• Lankum – The Livelong Day

    November 7, 2019 - By 

    If anyone was to be left in any doubt about the direction of Lankum’s third full-length release The Livelong Day, its opening track, a reworking of traditional drinking song ‘The Wild Rover’, dispels any notion that this is a standard folk album. Almost unrecognisable from its usual configuration as an oft-performed tune at a trad knees-up, ‘The Wild Rover’ Lankum-style is a profoundly chilling storm of tension and foreboding, one which lays the groundwork for an astoundingly innovative album from one of the Irish folk scene’s shining lights. For those familiar with Lankum’s stunning previous work, the tendency to tear up the rulebook will…

  • Richard Dawson Set For Dublin and Belfast

    November 6, 2019 - By 

    Hands down one of the greatest songwriters alive today, Richard Dawson will return to play a couple of Irish shows in 2020. With his band in tow, the Newcastle-upon-Tyne artist will play Belfast Empire Music Hall on February 20 and Whelan’s in Dublin on February 21. Tickets are priced at £17.50 and €18.95 respectively.

  • Kim Gordon – No Home Record

    November 5, 2019 - By 

    “The way the word ‘empowered’ is used makes feminism more digestible … I wanted to make work that was maybe less digestible.” This was Kim Gordon in conversation with Sinéad Gleeson at Dublin’s Light House Cinema this past July, having launched an exhibition of her visual art at the IMMA entitled She bites her tender mind. Its title is derived from one of Sappho’s fragments, connecting the project to the ancient poet’s evocations of feminine beauty and desire – while also nodding to the broken-down language that has consistently graced Gordon’s own work, in both her coolly minimalist lyrics and the shredded phrases…

  • Stream: Mantua – Mantua

    October 31, 2019 - By 

    The latest release from experimental Cork tape label Sunshine Cult is Mantua improvised live drone collaboration from accomplished singer-songwriter Elaine Malone (also of improvised group Hex & Land Crabs) and prolific fiddle player Niamh Dalton of Trá Pháidín. Across its two pieces – recorded in Plugd Records, Cork, Malone predominately leads with sepulchral harmonium work, her voice swollen with reverb. From this space, Dalton explores frayed ends with measured portent, attempting to uproot her foundations in traditional Irish & old-time music – and it’s this familiar flavour that makes Mantua’s eponymous debut so beguiling. Like cult collective United Bible Studies, the strength…

  • Album Premiere: Jogging – Whole Heart

    October 31, 2019 - By 

    We’ve premiered our fair share of albums here on The Thin Air, but – if truth be told – we’re struggling to recall one that we’ve loved so much, and so quickly, as Whole Heart by Dublin three-piece Jogging. The long-awaited follow-up to 2012’s Take Courage, it’s an emphatic (and rather heavier) ten-track return from Darren Craig, Gerard Mangan and Ronan Jackson. Out today via one of the country’s finest imprints, Out On a Limb, the album was engineered and produced by John “Spud” Murphy and Ian Chestnutt at Guerrilla Sound Studios in Dublin at the start of the year. To mark…

  • Sun Kil Moon To Play Dublin and Bangor

    October 30, 2019 - By 

    Mark Kozelek aka Sun Kil Moon will play Dublin and Bangor next year. The Californian artist, who is also a founding member of Red House Painters, will play a fully-seated show at Dublin’s Liberty Hall Theatre on Saturday, May 23 and Bangor’s Wesley Centenary Church on Friday, May 22 2020. Tickets cost €29.50 and £30 respectively and go on sale at 9am this Friday from here and here.

  • Battles – Juice B Crypts

    October 30, 2019 - By 

      To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one band member may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness. When Tyondai Braxton left Battles in 2010, fans were worried. Although the quartet had started out as an instrumental unit, Braxton’s distinctive pitch-shifted vocals had become the focal point of their acclaimed debut album Mirrored, and with his departure, expectations for the follow up plummeted. They needn’t have worried, as with the help of a few guest vocalists (including none other than Gary Numan), the band’s second album Gloss Drop was more than a match for its predecessor.…