• Rosie

    October 19, 2018 - By 

    Rosie’s tagline describes the film “inspired by too many true stories” of families affected by homelessness. It is an affecting and vital exploration of Ireland’s housing crisis through the concentrated study of one Dublin working class family’s experiences. Unable to find a house after their landlord decides to sell their home, Rosie (Sarah Greene, Black 47, Dublin Oldschool), her partner John Paul (Moe Dunford, Michael Inside) and their four children have been sleeping in hotel rooms unsure where they will be staying next. The children are often late for school because the family have been staying in hotels across county…

  • Watch: Bouts – Love’s Lost Landings (Pt. 1)

    October 19, 2018 - By 

    Five years on from the release of their debut album, Nothing Good Gets Away, Dublin indie rock quartet Bouts resurfaced back in May with ‘Face Up’. The lead single from the band’s highly-anticipated second full-length, Flow, frontman Barry Bracken called it “a no-filter, punch the air plea for staring things down and pushing on through.” Second single ‘Love’s Lost Landings (Pt. 1)’ picks up the pace in emphatic fashion. Accompanied with visuals from Paris/London-based French photographer Gwenaëlle Trannoy (link below) it’s an equal parts slick and starry-eyed burst of indie rock from the re-emerging Irish four-piece, centreing around frontman Barry Bracken’s…

  • EP Premiere: Son Zept – Q2B

    October 19, 2018 - By 

    Liam McCartan, AKA Son Zept, releases his debut today, and it’s one of the most exciting, forward-thinking electronic releases to emerge from here in some time. Parallels could be drawn with the likes of Autechre or Aphex Twin from an experimental standpoint, as his Q2B EP reveals McCartan as a true polymath, where concern with ideology is tantamount to creating limitless club potential. Brimming with atmosphere punctuated by his dense ‘polypatternism’, the Q2B EP is a work of deconstructed club music that alludes to the memory-triggering aspects of techno, noise, trance, power-ambient and industrial, often falling into umbrella of electroacoustic composition. We’ll have a full interview with Son Zept in the coming…

  • First Man

    October 19, 2018 - By 

    How far would you travel to get away from everyone you love? Would 400,000 kilometres be enough? Damien Chazelle is not a romantic. He is in the habit of taking conventionally uplifting genres — the artist’s journey, the technicolour musical, and now the space race — cutting out their rah-rah hearts, and rebuilding them with a controlled focus on grit, sacrifice and the weight of roads not taken. The spectacular lunar leap that took place in the summer of 1969 is hardwired to be a narrative of triumph. Triumph over gravity, over the odds, and, let’s not forget, over the Soviets, who snatched an…

  • Stream: Skelocrats – You’ll Never Make Me Talk

    October 18, 2018 - By 

    Call off the funeral procession: Skelocrats are back. Yes, Popical Island’s finest have returned after four years with one of their strongest single efforts to date, ‘You’ll Never Make Me Talk’. Better yet, the track – which brims with the band’s singular blend of lush baroque and earworming jangle-pop – is the first taste of a new Skelocrats full-length, which is set for release at some point next year. You’ll Never Make Me Talk by Skelocrats

  • Stream: Daithí – Lavender/Orange (feat. Tandem Felix/Sinead White)

    October 18, 2018 - By 

    Daithí has returned with not one, but two sublime new singles. It’s a collaborative one-two from the Galway-based electronic producer : featuring Dublin’s Tandem Felix, the wistful ‘Lavender’ is a stark affair marrying stoic beats, skeletal piano phrases and vocals bearing the imprint of hidden pangs. ‘Orange’, meanwhile, is an open letter penned to another about the end of a relationship. Tussling with a romantic cul-de-sac, head-on yet with subtlety, is no mean feat. For Daithí and Sinead White – whose vocals carry the single – it’s delivered with nuanced grace and earworming aplomb. Out tomorrow, stream both singles below.  

  • Premiere: Trick Mist – Abroad In The Yard

    October 18, 2018 - By 

    We’re pleased to present a first peek at the video for ‘Abroad in the Yard’ by Dundalk songwriter, electronic musician and multi-instrumentalist Gavin Murray AKA Trick Mist. The follow-up to ‘Two Doors Down’ – a stellar acapella effort released back in August – the single is a self-proclaimed song about letting go of cynicism, comprising samples Murray picked up while in India. Featuring archive footage of simpler times, when kicking a ball with the lads in the sun was responsibility enough, Graham Patterson’s video for the release makes for an inspired accompaniment. Murray said of the single: “Abroad in the yard…

  • Irish Tour: Editors

    October 18, 2018 - By 

    Editors kicked off their Irish tour with support from Talos in the Ulster Hall in Belfast and travelled down to Vicar Street in Dublin the following night. Photos by Niall Fegan and Sarah Ryan

  • Sharon Van Etten Set for Dublin

    October 16, 2018 - By 

    Sharon Van Etten will play Dublin’s Vicar Street on March 23, 2019. The New Jersey singer-songwriter and actress – who last play the Dublin venue in 2015 – will release her new album, Remind Me Tomorrow, tomorrow. Van Etten’s Dublin show takes place as part of a 33-date world tour. Tickets go on sale this Friday at 10am. Ticket price including booking fee is €25.00. Photo by Ryan Pfluger

  • John Grant – Love Is Magic

    October 14, 2018 - By 

    Upon first listen to an album that flits between seemingly whimsical matters of broccoli and cheese sauce to diet gum and hot Brazilian boys, one would be forgiven for merely scratching its surface. It’s only on the second and third (and fourth and fifth) listen to Love Is Magic, John Grant’s fourth studio album as a solo artist, that true appreciation can be found. After the sheer wackiness loses its immediacy, the authenticity of Grant’s latest body of work becomes more apparent and the world is given a whole new way of experiencing the American musician. It’s his most electronic…