• Dublin Quays Festival Announced Festival Venue Breakdown

    August 11, 2017 - By 

    With its aim of “providing a programme of events that catches the imagination of the public, while also giving artists and emerging talent a platform to engage with along the river” Dublin Quays Festival will make its inaugural outing across August 17-20. Taking place in The Workmans Club, The Sound House, The Liquor Rooms, The Grand Social, The Wiley Fox, Sin E and Bagots Hutton, the free, four-day music, art and spoken word festival will host the likes of Squarehead, Old Hannah, Cat Dowling, Birds Of Olympus, Maria Kelly, Fiction Peaks, Kelly-Anne Byrne, Super Silly and Orchid Collective in the aforementioned…

  • Stream: Pat Dam Smyth – Goodbye Berlin

    August 11, 2017 - By 

    The follow-up to the masterfully mournful ‘Juliette’ – a single relaying the tale of a woman attempting to escape an abusive relationship released back in April – ‘Goodbye Berlin’ by Belfast’s Pat Dam Smyth is a song that tackles “being a kid and disappearing down the rock and roll rabbit hole”. Bounding with the raconteur’s inimitable words of wanderlust and genre-bending brand of incisive indie-folk, it’s a sweet tale that “recalls a time where music had pushed him to the brink, defining his relationship with both his past and his future, and the dominant force that songs have always played in…

  • Album Stream: Frankenstein Bolts – Aglow & Spark

    August 11, 2017 - By 

    Wexford duo Frankenstein Bolts are a rare breed indeed. Released off the back of a successful crowdfunding campaign, their new – second full-length studio – album Aglow & Spark finds the pair invoking subtly enraptured brilliance across nine tracks of slickly-produced, wonderfully-realised dream-pop that evokes everyone from Cocteau Twins, Slowdive and The Radio Dept. to fellow Irish acts exmagician, Documenta and SlowPlaceLikeHome. From the streamlined Motorik groove and intoxicated reminiscence of opener ‘Land & Water’ to the balmy electro-pop of closer ‘Short Term Memory’, the album is a confident and bewitching release that will surely rank up there with the best Irish releases…

  • Eclectic Picnic: An Interview with Paul Muldoon

    August 11, 2017 - By 

    Ahead of Muldoon’s Picnic – an “omnium-gatherum” of words and music featuring an in-house band and special guests including Duke Special and Colm Mac Con Iomaire – at Belfast’s the MAC on September 2, Pulitzer Prize-winning Northern Irish poet Paul Muldoon talks to Brian Coney about collaboration, the birth and of the picnic and his desire to give poetry an extra push. Go here to buy tickets to Muldoon’s Picnic at the MAC “(A) Muldoon’s Picnic” is a saying denoting something that is all over the place or having a lack of structure and organisation. Collins also reliably informs me…

  • So Much For The Sun – So Much For The Sun

    August 14, 2017 - By 

    Lisburn doom-laden stoner rock/sludge trio So Much For The Sun have just released their debut album. Mastered by doom stalwart Brad Boatright, the album was recorded and mixed by Niall Doran at Start Together Studios – who has recently become the go-to guy for any production of noteworthy heft in NI. The band’s eponymous debut is a lengthy and dynamic affair, its samples and lyrics delving into sociopolitical commentary with a careful blend of clean and guttural vocals that’d see them sit well on any Desertfest billing. With the crushing low-end of post-metal & doom, its heaviness is framed within the midrange-bogarting fuzz of early…

  • Owlcrusher – Owlcrusher

    August 10, 2017 - By 

    One of the finest metal releases Ireland will see this year comes in the form of the long-awaited debut from Banbridge blackened sludge/doom trio Owlcrusher. Its three long songs – including the obligatory eponymous track – were recorded by Niall Doran at Start Together Studios in Belfast. The album came out on Seeing Red Records, and is available to order in a limited CD run, with vinyls in the works. A sprawling, funereal affair, it has harsh, distant, blackened vocals from guitarist Andrew Speir and evokes the crushing sorrow of the likes of Warning and low end devastation of Yob. Live, the band are a must-see. Owlcrusher…

  • Watch: Montauk Hotel – Sense of Place

    August 10, 2017 - By 

    Five months on from the release of the debut EP – a release we said contained a “real earworming charm” – Dublin quartet Montauk Hotel have unveiled the video to their new sense ‘Sense of Place’. Nicely straddling the line between indie jangle and straight-up pop, the song – their foursome’s strongest and most confident effort to date – is accompanied by a video courtesy the band’s vocalist Claudia Verdecchia. Montauk Hotel launch the single upstairs in Whelan’s on Saturday, with support coming from Beauty Sleep and Exiles. Have yourself a Facebook event page.

  • #CorkLovesMusic Announces Youth and Music Series

    August 10, 2017 - By 

    Organised in association with Cork YMCA and GroundFloor Productions, #CorkLovesMusic has announced its forthcoming Youth and Music series, the first in a string of talk and performance events aimed at younger musicians and prospective music professionals. Taking place in the heart of Cork City, upstairs in the historic YMCA building on Marlboro street on the afternoon of August 19th, experimental foursome God Alone, young folk outfit Sewing Club, Outsiders Entertainment and Rapha will all perform. As well as this, some local music industry pros including rapper Spekulative Fiktion, Eilís Dillon and Overblown’s Jamie Coughlan will all impart some invaluable words…

  • “It’s a Different World For Women…” Women on Wednesdays at Whelan’s

    August 9, 2017 - By 

    “It’s a different world for women,” says Eve Belle, a singer-songwriter from Donegal before her appearance at the inaugural event Women on Wednesdays in Whelan’s back in July. As one of many female-driven initiatives in Dublin, Women on Wednesdays is unique in that it is one born of the powerful force that is global female solidarity. The motivation is to bring female artistry to the fore, with artists offering their time and talent in order to raise funds for Aidlink’s girls’ rights and education projects in rural Kenya. Alongside Eve Belle (above) stood soul artist NC Grey, comedian Eve Darcy, spoken…

  • Watch: Wyvern Lingo – I Love You Sadie

    August 10, 2017 - By 

    Back in June we shared ‘I Love You Sadie’, the latest – and quite possibly finest – single from Bray alt-pop threesome Wyvern Lingo. Having called it “another instant gem bursting at the seams with the threesome’s slick marriage of exquisite, RnB-inflected harmonies, groove-laden patterns and their collective ear for a killer hook” we’re pleased to share the track’s slick new video courtesy of Louise Gaffney (who, as you might well know, is also a member of Come On Live Long). One of the Irish songs of the summer? Easily.