• Forbidden Fruit 2018: Saturday

    June 6, 2018 - By 

    Now celebrating its 8th birthday, Forbidden Fruit has become a staple in the Irish music festival scene, and with it and last week’s LIFE festival, the summer festival season has officially begun. A celebrator of Irish acts, with a focus on dance, R&B, and hip-hop, this year’s line-up was especially anticipated, with headliners such as Glass Animals, Justice, Bonobo, and EDM favourites like Bicep, Dennis Sulta, and DJ Seinfeld all making appearances over the weekend. It’s never easy to be one of the first acts of the day at a festival, and especially on the first day but this didn’t…

  • The National – Sleep Well Beast

    September 8, 2017 - By 

    After a four year period rich in collaborations, side-projects and production work, the build-up to this, The National‘s seventh album was a carefully crafted and ubiquitous one. Teaser clips hinted the release of its first single, ‘The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness’ and a blue-coloured, minimal take on the album’s cover art popped up in different cities across the globe. What is interesting is how this bold, outward looking campaign stands in a sharp contrast to the songs themselves. Here we find album that at its core is an intimate reflection on failing relationships both personal and universal, one that confronts…

  • Hercules & Love Affair – Omnion

    September 4, 2017 - By 

      In 2008, when Andy Butler formed Hercules & Love Affair and released breakthrough single ‘Blind’ –featuring Anohni – into the world there was a fear from DFA Records that the track had the potential to be a one-hit wonder of sorts. Quite the contrary, the critically acclaimed track shone a light on Butler’s project which has now, nearly ten years later, released its fourth studio outing Omnion. Since its inception, Hercules & Love Affair has grown to be a more collaborative effort, combining the intensity and and elegance of Butler’s production with a word-class cast of featured artists, including…

  • Makers in the Making: An Interview with Liam Geraghty

    August 26, 2017 - By 

    Almost unheard of as a medium five years ago, podcasting was once relegated to being one of those pesky default iPhone apps that you couldn’t get rid of. However, thanks in part to massively popular shows like NPR’s This American Life, whose podcast Serial in 2014 introduced a whole range of people to the audio form, the podcasting world has gone from a slightly unpopular alternative to listening to music on a morning commute, to shows like Welcome To Night Vale, or My Dad Wrote A Porno selling out multiple nights in Dublin. This September, Irish podcasting network HeadStuff host…

  • Haim – Something To Tell You

    July 7, 2017 - By 

    It’s been a while since we’ve heard from the Haim sisters – Este, Danielle and Alana – and they’ve marked their return with an album that takes the listener on that typical pop journey of love, loss and all the in betweens. Haim rode the waves of hype from their 2012 Forever EP, and 2013’s Days Are Gone for nearly four years by finding their niche in the pop leaning indie rock scene where female harmonies and Fleetwood Mac leaning instrumentals were in demand. With the release of follow-up LP  Something To Tell You, there’s a question mark over whether this formula…

  • Irish Tour: Green Day & Rancid

    July 3, 2017 - By 

     “Belfast you get it – not many people understand, but Belfast does.” To be very honest, it’s very easy to be apprehensive about a Green Day gig in 2017. After the messy 2012 Uno… Dos… Tres! trilogy of albums, expectations weren’t too high for their 12th studio album, Revolution Radio, released last October. But the album was a pleasant – though somewhat basic – effort from the iconic punk trio, revealing a sense of maturity, if not some dubious album artwork. It’s easy to be apprehensive to see artists ‘after’ their moment in the sun (or the burning ball in…

  • Loah – This Heart

    June 15, 2017 - By 

    Sallay Matu Garnett AKA Loah‘s debut EP This Heart is, at it’s core, a magical fusion of folk, soul and R’n’B. An effortless blend that draws on elements of eminent female artists such as Grace Jones and Fiona Apple as well as her own own classical music training. What she dubs ‘ArtSoul’ – soul music, which incorporates the scope of all the musical art that Loah loves, including classical, folk, blues – is a carefully curated mix of different sounds and different cultures. Not only that, This Heart  is a proud artistic celebration of Ireland’s multiculturalism, and an opportunity for Garnett to…

  • Perfume Genius – No Shape

    May 5, 2017 - By 

    With No Shape, Mike Hadreas AKA Perfume Genius has produced one the strongest releases of the year so far; simultaneously one of the bravest and most vulnerable. A step away from the more commercial vibes of Too Bright in 2014, the sound here is more akin to the Perfume Genius of Put Your Back In 2 It – an introspective, soul-searching struggle with the self, and with the universal concepts of loss, and love. When No Shape was announced Hadreas spoke about how the sound of this release is about “unpacking little morsels, magnifying my discomfort, wading through buried harm,…

  • Mac DeMarco – This Old Dog

    May 4, 2017 - By 

    “Mellow” is a word that, quite obviously, always sprung to mind whenever Mac DeMarco breezes into conversation. And indeed, no other word could be more fitting for This Old Dog, his third full-length release and the eagerly anticipated follow-up to his 2015 EP, Another One. The self-proclaimed king of “jizz-jazz”, loved for his goofball sense of humour as well as his chill lo-fi sound has carved a niche for himself since his 2012 debut 2, always decorating his music with a hint of melancholia and a tongue in cheek self-awareness. DeMarco seems nothing if not comfortable in his own sonic world. Comfortable though,…

  • Anohni – Paradise EP

    March 23, 2017 - By 

    Anohni is not afraid to be political. This was obvious with her previous release, 2016’s critically acclaimed Hopelessness, where songs like ‘Violent Men’ and ‘Crisis’ were an angry manifestation of a frustration at the state of modern society. While similar thematically, Paradise is a more despondent reflection, slowly building with the quiet and human admission that  “in my dreams, you don’t love me” (‘In My Dreams’). This refrain sets a scene for the emotions of the six-track EP. Paradise, Anohni’s sophomore release (outside of those albums she released as part of Antony and the Johnsons) shares the same anger, and…