The Messthetics – featuring Joe Lally and Brendan Canty of Fugazi with Anthony Pirog – at Voodoo in Belfast. Photos by Colm Laverty
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Belfast-based musician Isobel Anderson has teamed up with Northern Irish abortion rights organisation Alliance for Choice for an important fundraiser, #imalife Centering around one woman’s account of her journey to England to have an abortion, her song ‘_4284_ / I’m A Life’ – titled after the number of women who travelled from NI and ROI to access abortions in 2015 – doubles up as a powerful and incredibly well presented accompaniment to the appeal. “This money is vital to enable us to deliver workshops across Northern Ireland and GB,’ Alliance for Choice said. “Those we have done so far have made a tangible…
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Chin chin! A half-cut treat to see off a dry January, Can You Ever Forgive Me? is an immensely enjoyable and assured tragi-comic memoir, Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant in a spirited double act as a pair of grifting boozehounds in early 90’s New York. McCarthy has made her name playing loud, sweary and angry, but beneath her characters’ luridly detailed, improv-style threats of violence there is usually a blinking pilot light of sadness, marking women who feel beaten down, ignored and overlooked. The puppy-nabbing outsider in Bridesmaids; the minimum-wage worker in Tammy; the aggrieved middle-aged woman ditched by her husband in…
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Winterlude is an occasional song outlet of Neil Brogan, better known as the singer and guitarist of Belfast’s perennial bittersweet janglers Sea Pinks (who released 7th album, Rockpool Blue, back in September). But were Sea Pinks tend towards vibrant colour, Winterlude is a much more muted, understated prospect. Following on from 2015’s Four Songs, now available for the first time on all digital outlets, the two new songs on Winterlude II strip things right back. Brogan’s voice floats over a murmured Spanish guitar on ‘Thrown Chorus’, before pulling back to reveal a barren panorama of double tracked cello and skeletal piano. ‘Frozen Lake (Fade)’ is even more sparse sounding, just…
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We continue 19 for ‘19 – our feature looking at nineteen Irish acts that we’re convinced are going places in 2019 – with Derry artist Daryl Martin AKA Porphyry. Photo by Mickey Rooney “To explore the relevance of old philosophies and the art of the past in modern music, with layers of meaning created through leitmotif, musical allegory and literary references”. It’s no stretch to call Daryl Martin a genuine polymath. Based in Derry, Porphyry – named after the Roman Neoplatonic philosopher – is a fully-formed artistic vision, executed unlike anything else in Ireland. When we first 2017 debut EP…
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In this week’s edition of the arts column we’ve details of the latest Basic Space talk in The Hugh Lane, open calls for an anthology on direct provision, a summer residency in Dundalk as well as three shows that are due to open in Sligo and Cork. As always, if you have an event, talk, exhibition, or would like to recommend one please get in touch via aidan[at]thethinair.net Exhibition | The Keeper @ The Model, Sligo To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the start of The Niland Collection by Nora Niland, The Model in Sligo is opening a new exhibition celebrating…