• Pillow Queens – Name Your Sorrow

    April 23, 2024 - By 

    Pillow Queens’ third album Name Your Sorrow is a raucous feat of passion and disdain that explores the many facets of sorrow. The Dublin quartet have returned with something that offers little new, but brings to light the weaknesses of previous albums in its refinement of their shortcomings. Toeing the line between their first two albums, it lands in a sweet middle ground where we find Pillow Queens at their most refined. “Let’s just play some rock n roll music,” exclaims the opening track ‘February 8th’, punctuated by each instrument as they re-introduce the band one by one. Instruments are…

  • Breaking The Waves: An Interview with Brìghde Chaimbeul

    July 10, 2023 - By 

    Off the back of playing Glastonbury, and the release of her thrilling new album Carry Them With Us, Christine Costello speaks with acclaimed smallpipes player Brìghde Chaimbeul about the sounds and inspirations behind her singular craft Photos by Monika Ruman  Carry Them With Us is Brìghde Chaimbeul’s second solo album and features a combination of original compositions and songs inspired by Gaelic folklore and archive recordings. The album is as dark as it is whimsical from the soaring lilts of ‘Banish the Giant’ to weighted tragedies of ‘Oran an Eich Uisge’. Chaimbeul’s rich understanding of her instrument adds a new layer…

  • Lisa O’Neill – All of This is Chance

    April 11, 2023 - By 

    Lisa O’Neill offers up her finest release to date with All of This is Chance. The Cavan native’s fifth album boasts an impressive variety of collaborators, from concertinist Cormac Begley, violinist Colm Mac Con Iomaire, Kate Ellis of the Crash Ensemble, and more. O’Neill’s timeless sound breathes new life into traditional balladry. Upon a foundation of droning harmoniums, concertinas, and violins, which create a sound akin to fellow trad revivalists Lankum, her haunting vocals sit, captivating her listeners and luring them into a state of transcendence. Here, tracks like ‘Birdie From Another Realm’ slip nimbly from the clutches of modernity,…

  • Pillow Queens – Leave The Light On

    April 11, 2022 - By 

    Pillow Queens’ sophomore album Leave the Light On smooths the cracks of their debut to unveil a near-perfect follow-up. Where In Waiting documented the rough transition from adolescence into adulthood through fleeting tales of young love and triumphs, Leave the Light On  pushes forward into something more settled. Through elegiac verses and changing perspectives, Pillow Queens construct a metaphorical space that inspects the cracks in its white picket fence. These anthems shine light on the marginalised and lonely as they navigate the mundane and everyday; it’s an album that yearns for the peace of domesticity, in a country that continuously…

  • Pillow Queens – In Waiting

    October 5, 2020 - By 

    Pillow Queen’s anthemic indie-rock has seen them gain incredible momentum as one Ireland’s most refreshing musical exports. On their debut album, In Waiting, the Dublin group take the very best aspects of themselves and craft a magnificently poignant collection, exploring the emotional transition from adolescence to adulthood in a repressed society. With two highly-acclaimed EPs under their belt, along with a Choice Music Prize Nomination for their track ‘Gay Girls’, the four-piece set a high standard for their debut LP to meet. In Waiting exceeds all expectations, and offers a comprehensive showcase of Pillow Queens’ talent for captivating, emotional ballads.…

  • 10 for ’20: His Father’s Voice

    March 4, 2020 - By 

    In the latest installment of 10 for ’20, Christine Costello tips Limerick quartet His Father’s Voice for massive things in 2020 and beyond. Photo by Aaron Corr Blurring the lines between post-punk and shoegaze, His Father’s Voice are just one of many enterprising outfits to come out of DIY LK music collective. Since the release of their self-recorded EP Contexts and Perspectives in 2018, the group have met high critical acclaim, been awarded support slots with Viagra Boys and Cherry Glazerr on their Irish tours and will support Dream Wife at their upcoming Whelans show this May. In 2019, the band bounced…

  • Lana Del Rey – Norman Fucking Rockwell

    September 22, 2019 - By 

    Norman Fucking Rockwell is a triumph in modern pop music. Lana Del Rey holds a mirror up to the fallacy that is the American Dream; the kind of idyllic, white picket fence visions of Slim Aaron and Norman Rockwell, after whom the album is named. Through the cynical narrative, narcotic-soaked sound and Del Rey’s acerbic character portraits, she warps these images and distorts the convoluted ideology that is the American Dream.  This grim satire glossed over with the subdued vocals and overall ethereal quality is an aesthetic Del Rey has been trying to achieve in her for several albums, most…

  • Panda Bear – Buoys

    February 23, 2019 - By 

    Panda Bear’s Buoys is a mirage of deconstructed indie governed by its uninhibited stream of consciousness lyrical style. His writing makes this one of the most vivid depictions of society in 2019 so far and a lament to a generation condemned by its own vanity. Through minimalism, Panda Bear – Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox – draws the listener’s attention solely to his sincere, reverberated vocals through which he bares a haunting portrait of the modern human psyche. Lennox succeeds in making the familiar sound unfamiliar, taking the roots of conventional tracks and scrambling them into something completely unrecognisable and unique.…

  • Muse – Simulation Theory

    November 26, 2018 - By 

    From pollution and dirty talk to Harry Potter references and riffs straight out of ’90s Europop, Muse’s latest album, Simulation Theory, has the energetic, revolutionary spirit of an album that has no idea what or who it’s revolting against. Like many albums released by a British artist in the past year, critics have uncovered an elaborate anti-Brexit agenda somewhere amidst the circus of synthesisers. ‘Thought Contagion’ is one of the strongest tracks on the album – but that doesn’t say much – with Bellamy belting on about “fractured identities”, “infinite black skies’ and a society “bitten by false beliefs”. It’s so…

  • Death Cab for Cutie – Thank You For Today

    September 15, 2018 - By 

    In the midst of a tumultuous period in the revered band’s development, Death Cab for Cutie have stripped back to basics for ninth album, their most accomplished of the past eight years, Thank you For Today. Thank you for Today is without a doubt Death Cab’s most retrospective album in over a decade, and is in many ways a celebration of the past. As the past four albums have been burdened by darker and more personal tones, Thank you for Today comes as a welcome relief in many ways but never risking flipancy. The buoyant and Beck-reminiscent single, ‘Gold Rush’…