• Sea Pinks – Rockpool Blue

    October 9, 2018 - By 

    With the difficulty of making a proper living from music these days, it’s not uncommon to see the release schedules of bands on the more DIY end of the spectrum slow right down as they’re increasingly forced to balance music with work commitments and other general life admin. And yet, with the release of their seventh album a mere eight years on from their debut, Belfast’s Sea Pinks may surely by now have overtaken even Dublin’s No Monster Club for the title of Ireland’s most prolific band, and while one could be forgiven for assuming a case of quantity over…

  • Exploded View – Obey

    October 3, 2018 - By 

    Exploded View are a band on a steady ascent. Formed a few years ago in Mexico City by Welsh-born, Berlin-based Anika in order to perform songs from her 2010 solo covers album on a tour of the country, the new group’s natural chemistry lead to 2016’s eponymous debut, an album of stellar original material influenced by “Can, dub and political revolution” on the ever reliable Sacred Bones label.  Coming seemingly from  out of nowhere, the album flew a little under the radar at first, but last year’s EP Summer Came Early, with its unusually catchy, breezy title track – albeit…

  • Something Positive, Something Sincere: An Interview with Wooden Shjips

    September 6, 2018 - By 

    Ahead of shows at Belfast Empire Music Hall (Sept 17th) and Dublin’s Whelan’s (Sept 18th) Ripley Johnson of San Francisco psych alchemists Wooden Shjips talks to Cathal McBride about songwriting process, positivity and playing to “up for it” Irish audiences. It’s been a full five years since the last Wooden Shjips record. What made 2018 the right time for a return? Well, it was 2017 that we reconvened to make the record. Hard to say why, really. For me, I just got the urge to work with the guys again so proposed a simple plan for making it. The plan was…

  • Oh Sees – Smote Reverser

    September 1, 2018 - By 

      Oh Sees (aka Thee Oh Sees, OCS and too many other variations to mention), are not only one of the most prolific bands active today – seemingly locked in an endless battle of releases against protégés Ty Segall and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – but they’re also a rare example of a band that has by and large only gotten better as their career has progressed, even as their album tally has gone well into double figures. Though many long term fans miss the ‘classic’ lineup that disbanded after 2013’s excellent Floating Coffin, when Dwyer relocated from…

  • Everything Goes: An interview with Aidan Moffat

    July 12, 2018 - By 

    Still best known as one half of Arab Strab with Malcolm Middleton, Aidan Moffat’s later career has been a multifaceted one, and his latest album, Here Lies the Body, a collaboration with RM Hubbert, is one of our favourites of 2018 so far. Ahead of July dates at Galway’s Róisín Dubh (23rd), Dublin’s Grand Social (24th) and Belfast’s Black Box (25th), Cathal McBride speaks to Aidan (pictured right, with Hubbert) about this latest project and other recent work.  Hi Aidan, how has the tour for Here Lies the Body been going so far? They’ve all been pretty great so far,…

  • Girls Names – Stains on Silence

    June 26, 2018 - By 

    The fourth Girls Names full length has been a long time coming. A little under three years isn’t such a big gap between albums these days in an increasingly part-time industry, but recording updates were coming thick and fast from the Belfast band some time ago before seeming to dry up. As it turns out, an initial mix of the album was finished long ago before being shelved for 6 months and then ultimately aborted. The band then began reworking the material, taking it apart and rebuilding it with new edits and recordings. This drawn out process, as well as…

  • Aidan Moffat & RM Hubbert – Here Lies the Body

    May 31, 2018 - By 

    Aidan Moffat has a knack for a musical partnership. Having first come to attention as one half of Arab Strap alongside Malcolm Middleton from the mid-90s to the mid-00s – as well as a recent triumphant run of reunion shows – his later pairing with jazz musician and fellow Falkirk native Bill Wells saw the pair bag the inaugural Scottish Album of the Year Award for their 2011 debut Everything’s Getting Older. Now it’s the turn of guitar virtuoso RM Hubbert, perhaps best known to Irish audiences for regular stints supporting Mogwai on these shores. The pair already teamed up…

  • Ulrika Spacek – Suggestive Listening EP

    May 3, 2018 - By 

    For most bands, the EP format proves a useful starting point, a way of getting their earliest tracks out there when not in possession of enough money, time or material for a full LP, while also functioning as a low stakes release while they find their feet, not yet ready to commit to that ultimate statement of “the album”. Others though, like Ulrika Spacek, arrived so fully formed that work on an album was the first port of call, and indeed their 2016 debut release The Album Paranoia is still their strongest work to date. After last year’s quick follow…

  • Guided by Voices – Space Gun

    April 2, 2018 - By 

      As if Guided by Voices weren’t prolific enough in their ’90s heyday, Robert Pollard has amped things up considerably in the 2010s. When that classic ’90s lineup reunited earlier this decade, they remarkably pumped out six new albums within a mere two and a half year period, while the current reboot of the 1997-2004 Doug Gillard era produced two last year, including sprawling double album August by Cake. A wealth of new material from a band we once thought were gone for good is something to celebrate, but there’s been an undeniable sense since 2012 that they’ve been spreading…

  • Yo La Tengo – There’s a Riot Going On

    March 27, 2018 - By 

    Even though it’s a been a good five years since the last Yo La Tengo album proper – discounting 2015’s primarily covers and reworks-based Stuff Like That There – the band’s new album came about more by accident than design. Forced by software updates and the general onward march of technology to upgrade their home recording equipment, new material began to grow out of the practice room jam sessions that developed in order to enable bassist James McNew to learn how to use this new kit. Using these recordings as well as older snippets from over the past decade, the…