• Life of the Party

    May 16, 2018 - By 

    Life of The Party is a comedy about the danger of compromising for your partner. Melissa McCarthy plays the homely, mumsy Deanna, whose husband Dan announces he’s filing for divorce just after they drop their daughter off for her first college semester. Feeling sucker-punched and bereft, she decides to enrol in the college herself and finish the archaeology degree she abandoned when she got pregnant. Dan (Veep’s Matt Walsh) is shacking up with a glamorous realtor (Modern Family’s Julie Bowen), leaving Deanna bitter at having put him first all her life and having little to show for it. The message…

  • Watch: Bouts – Face Up

    May 16, 2018 - By 

    It’s been five years since debut LP Nothing Good Gets Away, and four since their last release, Unlearn, but back in style are Dublin indie rock Bouts, with ‘Face Up’. Influenced by the kind of breezy, hook-laden indie rock best placed to soundtrack the main stages of the Irish summer, its DIY video fittingly  papers over the malaise with emphatic optimism. Of the song, frontman Barry Bracken says: “Face Up is a no-filter, punch the air plea for staring things down and pushing on through. Some songs you write, others just materialise. This seemed born ready. Its immediacy excites us as much now as those first moments playing it.…

  • Deadpool 2

    May 16, 2018 - By 

    In the beefed up, more densely populated Deadpool 2, an expanded talent budget means Ryan Reynolds’ chattering ‘Merc with the Mouth’ gets to assemble his own super-team (named ‘X-Force’, because ‘X-Men’ is sexist). One of his recruits is Domino (a breezy Zazie Beetz), whose power is to be permanently in Fortune’s good books. She is effortlessly lucky: spinning cars whizz past her, guns in her face jam and a blustery day blows her parachute in just the right direction (prevailing winds turn out to be a not-minor plot point). In Reynolds’ rearguard mutant franchise, 20th Century Fox have found their own…

  • AVA Festival Preview: Denis Sulta

    May 15, 2018 - By 

    All this week, we’re going to be previewing some must-see acts at this year’s AVA Festival. Set to return to Belfast across Friday 1 – Saturday 2 June, the island’s finest electronic showcase will feature Bicep, Larry Heard aka Mr Fingers, KiNK, Floorplan, Denis Sulta and many, many more at the S13 Warehouse. We have a big giveaway for this year’s festival. To be in with the chance of winning two AVA weekend passes, two AVA T-shirts and, to sweeten the deal, four drink tokens, simply Like our Facebook page here and send us a link to your favourite Bicep track to info@thethinair.net There’s so much we could say about the Glasgow-born, Berlin-based, Denis Sulta but honestly? His Boiler…

  • Premiere: Heroes in Hiding – Berlin

    May 15, 2018 - By 

    The second single from their forthcoming debut album, Actor, ‘Berlin’ by Dublin quartet Heroes in Hiding is a cathartically-driven effort exploring “a want for change and a sense of belonging, or lack thereof.” According to the Joe Carroll-fronted band, “The narrator has become fed up with their surroundings, and fantasises about a new life in Berlin. They are convinced that by moving away they will be able to throw off the shackles of their old life and start afresh, leaving the anxious surroundings of their current world behind.” Exploring “a ‘moment’ of uncertainty in life – a moment where we are…

  • Beach House – 7

    May 15, 2018 - By 

    Fewer bands have so aggressively etched their niche as deeply as Beach House. Whilst aggression certainly isn’t a term usually associated with this century’s finest purveyors of lofty, emotionally-charged dream pop, the Baltimore based two-piece have certainly found their comfort zone and busied themselves deep within it. over the past 14 years. Typified by Victoria Legrand’s omnipresent keyboards and Julee Cruise-esque vocals, Scally’s reverbed guitar and a handful of simplistic drum loops, the band have been stuck in a beautiful, glorious rut creatively almost since their inception back in 2004. Fewer ruts have bought so much glory and critical acclaim,…

  • Ben Folds @ Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, Belfast

    May 14, 2018 - By 

    Ben Folds is a consummate master of contrast. Equally adept at playing plaintive ballads as he is at belting out looney tunes rock and roll, he comes across as a younger, only slightly less grizzled Randy Newman. Folds’ lyrics certainly have the same bite, and are similarly coupled with ear-worm melodies that belie the sardonic nature of the subject matter hiding in plain sight. So, during this evening’s lengthy set the audience is treated to particularly poetic versions of ‘Still Fighting It’, a beautiful tableau of a father-son relationship, and ‘Fred Jones Part 2’, another of Folds’ character studies whose…

  • AVA Festival Preview: Helena Hauff

    May 14, 2018 - By 

    All this week, we’re going to be previewing some must-see acts at this year’s AVA Festival. Set to return to Belfast across Friday 1 – Saturday 2 June, the island’s finest electronic showcase will feature Bicep, Larry Heard aka Mr Fingers, KiNK, Floorplan, Denis Sulta and many, many more at the S13 Warehouse. We have a big giveaway for this year’s festival. To be in with the chance of winning two AVA weekend passes, two AVA T-shirts and, to sweeten the deal, four drink tokens, simply Like our Facebook page here and send us a link to your favourite Bicep track to info@thethinair.net First…

  • Premiere: Switzerland – Waste of Time

    May 14, 2018 - By 

    A song about “the futility of arguments and going with the flow” ‘Waste of Time’ by Dublin quartet Brian Walsh, Shane Murphy, Al Condon and Enda Canavan AKA Switzerland is, hands down, the finest dose of sleepy, jangle-heavy, Pavement-leaning loveliness we’ve heard in quite some time. Comprised of members of Drunken Boat, Hello Moon, Land Lovers, No Monster Club and Paddy Hanna, Switzerland will launch the single at Thomas House on May 19. You should go to that, and have a first listen to the single (and look at its video) below.