Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds will play Dublin next year. Taking place as part of a wider Spring European and UK tour, the band will play Dublin’s 3 Arena on Friday, May 8 2020. It will mark their return to the country following last year’s Kilmainham show. Tickets go on sale on Friday, October 25 at 10am. Price TBA.
Over the last few years, Belfast artist Rory Nellis has steadily emerged as one of the country’s most respected songwriting voices. On albums Ready For You Now and 2017’s There’s Enough Songs In The World, his thoughtful, earworming craft has garnered comparisons to everyone from Conor O’Brien Villagers to Grandaddy at their most gossamer and contemplative. Nellis’ forthcoming new single, ‘When I Sleep’ is a meditative and delicately-crafted case in point. Released ahead of a new album in the works for release next year – and mixed by and featuring backing vocals from long-time friend collaborator Philip Watts d’Alton (Master…
The Late David Turpin (so called because of a brief near-death experience) has just released his first album in six years. Romances is a haunting and provocative collection of songs, on which Turpin has stepped back from the microphone to make way for ten guest singers, including Elephant, Bear Worship, Gar Cox, Jaime Nanci and Villagers’ Conor O’Brien. Here, we talk to him about the influences behind the album and its accompanying imagery. Photo by Dorje De Burgh. Previously, you’ve been known as a singer-songwriter. What made you decide to do an album with others singing, instead of you? I’ve…
Danny Brown has always been somewhat of an outlier in hip-hop. Gifted with the ability to present his many exploits with astounding shades of colour, humour and vocal inflections verging on the maniacal, his unorthodox style has garnered support across the globe, far beyond his home city of Detroit. Brown’s skill in synthesising his wide-ranging influences – he has confessed to being a fan of everything from Cee-Lo Green to Bowie and Joy Division – culminated in 2016’s Atrocity Exhibition on Warp. A remarkable collection depicting the highs and lows of mental health and the ugly underbelly of the hip hop world, its outstandingly…
Berlin-based Irish tunesmith Joey Gavin is back, albeit briefly, for a run of Irish dates to celebrate the release of ‘Home Sweet Home‘, the first single taken from his forthcoming debut album, due in 2020. Where early solo releases had more in common with the slacker or psych work of his old flame, Thumper, he appears now to have found his own voice without losing those hallmarks; rather, they’ve been reined-in, and kneaded – Wilco style – into pastoral, Americana-tinged songcraft. Written in mid-2016 in Greece, Joey told us more about his headspace at the time of writing: “There was a coalescence of ideas about patriotism, homelessness…
The latest thing to emerge from the mind of idiosyncratic polymath Arthuritis is an avant-pop fever dream. The glitchy ‘Condo’ – the sound of a brain puttering out before completing a factory reset – is as decidedly nausea-inducing as its uncanny accompanying video, masterfully shot & edited in three hours by CLAP Media’s Colm Walsh; recalling Twin Peaks: The Return, three selves are dragged down a cold, dark back-path adorned only by barriers and wet grass. It’s a perfect example of Arty’s latest approach, which explores the relationship between rhythm & time. He tells us: “One of the main things that influenced it was I looked at a…
Politically-charged Northampton rapper Slowthai live at The Academy in Dublin with support from Luka Palm. Photos by Ivan Rakhmanin.
Angel Olsen rarely shies away from making demands of those to whom her songs are addressed, seemingly with the aim of forging a sense of connection or wholeness through sheer will – not only with the addressee in question, however, but also with (or within) herself, and the world she inhabits. At her most confident, she issues imperatives that appear to be concerned less with whatever romantic situation is at hand, and more with a desire to give herself a voice when she feels most vulnerable, to be heard clearly just as emotional tumult threatens to drown out sincere efforts to…
It’s odd that so many of Ireland’s best and much missed bands have chosen the exact same time to make a comeback. Girl Band’s triumphant return four years after their debut and two years after their last live appearance may be the most notable, but forthcoming third albums from early 2010s Richter Collective stalwarts BATS and Jogging should be just as vital. Squarehead, meanwhile, don’t feel like they’ve ever really been away. Live shows have continued sporadically and new singles have slowly slipped out over the past two years, but it’s been a whole six since the band’s last full…
Gross Net started life back in 2014 as a collaboration between Girls Names guitarist Philip Quinn and Autumns’ Christian Donaghey, crafting krautrock jams out of primitive drum machines and industrial guitars. However, Donaghey’s early departure has left Quinn to captain the ship alone, steering it in a more fully electronic direction. After two EPs, 2016 saw the release of debut full length, Quantitative Easing, on Belfast’s ever reliable Touch Sensitive Records. Now, as if to ease the pain of Girls Names dissolution earlier this year, album number two has landed on LA based label, Felte. While Quantitative Easing’s cold electronic pulse…