• British Sea Power @ Limelight 2, Belfast

    February 11, 2018 - By 

    Despite emerging at a time when the supposed cool of The Strokes and The Libertines reigned supreme, British Sea Power have successfully outlived most of their contemporaries to become a strange sort of cult British national treasure, concerned less with drugs and parties than with books and nature – song lyrics cover such topics as collapsing Antarctic shelves and 1953 floods, and the band once even bagged an appearance on Countryfile. Five years since they last graced Irish shores, BSP’s famously eccentric live show makes a long overdue return. After a reverb-drenched opening set from Belfast dream-pop duo MMODE, BSP…

  • Hookworms – Microshift

    February 6, 2018 - By 

    Earlier in the decade, it felt like Hookworms were among the leading lights of the modern psych scene, but the gap since the one-two-punch of their first two LPs Pearl Mystic and The Hum in 2013 and 2014 respectively has been uncharacteristic. Having remained on the live circuit – including a storming pair of Irish gigs in 2016 – their studio output has been held up by both the flooding of frontman MJ’s studio in late 2015 and a more general desire to slow down and take their sound somewhere new, rather than continue repeating the formulas of their earlier…

  • Shopping – The Official Body

    January 24, 2018 - By 

    Rachel Agg must be one of the UK’s busiest musicians today. Not content with fronting Trash Kit and last year’s Scottish Album of the Year winners Sacred Paws, she also heads up London trio Shopping, who have somehow managed to find the time to record a third album in amidst it all. While those first two bands possess similar melodic indie-pop leanings, Shopping are leaner, tauter and more heavily indebted to their post-punk forebears. Their first two albums, 2013’s Consumer Complaints and 2015’s Why Choose, sound so much like products of the late 70s/early 80s that it would be tempting…

  • Glen Hansard – Between Two Shores

    January 19, 2018 - By 

      Given that Glen Hansard’s live band tends to contain various members of his old band The Frames, it’d be easy at first glance to wonder what exactly differentiates his solo career from the band he made his name with. On closer inspection though, his solo records so far have marked a gradual divergence from that band’s stock in trade. Though 2012’s Rhythm and Repose wasn’t a huge departure, it gave him the freedom to collaborate with various new musicians in the studio, and 2015’s Didn’t He Ramble saw him both further mine his long standing interest in Irish folk…

  • Sufjan Stevens – The Greatest Gift Mixtape

    November 24, 2017 - By 

    The release of Sufjan Stevens’ last album proper, 2015’s Carrie & Lowell, proved him to be an artist still very much at the top of his game. A decade on from the breakthrough of Illinois, the album saw him swap that record’s lavish arrangements, and follow up The Age of Adz’s oddball electronics, for a return to the hushed folk and introspection found on 2004’s Seven Swans, this time themed around his parents in the wake of his mother’s passing. The album’s tracklisting seemed so perfectly formed – he tended to play all eleven tracks at subsequent live shows, as…

  • Exploded View – Summer Came Early

    November 14, 2017 - By 

    Exploded View’s self titled debut was easily one of the finest albums of last year, even if it did fly a little further under the radar than it deserved to. Then again, it did come seemingly from nowhere. Vocalist Anika had already put out some promising solo material with the members of Beak but her work had been dominated by covers so its shelf life seemed limited. After finding a natural chemistry with a backing band assembled for some shows in Mexico, Exploded View were born, and the resulting, all-original album – self-described as being “for fans of Can, dub…

  • Four Tet – New Energy

    October 7, 2017 - By 

      Almost two decades since launching his electronic solo career (alongside his work in post-rock band Fridge) Kieran Hebden – AKA Four Tet – has become something of an icon of the genre. Originally pioneering ‘folktronica’ – a label he was never keen on but which attempts to describe his electronic manipulation of acoustic instruments and samples on early 2000s albums like Pause and Rounds – more recent records like Beautiful Rewind have seen him shift his focus from the bedroom to the club, moving further in the direction of downtempo house, all while working on collaborations with the likes of…

  • METZ – Strange Peace

    September 22, 2017 - By 

    The first two albums by Canadian trio Metz were loud, bludgeoning noise-rock records very much in the spirit of the band’s ear-splitting live shows. But as viscerally thrilling as both their self-titled debut and follow up II were, they weren’t the sort of albums a band can make a career out of repeating ad naseum, and on the latter there was already a sense of déjà vu creeping in before the end of its half hour duration. Third album Strange Peace then, feels like something of a make-or-break moment for the band’s continuing momentum. While a degree of progression might be…

  • Mogwai – Every Country’s Sun

    September 11, 2017 - By 

    With Mogwai’s soundtrack career ever-burgeoning and winning them new plaudits 20 years after the release of their debut, Young Team, you’d forgive them for taking a break from regular studio albums for a while. This soundtrack work has given them a new sense of purpose, and while 2014’s Rave Tapes was their highest charting album to date, it also earned them some of their most lukewarm reviews, the band themselves even conceding that it was somewhat underdeveloped. Not only that, but their 20th anniversary celebrations – consisting of a career spanning retrospective compilation and some of their most truly triumphant live shows ever…

  • Arvo Party – Arvo Party

    September 1, 2017 - By 

    There’s been something of a LaFaro-shaped hole in Belfast’s music scene since their dissolution a couple of years ago. In a city that’s had no shortage of post-hardcore-leaning bands over the years, LaFaro stood far in front, assisted by a rawness and lack of pretence, not to mention frontman Jonny Black’s vocals that swapped the usual throaty screams and Americanised emoting with a sarcastic snarl handed down from Steve Albini and mclusky’s Andy Falkous. After going on to join Cahir O’Doherty’s Goons – a band who were similarly riffy but lacked that same LaFaro spark and never really got going…