• 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…

  • Liars – TFCF

    August 29, 2017 - By 

    While a new Liars album is always cause for celebration, reactions seemed somewhat tempered this time around for the announcement of eighth LP TFCF (short for Theme From Crying Fountain) by the revelation that the band is now a solo project, with only frontman Angus Andrew remaining. Drummer Julian Gross, part of the trio since their second album after expending their original rhythm section, had already hung up his sticks shortly after last album Mess due to a bad back making touring difficult, but the departure of founding member Aaron Hemphill came as more of a surprise. This, coupled with…

  • The Fall – New Facts Emerge

    July 28, 2017 - By 

    Constant line-up changes are part and parcel of The Fall, to the point where Guardian journalist Dave Simpson almost drove himself mad trying to track down every ex-member for his book The Fallen. And yet, in the last decade they’ve been strangely stable, releasing an unprecedented four albums with an entirely unchanged line-up, and a fifth that merely added a second percussionist. Now, though, not only are they back to a single drummer, but they’ve also lost Elena Poulou, who’d been manning the keyboards since as far back as 2002, making her one of the band’s longest serving members ever,…

  • The Jimmy Cake – Tough Love

    July 13, 2017 - By 

    Ireland has had no shortage of post-rock bands, but The Jimmy Cake feel a bit like the elder statesmen. On early releases they set themselves apart from their contemporaries with a 10 piece lineup that mixed folk and orchestral instruments like banjo, accordion, brass and woodwind alongside the guitars, a sound they had perfected by the time they put out the lush Spectre & Crown. But on their return from a subsequent seven year gap with 2015’s Master they’d undergone a reinvention, those extraneous instruments all but replaced with stratospheric synths, tracks that could now last half an hour, and…

  • Ulrika Spacek – Modern English Decoration

    June 8, 2017 - By 

    It’s scarcely more than a year since Ulrika Spacek appeared as if from nowhere with their critically lauded debut, The Album Paranoia, on the ever reliable Tough Love Records. So it’s surprising, by today’s standards at least, that they’re already back with a follow up, Modern English Decoration. Recording and mixing the whole record entirely in their own shared East London house that serves as their creative hub probably helped speed things along, mind. Although the band had already expanded from the core duo of Rhys Edwards and Rhys Williams to a full five piece by the time of The Album Paranoia’s recording…

  • Damo Suzuki w/ Blue Whale & Paul Stapleton and Robocobra Quartet @ Black Box, Belfast

    May 29, 2017 - By 

    When former Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit died in January this year, the tributes that poured in were a potent reminder, if one were needed, of just how influential the krautrock pioneers were. With the German band’s original American vocalist Malcolm Mooney leaving the band at the dawn of the 70s, erstwhile Japanese busker Damo Suzuki was installed in time for 1971’s seminal Tago Mago, remaining with the group for the equally classic Ege Bamyasi and Future Days, albums that within just a few short years were influencing Berlin-era Bowie and the entire post-punk scene, not to mention countless rock bands…

  • New Jackson – From Night To Night

    May 22, 2017 - By 

    It’s been a full eight years since David Kitt released his last studio album The Nightsaver, but he hasn’t put that time to waste, continuing to gig sporadically, while also reinventing himself as New Jackson, swapping his usual ‘folktronica’ for a more purely electronic approach and releasing a string of EPs from 2011 on various house labels. Impressive then that the same year he makes a return under his own name – long awaited seventh LP Yous is released in September – this new alter ego also finally makes a full length debut with From Night to Night on Dublin’s…

  • Moon Duo – Occult Architecture Vol. 2

    May 12, 2017 - By 

    The double album is a much maligned concept nowadays, something that can be thrilling when done right but is far more often overly long and bloated, easily chopped down to a single album of highlights. The announcement of a double album release sets alarm bells ringing as fans start to worry about their favourite bands’ ambitions starting to fly a bit too close to the sun. Perhaps splitting them up into a part 1 and 2 is a good way of keeping things less bloated, but then of course the records both have to be good enough to justify buying…

  • The Divine Comedy w/ Lisa O’Neill @ CQAF, Belfast

    May 8, 2017 - By 

    It’s a while since Neil Hannon has toured with a full band version of The Divine Comedy, having toured last album Bang Goes The Knighthood solo back in 2010 (including a date in this same faux-starlit CQAF marquee) and having made most appearances since – such as his Mandela Hall performance upon winning 2015’s Oh Yeah Legend Award – with a stripped back trio of acoustic guitar, piano and accordion. The days of endless major label money having long since dried up, a return to the era of bringing along a full orchestra seems unlikely, but the promise of a…

  • Ciaran Lavery – A King at Night: The Songs of Bonnie Prince Billy

    May 5, 2017 - By 

    Will Oldham, aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, releases his new album Best Troubadour this month, a collection of covers of songs by Merle Haggard , who Oldham describes as his “forever hero”. Yet the prolific Oldham is something of a hero himself to many, name-checked in songs by Half Man Half Biscuit and Jeffrey Lewis, cited as a primary formative influence on a young Arab Strap and covered by the likes of The Frames, Mark Kozelek and even Johnny Cash, yet he remains firmly in the “cult favourite” bracket, where in a more fair and just world he’d surely be subject to the…