Laced with pathos in all the right places, ‘The Song They Play Every Night’ is the wonderful lead single from Dublin five-piece Little Green Cars‘ second album, Ephemera. Swooning, brittle and impossibly earnest, the track – driven by Stevie Appleby’s exquisite, whole-hearted delivered – taps into the all often unspoken world of loss and recovery. Top drawer. Ephemera will be released on March 11.
If there’s three better consecutive words than Dublin Bowie Festival we haven’t heard them. Making its inaugural outing at The Grand Social on Saturday, January 9 and Sunday, January 10, it will celebrate Davy Jones’ musical towering legacy via “live performances, banter, movies, table quiz, collectors merch and more.” With Bowie’s highly-anticipated twenty-fifth album Blackstar set for release the day before the festival’s launch, this is a perfectly-timed opportunity to revisit a bona fide music legend. Go here for more info.
Having made their first announcement back in December, Cork’s Quarter Block Party have revealed a slew of new acts and events set for their 2016 outing from February 5-7. Amongst the new additions is Cathy Walsh’s Running Up That Hill, a celebration of feminism equality and solidarity. Provoked by the #wakingthefeminists movement and inspired by Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’, the people of Cork City will march through the streets and dance together in celebration on North Main Street, the historic spine of the city. Elsewhere, Abigail Conway’s participatory installation Time Lab will ask visitors to “dismantle a wristwatch or clock and reconstruct…
With The Gloaming proving well-deserved victors last time round, the shortlist for this year’s Choice Music Prize has been announced. Set to be selected by an industry judging panel at Dublin’s Vicar Street on Thursday, March 3, the following albums are all vying for the prize: Girl Band – Holding Hands with Jamie (Rough Trade) HamsandwicH – Stories From The Surface (Route 109A Records) Gavin James – Bitter Pill (Warner Music Ireland) Jape – This Chemical Sea (Faction Records) Le Galaxie – Le Club (Universal Music Ireland) Colm Mac Con Iomaire – And Now The Weather (Plateau) Roisin Murphy – Hairless…
Ahead of the launch of their stellar fifth (and second studio) album, Soft Days, at Belfast’s Lavery’s tomorrow night, Cathal McBride chats to Neil Brogan of Belfast guitar-pop trio Sea Pinks about progression, variation and recording their most emphatic record to date. Soft Days sounds like the most varied Sea Pinks album so far, was that a conscious choice when you were writing and recording it? I think the songs just came out that way, but I did want it to sound more varied. I’ve been doing this band for five years so you have to try and keep it interesting…
Featuring some of our favourite Bandcamp tags ever – “ringo starr, soundtrack, good life, ringo starr lower road, ireland” LIFE IS GOOD by inscrutable Irish noise duo SENIOR INFANTS is likely to feature on the Hollyoaks soundtrack any day soon. Marrying sparse blips and sunless splurges of sound with the odd melodic stream and percussive dance, it throws caution to sonic wind, expectant of nothing but itself in fine and mad fashion. LIFE IS GOOD by SENIOR INFANTS
From Joy Orbison, Camper Van Beethoven and Chet Faker to Truman Peyote, Ringo Deathstar and Joanna Gruesome, punny musical monikers range from the positively inspired to the downright cringeworthy. Falling very much into the former camp, Arvo Party is the new-fangled electronic-leaning appellation of Belfast’s Herb Magee of kaput riffmasters general LaFaro and three-piece GOONS. Diametrically at odds to said heavydom, Magee has unveiled two EPs of sublime throwback minimalist electronica: four-track release Beep and the five-track Tintinnabuli, which features two re-imaginings of (the actual) Arvo Pärt’s ‘Für Alina’ and ‘Solfeggio (Excerpt in C Major)’. Back to back, it’s an exceptional double curveball from the Belfast-based bassist and…
Taken from Where Have You Been All My Life? (a collection of re-imaginings set for release on Friday) Villagers are streaming their sublime cover of Glen Campbell’s stone-cold classic ‘Wichita Lineman’. Meeting and exceeding all expectations, it’s an expectedly heartfelt, full-band affair that pays tribute to the original in extraordinary fashion. Distilling five years and three albums of Villagers’ songwriting into “one flowing narrative” Where Have You Been All My Life was recorded in one day at London’s RAK Studio with Richard Woodcraft and Villagers live engineer Ber Quinn.
Launched at Belfast’s Lavery’s this Friday night (January 8) Soft Days by Sea Pinks sees the Neil Brogan-fronted trio in rudest of health. A highlight from the album – their fifth to date – the band have unveiled single ‘Yr Horoscope’, a twanging, surf-laced earwormer. Read our review of Soft Days here. Stream ‘Yr Horoscope’ below.
Almost two years on from their last release, three-track EP Space is an Ocean, Belfast-based experimental electronic twosome Allez Bartoli are back with Everything.Forever, a mini-album very tidily imbued with the pair’s penchant for post-rock leaning soundscapes. DIY at its beating heart, the seven track release was recorded throughout 2014 and 2015 and further reveals AB’s reluctance to aspire to anything even remotely resembling linear imitation. Ahead of our review of the release, stream/download it now via Bandcamp. Everything.Forever by Allez Bartoli