• Sean Being – DEIS

    January 22, 2021 - By 

    Opening with a sharp downpour of prickling synth tones and electrical disturbance, Dublin artist Sean Being’s DEIS wastes little time setting a chilly and discomfited tone, oh so fitting of the EP’s December 28th release date.   If the end of the year was already characterised by damp post-holiday ennui and a cruel and unusual tendency to take stock and pick over our many and varied personal failings, the caustic pall cast by 2020’s concurrent dumpster infernos certainly helped make it all the bleaker this time around. The extended state of emergency and protracted isolation that many of us have become intimately…

  • Orville Peck – Show Pony

    September 1, 2020 - By 

    Bedecked in a Stetson hat, a Roy Rogers Nudie Suit and enough rhinestones and country verve to power the Dollywood Ferris wheel, enigmatic troubadour Orville Peck’s star has been on a steady rise since first ten-stepping his way onto the world stage back in 2019. His acclaimed debut album Pony marked Peck out as an important new songwriter in country music, showcasing not only his unique style and towering vocal chops but also a seemingly endless array of face obscuring leather fringed masks, a stylish nod to anonymity that has since become his calling card.  Melding the macho “outlaw country”…

  • Nadine Shah – Kitchen Sink

    July 9, 2020 - By 

      Nadine Shah’s 2017 release, Holiday Destination seethed with fiery indignation and deep despair as the artist reckoned with the inhuman horror of the Syrian refugee crisis. Her remarkable follow up sees the Tyneside musician turning her lens inward and focuses her incisive attentions on more personal, but no less political, frustrations. Taking aim at everyday racism, feckless men and, most pointedly, the concept of identity and the weighty societal expectations that go with it, Kitchen Sink delivers some of Shah’s most keenly observed performances to date. These songs push Shah’s macabre sound into exhilarating new terrain, oozing dark glamour…

  • Various Artists – The 343 Vol.1

    June 25, 2020 - By 

    Named for Le Manifeste des 343,  a brave act of civil disobedience by French women who dared sign a Simone de Beauvoir penned petition, publicly declaring that they had undergone illegal abortions,  The 343 is a feminist-led, Queer art space that has swiftly become a thriving and vital corner stone of the Belfast music scene. Having  garnered a glowing reputation for its community-driven ethos and unflinching dedication to creating a safe and inclusive space for LGBTQIA artists, The 343 has now put together its first compilation album. The 343 Vol. 1 brings together a vibrant range of experimental artists associated…

  • The Magnetic Fields – Quickies

    June 4, 2020 - By 

      At one point in 2010 documentary, Strange Powers, an admirer of The Magnetic Fields asks if anyone else could to write songs like Stephin Merritt does.  Any attempt to do so, he warns, could be dangerous. It’s hard to disagree. Such is the tonal high wire that a typical Magnetic Fields song walks; a delicate and unlikely balance of lush romanticism, caustic wit and unabashed schmaltz that imbues Merritt’s grand album concepts and arch wordplay with a profound and lasting emotional bite. The music too is a strange beast. Keening melodies and radiant singalong hooks are cast off with apparently preternatural ease,…

  • Throwing It Out There: An Interview With Kristin Hersh

    April 8, 2019 - By 

    U.S. singer-songwriter, musician and author Kristin Hersh talks to James Cox about pride, process, PTSD, guitar-playing and forthcoming new Throwing Muses material. Your latest release Possible Dust Clouds is certainly one of the more muscular and unapologetically rocking entries to your solo catalogue. Can you talk us through some of the influences behind the album? Where was your mind at when writing and recording this latest batch of songs? I wanted to hear how it feels to be at a show rather than how it feels to listen to a live recording (which is usually just a lousy recording!). The songs themselves…

  • Beirut – Gallipoli

    March 2, 2019 - By 

    For a project born out of the narrow confines of a bedroom in landlocked Santa Fe, Beirut’s influences have always been remarkably far flung. Right from the off, the band’s globetrotting song titles and grand orchestrations betrayed Zach Condon’s wanderlust and romantic tendencies and allowed him to project himself out from the desert plains of New Mexico and into the imagined eastern gulags and louche European locales so central to his sound and aesthetic. At a time when indie music was more firmly rooted in a traditional band format, Condon quickly marked himself out as a purveyor of strange and…

  • Sharon Van Etten – Remind Me Tomorrow

    February 5, 2019 - By 

    “Kid came back. A real turn around.” Remind Me Tomorrow’s extraordinary lead single ‘Comeback Kid’ was an electrifying jolt to the system. Ducking and weaving like a prizefighter over buzzing synths and a clatter of snare drums, it was a hair raising musical feat that instantly heralded a radical break from Sharon Van Etten’s established sound. It is a trend that runs to the core of an album, which eschews her typical palette of dark guitar textures and sombre piano  in favour of a warmer, glossier soundscape that brims and burbles with vintage electronics and off kilter percussion. Each track…

  • 19 for ’19: Problem Patterns

    January 11, 2019 - By 

    Happy new year! We’re pleased to present 19 for ’19, a handpicked selection of Irish acts we’re absolutely convinced are going places in 2019. Over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to be previewing each of those acts, accompanied by words from our writers and an original photograph by our wonderful team of photographers. First up is Belfast-based feminist punks Problem Patterns. ___ Jokingly describing themselves as “A bunch of women screaming in a room”, Belfast’s Problem Patterns wasted little time getting under our skin with the raucous and politically charged bombast of their debut track ‘Allegedly’. Released in December…

  • Katie Kim & The Crash Ensemble – Salt Interventions

    November 21, 2018 - By 

    Salt Interventions documents a superb live performance by Waterford musician Katie Kim as she teams up with the Crash Ensemble to revisit and reimagine her darkly brooding masterwork, Salt. Casting a new light on the 2016 album’s nine chilling tracks, Kim chooses to divest her compositions of the surging electric guitar figures and stormy electronic textures that were so central to their studio incarnations. Instead, she boils her song’s down to their base emotional bone broth, allowing her authoritative vocals to take centre stage as they unfurl over unfussy piano chords, leaving it to the orchestral 14-piece Crash Ensemble to provide…