• 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.

  • Watch: Shrug Life – You’re Such a Good Looking Woman

    October 29, 2019 - By 

    It’s true. Indeed, it’s positively ironclad: there is no show like a Joe show, but Shrug Life, we reckon, give him a run for his money. Yes, Dublin’s most incisive and impossibly earworming indie-leaning trio are back with a cover of ‘You’re Such a Good Looking Woman’, the Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood-penned song that the one, the only Joseph Francis Robert “Joe” Dolan made his own back in 1970. Now, I know what you’re thinking: on paper, this probably shouldn’t work. But we’re not talking about paper here, are we? No – we are referring, in fact, to the medium of song.…

  • Wanda: Feminism and Moving Image

    October 29, 2019 - By 

    Belfast’s feminist film festival, WANDA: Feminism & Moving Image, returns for its second outing later this week. Opening on Thursday, October 31st and running until Sunday, November 3, the festival have pulled out the stops to present a wonderfully diverse programme, spanning new and retrospective films and features directed by women. Launching at Queen’s Film Theatre with The Juniper Tree, this year’s programme features, among many other screenings, discussions and panels across the city, the NI premiere of Kim Longinotto’s critically-acclaimed Irish-produced documentary Shooting the Mafia. Co-director Rose Baker said, “As the festival’s key aim is to revisit ‘lost’ films by…

  • Premiere: Laurie Shaw – Had To Swerve

    October 29, 2019 - By 

    This Thursday, endlessly prolific, Cork-based songwriter Laurie Shaw will release his latest album, Helvetica. The follow-up to the exquisite Weird Weekends (which we premiered last January) the redord, we’re told, “delves deep into the British psyche, taking a poignant and timely look at its history and current society, moving between both fond and satirical tones.” New single ‘Had To Swerve’ edges into more darkly territory. Conjuring a midpoint between Sparklehorse, Department of Eagles and Amnesiac-era Radiohead, it makes for a brilliantly oppressive four-minute burst of scorched vocals and layered, spectral sounds. Have a first look at the Laurie Shaw-directed video for the single, as…

  • Pixies Set For Galway and Dublin Next Summer

    October 29, 2019 - By 

    Boston alt-rock legends Pixies are set to make their Irish return. Having recently played shows in Dublin and Belfast, the seminal, Black Francis-fronted quartet will return next summer to play the Big Top at Galway Arts Festival on July 17th and Dublin’s Iveagh Gardens on July 18th. Tickets, which go on sale at 9am this Friday, are priced €52.50 and €59.50 respectively.

  • Premiere: Eoin Dolan – Sheena

    October 25, 2019 - By 

    Last August, Galway alt-pop maestro Eoin Dolan released easily one of the Irish releases of the year in the form of the sublime Superior Fiction. Over a year on from hailing it a four-track distillation of his yearning, sci-fi-tinged surf pop craft”, we’re very pleased to present a first listen to Dolan’s latest single, ‘Sheena’. Taking from his forthcoming third album, Commander of Sapiens, it’s a trademark carefully-crafted gem from Dolan, woozily blurring the contours of romance, reality and full-blown, spaced-out reverie. Commander of Sapiens is released in association with Citóg Records on Friday, November 22nd and will, we’re told, covers themes such as environmental destruction, mass consumerism and…

  • Watch: Aoife Nessa Frances – Blow Up

    October 22, 2019 - By 

    Co-produced by Cian Nugent, ‘Blow Up’ by Dublin-based artist Aoife Nessa Frances stems from a sonic netherworld inhabited, at different points, by the likes of Nico, Broadcast and Pentangle. Blurring the lines between folk, psychedelia and otherworldly pop, it’s a wonderfully-crafted paean, redolent of bygone times, all while occupying its very own woozy, yet supremely lucid territory. Marrying mellotron, strings and more, the song – which is accompanied by some sublime visuals courtesy of her sister, Anna McCarthy – is taken from Frances’ forthcoming debut album, Land of No Junction. It’s released via Basin Rock on January 17th. Borrowing its title from the…

  • Win Tickets to Swordfishtrombones Revisited @ National Concert Hall

    October 21, 2019 - By 

    On Tuesday, October 29th, Dublin’s National Concert Hall will play true to a special one-off event commemorating Tom Waits’ seminal seventh studio album, Swordfishtrombones. Featuring a veritable dream team of musicians in Nadine Shah, Soap&Skin, Lisa O’Neill, Dorian Wood and Matthew E. White, British instrumentalist David Coulter will oversee Swordfishtrombones Revisited on the night. With a six-piece band in tow, Coulter & co. will reinterpret tracks including ‘6 Shells From a Thirty-Ought-Six’ and ‘In The Neighborhood’ from the critically-acclaimed 1983 album. We’re teaming up with NCH to give away a pair of tickets to the show. To enter, simply Like…

  • Output Belfast Set For 2020 Return

    October 22, 2019 - By 

    Details of the return of Output Belfast next year have been announced. Ireland’s largest one-day music conference and showcasing event five years running will return to various venues across Belfast on Thursday, February 13th. As ever, as well as various talks and panels in the morning and afternoon, this year’s outing will also feature a music trail-like evening of concerts around the city’s Cathedral Quarter. Line-ups and schedule will be announced in due course. A new addition to next year’s outing is a brand new showcase stage, which is “devoted to new emerging talent that otherwise might be overlooked by…