The one and only Ariel Pink with support from Jorge Elbrecht at Dublin’s Button Factory. Photos by Zoe Holman.
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Given the critical success of 2016’s Puberty 2, touring with Lorde and Run the Jewels, and facing into an almost fully sold out tour across the US and Europe, it’s fair to say Mitski’s upward trajectory in the past few years has been stratospheric. Be The Cowboy, her highly anticipated fifth album marks a more mature direction in the New York artist’s – full name Mitski Miyawaki – sound, both musically and lyrically. Mitski seems to have taken a step away from the guitar and pop-punk sound her name is has become synonymous with. Patrick Hyland (who also worked as a producer…
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Sea Pinks’ Neil Brogan is a big fan of the Australian band TERRY. So much so that he has turned promoter to ensure the band stop off in Belfast on their upcoming UK tour to promote new album I’m Terry. You can catch them September 7th at Voodoo with a reformed (for one night only!) CRUISING supporting. Neil caught up with Al Montfort from the band for a Q&A that touches on Home & Away, the band’s love of Van Morrison and Melbourne’s place in the global liveability index. Meanwhile you can catch Sea Pinks launching their new record, Rockpool Blue, over…
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Even before the passengers disembark at a secret destination in the Fermanagh countryside, the drama has begun. Franz Schubert’s Winterreise provides the soundtrack en route before the bus stops. The door opens. A woman in green overalls gets on. Megaphone in hand, a bandana masking her face, though oddly, with an opening for the mouth. She walks silently down the aisle, scrutinizing the faces as though searching for the guilty party. Silence descends amongst the passengers. Search over, the woman gets off the bus, as do the passengers, who find themselves in front of a green cattle shed or some…
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Dublin alt/indie quartet Bullet Girl have shared the video for their sweat-laced new single, ‘Wasted’. Directed by Raymond Kenny, with additional camera by Dean Flynn, it captures the quartet cutting loose and performing the track at a show in Whelan’s back in July. Sound up your street? Have a peek below.
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On the third anniversary of Dott members’ Anna and Evan’s wedding day, the Galway noise pop band have released a new video for the apt-titled ‘Wedding Song’. Taken from their stellar new album Heart Swell – which the band are marking with shows around the country – Dott’s chief songwriter, Anna wrote the song following the marriage in 2015 – the same year Same Sex Marriage was made legal in Ireland by popular vote. The video, by Madra Dana, is a look back at what weddings looked like before Same Sex Marriage was legal, while being juxtaposed with McCarthy’s lyrics which contemplate how the Marriage…
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Ahead of her mini-Irish tour, Greta Kline of New York DIY indie band, Frankie Cosmos speaks to Zara Hedderman about recording over fifty albums, dogs of Instagram and the bigs steps she took with her band whilst honing her craft and building an audience. Photo by Landon Speers Hey Greta, where are you right now? I’m at my house in New York, getting ready for the upcoming block of shows for the Frankie Cosmos tour. Do you write new material on the road? I do write while I’m on tour but it definitely changes the way I compose songs. When…
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Following the success of their single, ‘We Fell For Miles’, Waterford based soul-pop duo Toucan have released their self-titled debut EP. The brainchild of singer-songwriter Conor Clancy and multi-instrumentalist Martin Atkinson, Toucan is a project that highlights the talents of both musicians. Clancy’s ear for quaint yet infectious melodies and Atkinson’s full-bodied arrangements result in a collection of songs alive with rhythm and charm. The band’s style is positively upbeat, reminiscent of the likes of Stevie Wonder complete with riffing brass sections and memorable choruses. While most of the EP follows in the footsteps of ‘We Fell For Miles’, ‘Gold’…
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Maurice Sweeney didn’t want to make a Spotlight special, lost in the evening television schedule, he tells the audience after a screening of I, Dolours, his hybrid documentary about Dolours Price, the late Provisional IRA volunteer, bomber and hunger striker. He wanted to make a movie. Party it’s strategic: a movie gets a slot at doc festivals like Pull Focus, attracting a packed multiplex audience. Partly it’s a way to use story-telling to do justice to Price’s extraordinary story of a life as a Republican soldier. On this ambition, the often-harrowing film is half-successful. I, Dolours tells the story of the Troubles and…
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Outlining an ethics of documentary making in The Image You Missed, the late, acclaimed film-maker Arthur MacCaig (via Ernest Larsen’s crisp, twangy voiceover) describes the subject of the lens’ gaze as one who is forced to ‘account for themselves’ — their choices and responsibilities and lived experience. Who are you? And why are you doing what you’re doing? McCauley’s son Donal Foreman, Image’s director and editor, uses his own film to turn the camera’s scrutiny back on his absent father, producing an engaging, clever consideration and critique of MacCaig’s legacy, of political docs more generally, and of the subtle differences between looking at…