• Monday Mixtape: Jeffrey Lewis

    April 30, 2018 - By 

    Ahead of a solo acoustic Irish tour from May 5-11 (full details here) New York musician and illustrator Jeffrey Lewis selects some of his all-time favourite tracks, including The Fall, Focus and Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers. Ish Marquez – Gin is Not My Friend Ish Marquez, best underground soul singer from the Bronx streets! Sam Cooke meets Kurt Cobain on NYC subway at 3am in 1976 and they make up songs till dawn and sing to the sunrise on a tenement rooftop until the cops shut them down, and it just might sound like Ish Marquez. I used…

  • Stream: Girls Names – Karoline

    April 27, 2018 - By 

    Belfast’s Girls Names are sitting on one of the Irish albums of the year. Set for release on June 15 via Tough Love, Stains on Silence finds the three-piece at their most vital and experimental to date. Recorded in various locations including Belfast’s Start Together Studio with Ben McAuley, Cully’s home and the band’s practice space, spontaneous creation, cut-up techniques and self-editing took centre-stage for the first time. “We started tearing the material apart and rebuilding, re-editing and re-recording different parts in my home in early Autumn last year,” says frontman Cathal Cully. “When we got them to a place we were happier…

  • Stream: Subplots – Unspeak

    April 27, 2018 - By 

    It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Dublin’s Subplots. Having “formally introduced” drummer Ross Chaney to the fold back in January, the band – now based between Ireland and Canada – spent last year writing and recording the full-length follow-up to 2015’s Autumning. The first single to be taken from that is ‘Unspeak’, a wonderfully-woven six-minute track gem began as a live recording of the trio – on guitar, bass synth and two busted old ARP synthesizers providing bass drum and hi-hat sounds. Vocalist Phil Boughton said, “The song grew around this simple skeletal recording of the three of us playing in…

  • Spectrum @ Drogheda Arts Festival

    April 25, 2018 - By 

    An outright highlight of this year’s Drogheda Arts Festival, Spectrum aka Pete ‘Sonic Boom’ Kember will perform at Droichead Arts Centre on Friday, May 4. An exclusive Irish date, this is an unmissable opportunity to catch the Spacemen 3 founding member and E.A.R musician’s decades-spanning solo project. Support on the night comes from Drogheda’s very own ethereal down-tempo pop collective We Eat Electric Light, producers and musicians driven by a mutual interest in electronic and organic music, noises and sounds. They are working towards a cassette EP release soon via Drogheda-based thirtythree-45. Tickets – very reasonably priced between €18-€20 – are available…

  • Watch: Hilary Woods – Black Rainbow

    April 24, 2018 - By 

    Some artists are just destined to wind up on certain rosters. One such act is Dublin’s Hilary Woods, an artist whose solo craft we’ve followed with a certain glee over the last couple of years. On June 8, the musician, ex-JJ72 member and multi-instrumentalist will release her debut full-length album, Colt, via Brooklyn’s Sacred Bones, an indie imprint whose discerning (and, so far, pretty impeccable) penchant for repping acts such as Zola Jesus, Jenny Hval, David Lynch, John Carpenter, Blanck Mass and Marissa Nadler runs directly parallel with Woods’ very own crepuscular craft. Conjuring a woozed-out netherworld that wouldn’t feel in any way out…

  • Kurt Vile & The Violators Set For Dublin

    April 24, 2018 - By 

    Having last played the venue back in 2015, Kurt Vile will return to Dublin’s Vicar Street later this year. Taking place on November 14, the show will mark the end of a run of UK and Irish shows by the Philadelphia indie-rock musician. Tickets go on sale at 10am on Friday.

  • Premiere: Brand New Friend – Seatbelts For Aeroplanes

    April 23, 2018 - By 

    Few Northern Irish acts are on the up quite like Castlerock quartet Brand New Friend. From their release of almost dangerously-earworming debut EP, American Wives, back in 2016, the band’s brand of starry-eyed indie-pop will be on full display on their forthcoming debut album, Seatbelts For Airplanes. A sub-three minute burst marrying starry-eyed, harmony-driven sounds with confessional lyrics touching on the unspoken things in relationships, the album’s title track distils the Brand New Friend sound (essentially – once you hear it, you know it) perfectly. Shot by Gregory Nolan and edited by OneThirtyEight, have a first look at the video for the single below. Seatbelts For Airplanes is…