• the arts column: May 14th

    May 14, 2019 - By 

    In this week’s edition of the arts column we’ve details on the extensive activities going on in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin and nationwide to celebrate National Drawing day, as well as details on a application opportunities for studio spaces, international residencies and open calls. As always, if you have an event, talk, exhibition, or would like to recommend one please get in touch via aidan[at]thethinair.net National Drawing Day| National Gallery of Ireland and nationwide This Saturday is National Drawing Day in the National Gallery of Ireland, with a day packed full of free events and activities for drawers of all ages. Below…

  • Manic Street Preachers @ Olympia Theatre, Dublin

    May 14, 2019 - By 

    It’s been a little over twenty years since Manic Street Preachers’ landmark fifth record, This is my Truth, Tell me Yours, solidified a somewhat stratospheric ‘second act’; a manic metamorphosis from a politically punctuated punk four piece into the enduring ruminative band we know today. Back then, the Manics were just about coping with the tragic disappearance of their guitarist Richey Edwards in 1995, and fresh from the meteoric success of the sweepingly superabundant sounds of their following album, Everything Must Go. Despite being the first to be recorded timidly without him, half of it contained his lyrics. The viscerally…

  • MARINA – Love + Fear

    May 12, 2019 - By 

    Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross theorized that there are two primary emotions: fear and love. All positive emotions come from love, all negative emotions from fear. From love flows happiness, contentment, peace, and joy. From fear comes anger, hate, anxiety and guilt. She also believed fear and love are opposites writing that if you are in a place of fear, you cannot be in a place of love, if you are in a place of love, you cannot be in a place of fear. This theory forms the backbone of Marina’s (formerly Marina and the Diamonds) fourth record which is broken into…

  • Marissa Nadler & Stephen Brodsky – Droneflower

    May 10, 2019 - By 

    Ethereal gothic folk and experimental post-hardcore are convenient, if broad, brushstrokes to describe the individual styles of Marissa Nadler & Stephen Brodsky, but those labels would be to do both a disservice. Theirs at first seems a disparate pairing that might never otherwise have come about save for the fact that they both drank in the same Brooklyn bar. Nadler though has previously dabbled with Scott “Malefic” Conner of black metal outfit Xasthur, among others, not to mention a single released with John Cale earlier this year. Brodsky, best known from the heavier realms of Cave In and Mutoid Man,…

  • Stream: Duellists – Perspective

    May 10, 2019 - By 

    On Friday, May 24th, Northern Irish trio Duellists – a band comprising Throat rhythm section Mike Barr and Rus Crookes and Ex-Element guitarist Peter McCavery – will release their highly-anticipated debut album, Into the Fade. Across twelve tracks, it makes for a fierce, nostalgia-incinerating barrage of first-rate noise-rock, swiftly positioning the three-piece as one of the country’s most vital bands. New single ‘Perspective’ distills this down two face-melting minutes. Marrying a slew of riffs and taut rhythms with McCavery’s larynx-shredding vocals, it makes for a masterful, all-too-short rampage. Delve in and prepare to hit repeat below. Duellists play alongside Podracer at Dublin’s Underground…

  • Premiere: Department of Forever – A Simulation of Here

    May 8, 2019 - By 

    Over the last two decades, Irish sound designer and musician Steve Fanagan has composed and produced under a range of monikers including Northsta5on, Moose Eats Leaf, Small Group Primate, Wrecking Ball and others. His latest nominal conduit is Department of Forever. It’s a project the dense, meditative majesty of which is laid bare on a nine-track release, Unseen Pictures, set for release via new-fangled Irish indie imprint Wow & Flutter on Friday (May 10th). Originally improvised and recorded over a few days and then chopped up, edited, reworked and constructed, the album will (just like all releases set for release via Wow & Flutter) be limited…

  • Premiere: Nix Moon – Ceremony

    May 9, 2019 - By 

    Progressive folk meddlers Nix Moon are a more esoterically-inclined proposition than most of their peers. With new single ‘Ceremony’, that compositional ambition is present from the onset. Building from a foundation of exploratory, Eastern-tinged drone, they’ve managed sculpt a darkly layered, progressive piece that’s not tonally dissimilar to the Hail To The Thief or A Moon Shaped Pool-era Radiohead. Their trademark indigenous & mythological allegories point to that sense of otherworldly earthiness – think Jeff Buckley’s more heavy, ethereal work by way of experimental 70s psych pop masters The Pretty Things. This release bodes well for the forthcoming release of the band’s debut album later in the year, recorded in Grouse Lodge…

  • Other Voices Set For Belfast Return

    May 8, 2019 - By 

    Other Voices is set to make it return to Belfast in the summer. Across June 14-16, the hugely successful Irish musical institution will team up with the 174 Trust to take over The Duncairn for another three days of musical and cultural events. With the line-up for this year’s outing to be announced soon, Ray Griffin of the Duncairn said, “To say that we are over the moon to have Other Voices returning to The Duncairn and our wonderful city is the understatement of the year.” “Central to the shared vision, and delivery of both organisations, is a love for music…

  • Vampire Weekend – Father of the Bride

    May 8, 2019 - By 

    Six years on from Modern Vampires of the City, Vampire Weekend have returned with Father of the Bride, a sprawling double album which finds singer Ezra Koenig trying to find his voice since the departure of Rostam Batmanglij (Rostam) from the band. When the New York outfit first appeared in 2008, they owed their unique sound to a mix of classical, African and western pop influences – never before had a combination of harpsichord, strings, bass, and drums sounded as good as it did on ‘M79’. This evidently was largely due to Rostam, the band’s multi-instrumentalist who has since taken…

  • Fat White Family – Serfs Up!

    May 7, 2019 - By 

    The spirit of Jean Genet has been invoked far too often by would-be provocateurs for his warped aphorisms, especially tiresome when sputtered by indie-rock’s supposed enfants terribles; so many wannabe-libertines have cited The Thief’s Journal in justifying their decadent posturing, I wonder whether Genet’s had a moment’s rest amid his turning in the dirt. When Fat White Family frontman Lias Saoudi told The Quietus recently that Genet was the “lyrical bedrock of the album”, I feared that the band’s raucous black comedy might have begun to curdle into banal pretence. No such worries. While the group has straightened up in some ways…