• A Band Called Wanda w/ New Pope & Liam Doherty @ Roisin Dubh, Galway

    September 29, 2015 - By 

    Thursday the 24th of September saw the first of a new monthly event being held in the upstairs venue of Galway’s Roisín Dubh. Run by local songwriter and musical institution Steven Sharpe, the first installment – “What’s Dubh Got To Do With It?” – aimed to create an atmosphere of cosiness, warmth, friendliness and ease and succeeded in doing so with what seemed like total ease. The room is warmed by warm candlelight and the seats are already nearly filled by the time the first act of the night, local songwriter Liam Doherty (below). Being this his first solo show,…

  • Parquet Courts w/ Oh Boland, Cian Nugent & The Cosmos @ Roisin Dubh, Galway

    September 4, 2015 - By 

    From the offset of tonight’s festivities it is made plainly clear that no one will be leaving this room with ears as healthy as they were when they came in. Getting things going, local institution and ever-progressing garage maestros Oh Boland (below) break into their brand of screechy, uplifting and loud jams. Guitarist and vocalist Niall Murphy flaps about the stage like a moustachioed Crash Bandicoot while the rhythm section of Eanna MacDonnacha (bass) and Simon McDonagh (drums, backing vocals) provide equal measures of sweaty energy. The songs sound like taking a trip to the beach on a sunny day, except…

  • Interview: Foals

    August 19, 2015 - By 

    Foals have this aura of being an incredibly intense act. There’s an image portrayed of this bunch of manic but brooding individuals from Oxford who have gone from creating live dance punk to trash a house party to, to crafting some of the most lucid and crushingly expansive indie-rock of the past decade. Speaking to Foals’ drummer Jack Bevan on the phone about their upcoming release What Went Down then, it felt both refreshing and jarring to be met with a relaxed yet chirpy voice on the other side. On the subject of change, writing, dynamic and everything that was…

  • David Kitt w/ Margie Lewis @ Roisin Dubh, Galway

    August 18, 2015 - By 

    In the past year or so, Irish indie-folk institution David Kitt has made leaps and bounds in a more club-oriented scene with his warm, groove-based approach to house music under his New Jackson alias. Other audiences however will associate him a lot more with something like the folk soundtrack to a rainy summer somewhere in Kerry, triggering the same nostalgia that comes with listening to The Frames Set List or Bell X1’s Music in Mouth. To see Kitt touring extensively around the country this summer in between massive dance settings such as Body and Soul’s Midnight Circus Stage or District…

  • Strange Brew Summer Shindig #11 @ Roisin Dubh, Galway

    August 3, 2015 - By 

    It’s still relatively early in the evening on the Thursday of the Galway Races, July 30. I’m walking through the town which is flooded will ill-fitting suits and headwear that ranges from patch caps to multi-coloured shapes that defy the laws of physics. It’s mayhem. It’s loud. There’s a man with curry sauce all over his shirt shouting at a seagull and there’s a bunch of lads singing (read: bellowing) ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’. Despite the sense of mania of it all, it’s hard to not find it all just to be a lot of fun. People have come in…

  • St. Vincent w/ Little Green Cars @ The Big Top, Galway

    July 16, 2015 - By 

    Tonight saw the Galway International Arts Festival Big Top host its first event of the season with the sheer spectacle of Texan powerhouse St. Vincent and support from the always-charming Little Green Cars. The tent by the river has already filled suitably by the time Little Green Cars take to the stage and there’s an immediate sense that the audience is more than willing to be drawn further in by the brutally honest and heartfelt tracks from the band’s 2013 debut LP Absolute Zero and a healthy sprinkling of equally emotive new ones, one of which wouldn’t sound out of…

  • Body & Soul Festival 2015

    June 24, 2015 - By 

    Friday afternoon of Body and Soul 2015 saw waves of punters throwing their eyes in every direction while walking around the impressively navigable site. Everywhere you look something else is noticed, be it a person juggling, dancing or performing acrobatics, or another one of the myriad food, drink or craft stalls dotted throughout the place. This sense of wonder and intrigue that opened the festival continued throughout the weekend but from the get-go acted as a reminder that this festival is about far more than the musical line-up. It’s about escape from the norm, from the trajectory that a day…

  • SOAK, Rainy Boy Sleep + Rosseau @ Roisin Dubh, Galway

    June 14, 2015 - By 

    It’s a bright Friday evening at the start of the summer and as the first act of the night, Derry two-piece Rosseau (below), quietly take to the stage there is an immediate sense that the crowd here tonight are feeling that atmosphere of warmth. The room is quietly fluttering with an eagerness to be enveloped by some of the best music the North Coast has to offer. Having formed roughly six months ago and only releasing their debut EP at the start of June, Rosseau’s tender guitar and drum combo is still very much in its germination phase with only…

  • Tandem Felix – Comma EP

    May 26, 2015 - By 

    On their new EP, Comma, Dublin’s Tandem Felix have toned down the gritty anxiety that added a particularly distorted, glitching atmosphere to their 2013 EP, Popcorn. That grit, which gave Tandem Felix’s folkier basis a very psychedelic edge, has been twisted slightly to incorporate less abrasion and a little more lap steel guitar. The result is that Comma’s five tracks bear a lot of similarity to the likes of Beck’s Sea Change or Morning Phase, or to the more tender points in Wilco’s discography.  That’s not to say that the anxiety is gone, however. The lyrics express the same sense of…

  • Inbound: Pleasure Beach

    May 25, 2015 - By 

    Belfast’s newest dream-pop outfit Pleasure Beach dazzled into our ears at the end of April with their shimmering and uplifting first release ‘Go’. The song emerges from a haze of wavey synths, which envelope and carry the twanging 50’s diner guitars and driving drums. The five-piece seem to have put enormous concentration into the sound they are hoping to achieve and into how each instrument would play off the other on their glamorous debut. With ‘Go’ being the first and, thus far, only thing we have to go on with Pleasure Beach it is safe to say that anticipation is…