We have a pair of tickets to give away to the launch of Sea Pinks’ new album this weekend. The Neil Brogan-fronted threesome will release their seventh album, Rockpool Blue, at Belfast’s Black Box on Friday, September 28. Support on the night comes from Music City and Fears. To be in with a chance of snapping up the tickets, e-mail info@thethinair.net with the answer to the following question: Sea Pinks are named after a coastal flower. What’s the Latin name for it? Rockpool Blue by Sea Pinks
As Mitski takes to the Tivoli stage, accompanied by her four-piece band, there are shrieks and howls from the sea of caps and thick-rimmed glasses before her. Support act EERA have clearly warmed up the crowd sufficiently with their blend of dream-pop and indie rock. Aside from that, it’s clear that the crowd are not just casual listeners: they are fanatics. As the abrasive and electric opening riff of ‘Remember My Name’ rears it’s ugly head, Mitski remains stationary, with her hands behind her back, looking slightly upward. She appears powerful in this stance, proving that one does not need flashy…
It’s been confirmed that Metallica will headline Slane next year. As part of their WorldWired Tour, the L.A. metal titans will top the bill for the iconic Co. Meath concert series on June 8, 2019. With more acts to be announced, Ghost and Bokassa will support. The show will mark the James Hetfield-fronted band’s return to Ireland, having last played Dublin in 2009 and Belfast in 2010. Go here for pre-sale information. Tickets go on sale on Friday at 10am.
Over the last few years, Leeds has been quietly asserting its place as one of the UK’s most reliable cities for guitar music. Bands like Alt-J, Pulled Apart By Horses and Sky Larkin have consistently been putting out material that can’t help but restore people’s faith in the classic format. Within this scene, one group who’ve been etching out a serious name for themselves is Menace Beach. The punk five-piece have been dropping excellent releases without much fuss over the last six years. Their most recent releases, 2015’s Ratworld and 2017’s Lemon Memory, are excellent examples of what this group…
Belfast experimental rock quartet Blue Whale are finally set to launch their highly anticipated debut album Process, which reins the satiating havoc of their live show into a slightly more ordered studio format. The havoc, however, will come to the Menagerie on November 9, where its launch is hosted by Moving On Music. With an aim to always been to veer away from the trappings of the traditional guitar-centric four-piece, they have experimented heavily with unconventional scales and time signatures. Their cadenced, angular and atonal compositions tread fine lines between dance and discord, chaos and intricacy, with the resultant aural tension unique in its capacity to simultaneously provoke mental…
At long last, one of our favourite bands in Ireland are set to release their debut album. Alluding to their deconstructivist tendencies, Belfast-based experimental rock band Blue Whale release Process on November 9. Recorded with Ben McCauley at Start Together Studios, lead single ‘Shortbread Fingers’ has recently premiered over at The Quietus, and ‘Coitus‘ featured on Irish independent compilation A Litany of Failures: Volume II. Their carefully-constructed chaos has led to a considerable live portfolio, where their potency is as undiminished on the dancefloor as it is with Can’s Damo Suzuki as improvised sound carriers. Oft-compared to Swans, Captain Beefheart, King Crimson and Slint, we’ve described them as “one of the country’s most thoroughly…
David Kitt rounded off the first quarter of 2018 with Yous, a welcomed return to the sound he’s cultivated over the last two decades. The Dublin-based musician greets the autumn with Like Lightning, a six track EP led by the title-track which was originally featured on the quietly acclaimed album that preceded it. Like Lightning offers fans of Kitt’s varied repertoire of records under his own name an introduction to his more immediately electronic New Jackson material. On the surface, this EP could be construed as a compilation of B-sides and offcuts from the Yous recording sessions. These five songs…
Not to put too fine a point on it, the latest full-length release from Villagers is a lovely thing. At times so fragile it appears as though the music itself might break, at others dense and swirling with otherworldly sounds, the album never fails to intrigue and surprise whoever takes some much-needed time out from the day’s push and pull. Opener ‘Again’ immediately sets both the tone and style of the entire work: delicate fingerpicking is counterbalanced by a strange, robotic voice repeating the title while Conor O’Brien, sounding as sweet and forlorn as ever, sings of dejection and searching for…
The closing track from one of the EPs of the year, Superior Fiction, ‘Lunar Drift’ by Galway’s Eoin Dolan is a slow-burning masterclass in the realms of wistful alt-pop. Released today, the single – which carries one of the finest refrains we’ve heard from an Irish artist in quite some time – comes accompanied with visuals by Dolan’s friend and collaborator David Boland AKA New Pope (who also created the video for the release’s title track).
Why? with support from Serengeti at Galway’s Roisin Dubh. Photos by Ciaran O’Maolain.