• Fifty Shades Freed

    February 14, 2018 - By 

    Three Valentine’s Days later, it’s finally over. Jamie Dornan has been humiliated and audiences have been punished, but by this point you know what you’re in for. In order to get anything from Fifty Shades Freed, the climax to this improbable trilogy, you have to just hold up your hands and submit. Christian Grey gets his happy ending. The rest of us will have to get our rocks off elsewhere. Picking off where Darker left off, the soap opera romance is in full swing. There’s still the odd trip to the Red Room, sure, but Anastasia (Dakota Johnson) and Christian (Dornan)…

  • The Thin Air’s Alternative Valentine’s Playlist

    February 14, 2018 - By 

    Sure, every second song is about love (or the lack of it) but that hasn’t stopped us from compiling our annual Spotify playlist of 30 songs that sum up the sometimes transformative, other times crushing realm of love pretty succinctly. Featuring Mojave 3, Elliott Smith, Nick Cave, James Blake, Grizzly Bear, Yo La Tengo, My Bloody Valentine, Big Star, Father John Misty, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Magnetic Fields, Radiohead and more, you can stream and subscribe to it below.

  • Album Stream: Stoat – Try Not To Think About It

    February 14, 2018 - By 

    As an album title, Try Not To Think About It by Dublin underground rock heroes Stoat goes a considerable distance in summing up one of its prevailing themes, i.e. things may not be the greatest they’ve ever been but, collectively, we could do a whole lot worse than trying to see the good and absurdity in things. Having been making music together for the best part of 20 years, the threesome’s wry, masterfully incisive brand of indie-pop is on full display on the album – their second – which was released on Saturday in Dublin. From to-do lists that never seem…

  • Paddy Hanna – Frankly, I Mutate

    February 14, 2018 - By 

    It’s been a long time coming, but singer-songwriter Paddy Hanna‘s new album Frankly, I Mutate, is upon us through Strange Brew on March 2. This follows his 2014 debut album, Leafy Stiletto, and the string of strong singles he’s since released – the likes of ‘Unprotected’ and ‘Bad Boys‘. Also the frontman of supergroup Autre Monde, it’s a long-held view of ours that Hanna is one of Ireland’s most accomplished true songwriters; elusive, nuanced, capable of broad truths, while invoking the kind of Elvis Costello, Jarvis Cocker or Scott Walker-esque dark humour & vulnerability that catches one offguard in an otherwise ’70s pop tune. Frankly, I Mutate is filled with rich, retro-current…

  • The 15.17 To Paris

    February 14, 2018 - By 

    On 21 August 2015, on a cross-border train from Amsterdam to Paris, a Moroccan man named Ayoub El Khazzan emerged from a toilet cubicle shirtless, an AKM assault rifle in his hands. He shot a passenger who tried to intervene and then went to open fire on the carriage, but the weapon jammed, allowing three young American men to rush El Khazzan and prevent further violence. Afterwards Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone, two of whom were off-duty members of the U.S. Armed Services, received the Legion of Honour, the highest decoration of the French Republic. Back home, Stone earned a…

  • EP Stream: Perish – Inertia

    February 13, 2018 - By 

    At the start of the month, we shared ‘Terror Swimming’ by Cork-based band Perish. Calling it a “hazed-out trip bursting with submerged, starry-eyed guitar shapes and a wondrous wall of reverb-soaked noise” the single was a first-rate opening gambit from the Ciaran Corcoran-fronted project. The track is taken from the stellar Inertia, a brand new, five-track EP out via Cork imprint Sunshine Cult records, home to TTA favourites The Sunshine Factory. From the blissed-out noise-pop of opener Vision to the Motorik strut and swirling, effects-laden Kosmiche of closer ‘No Time’, it is hands down the strongest EP from an Irish act we’ve heard this…

  • Tune-Yards Set for Dublin and Galway Shows

    February 13, 2018 - By 

    In support of their new album, I can feel you creep into my private life, Tune-Yards have announced their return to Dublin and Galway this summer. Three years on from playing Vicar Street, the duo of Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner will stop off at Tivoli Theatre in Dublin on July 10 and Galway’s Roisin Dublin on July 11. Tickets for the shows cost €24 and go on sale this Friday, February 16 at 10am. Read Dominic Edge’s review of I can feel you creep into my private life here.

  • Stream: Ryan Vail – As It Tears

    February 14, 2018 - By 

    Earlier this month, Derry producer Ryan Vail revealed that after two years of recording and mixing, his new album Distorted Shadows is set for release in April. The second single be lifted from that, ‘As It Tears’ is a woozy, deep electronica gem, full of skittering beats, cello courtesy of Laura McCabe, Rachael Boyd on violin and Vail’s trademark hushed vocals. Fancy catching it live? With more TBA, Vail plays the following shows in February, March and September. Sebright Arms – London – 26th February AVA festival – London – 16th March Oscillations And Modulations Festival – 21st March Kantine Am Berghain – Berlin –…

  • Franz Ferdinand @ Olympia Theatre, Dublin

    February 13, 2018 - By 

    You get the impression Alex Kapranos enjoys this kind of thing. The frontman strutted on stage, fully decked out in signature skinny suit and tie, looking like he was born there. Sporting a newly bleached quiff and rockstar pout, the Scot had a heavy whiff of Bill Nighy’s character in Love Actually about him. There were hips thrusts; there were finger wags; there were even Eddie Van Halen style guitar jumps. And like the aforementioned Nighy, you can’t help but be endeared by his performance. Before the Dublin crowd got this show of old school entertainment, there were some young…