• Mount Eerie – Now Only

    April 4, 2018 - By 

    You did not walk with me Of late to the hill-top tree By the gated ways, As in earlier days; You were weak and lame, So you never came, And I went alone, and I did not mind, Not thinking of you as left behind. I walked up there to-day Just in the former way; Surveyed around The familiar ground By myself again: What difference, then? Only that underlying sense Of the look of a room on returning thence.  – Thomas Hardy In July of 2016, musician Geneviève Castrée died. She was survived by husband Phil Elverum and her infant…

  • Guided by Voices – Space Gun

    April 2, 2018 - By 

      As if Guided by Voices weren’t prolific enough in their ’90s heyday, Robert Pollard has amped things up considerably in the 2010s. When that classic ’90s lineup reunited earlier this decade, they remarkably pumped out six new albums within a mere two and a half year period, while the current reboot of the 1997-2004 Doug Gillard era produced two last year, including sprawling double album August by Cake. A wealth of new material from a band we once thought were gone for good is something to celebrate, but there’s been an undeniable sense since 2012 that they’ve been spreading…

  • EP Premiere: Ghost Office – Desire Lines

    April 6, 2018 - By 

    Almost certainly Belfast’s most promising post-punk prospect, Ghost Office, have just made available their second EP, Desire Lines. With new bassist Carl Small in tow and new material to be unveiled in coming months showing further songwriting spark, Desire Lines is just the beginning of what will be Ghost Office’s defining year so far. With each cut an under 3 minute short burst of undistilled creative flourish, throbbing bass & jagged Fender attack the band – both live and on record – bursts with vitality, while the confluence of musical & literary influences conjure acts like Parquet Courts and Protomartr‘s knowing self-loathing, lent broader purview with vocals from former-bassist MK Maguire, and…

  • Love, Simon

    April 2, 2018 - By 

    Love, Simon is a queer teen drama that wants you to know up front it’s sorry for being so, well, straight. Loosely adapted from Becky Albertalli’s 2015 novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, the film opens with a voiceover from Simon Spier (Nick Robinson), providing a mea culpa for his boring, stable life, the kind of intensely comfortable existence accepted as default by studio teenage flicks. Simon lives in a gorgeous house with his younger sister and hot parents (Jennifer Garner and Transformers’ Josh Duhamel). He gives his happy, handsome friends rides to school in the morning, picking up iced lattes…

  • Tethers – Skinwalker

    April 4, 2018 - By 

    Lisburn-based post-hardcore outfit Tethers are set to release their debut EP Skinwalker via Swallow Song Records. While retaining the kind of pop inclination that made Biffy Clyro household names, the trio channel Derry’s Jetplane Landing, and mathier elements of the post-hardcore sound – the likes of which made Faraquet such an incredibly instinctive, yet compositionally complex outfit. Recorded by Chris Ryan, the EP gets its title from a term in Navajo folklore that denotes a shape-shifting witch, which they’re re-envisioning as ‘a future slang for artificially-enhanced humanoids’, an aspect of the band’s outlook, which – in a way that would please Philip K Dick, Neil Gaiman or Warren Ellis…

  • Young Fathers – Cocoa Sugar

    April 2, 2018 - By 

    Words are hard. Try as we might as we attempt to translate thoughts into words, we inevitably truncate the infinite. We’ve spent millennia desperately trying to communicate with one another the depth and breadth of the things we feel and how external stimuli affect us. Think of all the experiences you’ve had and everything you’ve ever felt and then wonder if you’ve ever been able to truly express yourself to another without losing some level of definition. That’s the reason behind the elation of discovering a new metaphor. Occasionally though, you’re faced with an experience or piece of art whose…

  • Stream: Gnarkats – Enigma

    March 30, 2018 - By 

    Belfast three-piece Gnarkats recently teamed up with Paul Mahon of the Answer to record a new track, ‘Enigma’. Released this week, the single is a starry-eyed burst of gazey alt-indie with a lyrical undercurrent of feeling isolated in toxic relationships. Speaking of the recording said, “Paul was amazing to work with, he loved the songs and we all got on really well. He put so much effort in to our music, had great suggestions and got the best performances out of us. We are very proud of the two tracks we worked on with him and it was truly a dream come true for [guitarist] Jordan…

  • Premiere: Brash Isaac – If

    March 30, 2018 - By 

    Set for release on April 7 to coincide with Pop Up’s 3 bands, 3 Cities, 3 Singles tour in Derry, ‘If…’ by Belfast-based, Andrew Cameron-fronted Brash Isaac is a delicately-woven yet impassioned single confronting ambivalence and self-realisation. Recorded at SubZero Studios with Michael McCluskey, Cameron said of the track: It’s a slight departure to what we’ve done before and doesn’t rely heavily on a lot of instrumentation or production. We’ve stripped it back to the sound of a four piece band playing their parts together in a room, and we feel that’s how this track works best It’s a song that tackles feelings of dread and anxiety, addressing the…

  • Young Fathers @ The Academy, Dublin

    March 30, 2018 - By 

    To describe Dublin’s Academy as packed would be an understatement. Bodies have been piling in in rapid succession after a slow trickling start. The main floor is shoulder to should with sweating teeming masses barely able to contain their anticipation for the Scottish hip-hop trio Young Fathers‘ arrival. The crowd tonight is beyond hyped up. There’s an intense positivity within all the anticipation that fuel some of the night’s most powerful moments. Thirty minutes after the opening DJ finishes his surprisingly enjoyable set of chipmunk soul and reggae cuts, the house lights dim and stage beams with white light. Three…