• Body/Head w/ Heather Leigh & Elaine Kahn @ IMMA, Dublin

    July 29, 2019 - By 

    The end of Sonic Youth’s 30 year career in 2011 was the end of an indie rock era, but it’s been some consolation that the band’s remarkable consistency has largely carried across to each member’s post-SY projects. Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo’s solo careers have both largely carried on where their contributions to the band left off, both even sharing joint custody of drummer Steve Shelley. But it’s arguably Kim Gordon who has remained most in touch with Sonic Youth’s avant-garde roots. Since forming experimental guitar duo Body/Head with Bill Nace, their three albums of freeform guitar exploration so far…

  • Bill Callahan – Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest

    July 5, 2019 - By 

    From his extremely ramshackle 1990 debut Sewn to the Sky up until 2013’s far more polished Dream River, Bill Callahan – better known for the first half of his career by the alias Smog – managed to maintain a reasonably prolific rate of output. Following a dub remix album in 2014, however, things fell rather silent. Had the man often referred to as the spiritual successor to Leonard Cohen finally run out of ideas after fifteen albums? Well, as it turns out, no – life merely got in the way. As Callahan found himself getting married and fathering his first…

  • Inbound: The Claque

    April 18, 2019 - By 

    Girl Band’s incendiary LP Holding Hands With Jamie found itself landing on Albums of the Year lists far and wide in 2015, but health issues have seen the band lie dormant for the last two years. Cue the excitement then that guitarist Alan Duggan has convened a new group, The Claque, alongside Paddy Ormond of jangle-pop maestros Postcard Versions and vocalist Kate Brady. Debut single ‘Hush’ sees the trio pool their talents, combining Duggan’s brutal mechanical noise with Ormond’s distinct sense of melody and Brady’s pop sensibilities. With a debut Dublin show pencilled in for 27th April and summer dates…

  • James Yorkston – The Route to the Harmonium

    March 28, 2019 - By 

    It’s been five long years since Scottish folk singer James Yorkston’s last solo album – 2014’s The Cellardyke Recording and Wassailing Society – though he’s certainly not been resting on his laurels in that time. As well as turning novelist and podcaster (spinning esoteric tunes on ‘46-30’), he’s put out two highly acclaimed albums in quick succession with his new trio, Yorkston/Thorne/Khan – a sort of folk-fusion collaboration with his regular double bass player Jon Thorne and Indian sarangi player Suhail Khan (a third album is already recorded and ready for release early next year). All the while, though, he’s…

  • The Redneck Manifesto – The How

    December 11, 2018 - By 

    The Redneck Manifesto may not be a household name, but their influence on modern Irish music cannot be understated. Their initial run of releases in the early 2000s, falling somewhere in that uncategorisable gap between post-rock and math-rock, helped to pave the way for the abnormally large influx of instrumental guitar bands on this island. Bands like Adebisi Shank and Enemies bore their influence and long sang their praises, while across the Irish sea, even now-global superstars Foals reportedly worshipped heavily at the TRM alter in their early days, even inspiring frontman Yannis Philippakis’ choice of Travis Bean guitar. Resolutely DIY…

  • Woven Skull – Woven Skull

    December 3, 2018 - By 

    The latest Woven Skull record may be self-titled, but it’s a long way off being their debut. One glance at their Bandcamp page shows just how impressively prolific they’ve been over the past decade, with all manner of singles, EPs, albums and collaborations of improvisational drone-folk creeping out of their Leitrim base. And that’s not to mention the various solo and side projects the group – original trio Natalia Beylis, Aonghus McEvoy and Willie Stewart, along with more recent addition Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh of Cian Nugent & The Cosmos – manage to keep on the go as well. If giving…

  • Thom Yorke – Suspiria (Music for the Luca Guadagnino Film)

    November 15, 2018 - By 

    With the increasingly long gaps between Radiohead albums in their latter years, three of the band’s members so far have managed to put this downtime to good use exploring their own projects on the side. And for a band so heavily focused on sounds and texture, it’s no surprise that all three of them have found themselves drawn to soundtrack work in one way or another – most notably Jonny Greenwood, whose string of collaborations with Paul Thomas Anderson this year earned him an Oscar nomination for Phantom Thread. Drummer Philip Selway too, having reinvented himself as a hushed folk…

  • Ty Segall – Fudge Sandwich

    November 8, 2018 - By 

    Garage rock institution Ty Segall has always been insanely prolific, but in 2018 he’s taken things to extremes. So far he’s put out expansive double album Freedom’s Goblin, a long awaited second collaboration with White Fence and a second record from side project GØGGS. Now we can add to that an album of covers in Fudge Sandwich, but news has also surfaced of an ultra-limited cassette called Orange Rainbow distributed at a recent art exhibition, and a new side project with wife Denée called The C.I.A. with an album due out in December. Exhausting stuff, but back to Fudge Sandwich for…

  • Documenta – Lady With The Ring

    October 31, 2018 - By 

    It’s a chilling story, that of a woman prematurely buried, presumed dead until awoken by a grave robber attempting to amputate her finger to make off with her valuable ring. Often attributed to early 18th century Lurgan woman Margorie McCall, her grave, pictured on the cover of this EP, does indeed state “lived once, buried twice” – though the existence of countless versions of this tale all over Europe, attributed to various different women from anywhere as early as the 14th century, does sow doubt on its veracity. Nonetheless it remains an infamous piece of local folklore, and Belfast’s finest…

  • Lisa O’Neill – Heard a Long Gone Song

    October 27, 2018 - By 

    Given Lisa O’Neill’s rising star in recent years, it’s surprising she hasn’t been snapped up by a bigger label sooner, with previous work being either self released or issued through The Frames’ Plateau Records. Having toured extensively over the last few years with the likes of Glen Hansard, James Yorkston and The Divine Comedy though, it seems pretty natural that at last the Cavan songwriter should follow fellow Irish folk luminaries Lankum onto the eminent Rough Trade label, or more accurately, Rough Trade’s brand new folk imprint River Lea, for album four. Where previous records, particularly 2013’s Same Cloth or…