it marked the arrival of an artist with remarkable potential. Having moved to Shanghai, Barcelona and back to Dublin in the meantime, Knuttel has come good and then some on his sublime, nine-track debut album WAS. A prismatic traipse of melodically rich, compositionally ambitious alt-pop, the likes of the subtly ecstatic ‘Shimmerings’ and ‘Galapagos’ conjure the aforementioned acts, Grizzly Bear,…

  • Critical Bastards #14 Launch

    June 14, 2017 - By 

    Critical Bastards launch their new issue later this evening in Dublin’s Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. The latest release from the critical art journal is centred on the theme of ‘hope’ and its role within the creation and enjoyment of art – the open call for submissions earlier this year advised: “Critical thinking without hope is cynicism. Hope without critical thinking is naïveté… We are looking for critical responses to the idea of the hope that underpins the ceaseless endurance of existence, and of art.”  As we continue in 2017 with the current global and national social and political crises, this…

  • Stream: Rory Nellis – All I Ever Wanted Was a Chance

    June 13, 2017 - By 

    Set to headline a free Thin Air show at Lavery’s in Belfast on Thursday night, Rory Nellis remains one of our favourite solo artists from these shores. The fifth consecutive single from his forthcoming album, There Are Enough Songs In The World, ‘All I Ever Wanted Was A Chance’ is a full-band alt-pop gem that tussles with disenchantment and apathy in masterful fashion, revealing a darker yet no less incandescent shade to Nellis’ expansive musical palette.