• So Cow w/ Hot Cops, Junk Drawer & Shrug Life @ Voodoo, Belfast

    July 11, 2016 - By 

    Irish independent music is going through something of a renaissance at the moment with a burgeoning collective of bands attempting to show that music from Ireland is more than trad and U2. This evening at Voodoo we are treated to a selection of bands from various parts of the island who all bring something different to the scene. Dublin’s Shrug Life open affairs although this evening frontman Danny Carroll (below) goes it alone. Everything takes on a slower pace without the urgency of the drums or bass but Carroll strums through the set with enough assuredness and control that the…

  • Wye Oak – Tween

    June 21, 2016 - By 

    It’s been two years since the release of the critically acclaimed Shriek and the members of Baltimore’s Wye Oak have been quietly busy – Andy Stack has been the touring drummer for EL VY and Jenn Wasner has been touring her solo project, Flock of Dimes. So, the surprise release of Tween – alongside the statement that this is a collection of songs written and subsequently scrapped between the 2011 release Civilian and the aforementioned Shriek ­– makes this album a treat but one that is hard to place in the Wye Oak catalogue. Is it an album? A collection…

  • Car Seat Headrest – Teens of Denial

    May 19, 2016 - By 

    Will Toledo sings “I’m so sick of: fill in the blank” on album opener ‘Fill in the Blank’ and that line sums up much of the content on Car Seat Headrest’s first full-band studio release. That line also could sum up the last week for Toledo too as he’s been encumbered by a copyright issue involving a sample of The Cars’ single ‘Just What I Needed’. In what could easily have encumbered a songwriter used to complete creative control and in his own words “working on an album right up to its drop date”. Toledo maintains his “everything is done…

  • Handsome Eric/Maxamillian Raxatrillion – Split EP

    February 25, 2016 - By 

    Dublin’s lo-fi wonder Handsome Eric returns with a split and brings with him the upstart from the American Maxamillion Raxatrillion. Handsome Eric brings the melancholy we’ve come to expect from him as he recounts the past year of his life. Every song is short and to the point with Stephen O’Dowd wasting no time in baring his soul and getting straight to the hook in each song. Opener ‘save yrself, kill me quickly’ is a break-up song that captures the awkwardness of feeling glad that you haven’t been strung along but also pissed off that someone can’t see how great you are. All tinny guitars, crashing cymbals and…

  • No Monster Club – I Feel Magic

    February 19, 2016 - By 

    Magic conjures up images of David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear, David Blaine looking off-his-face with an eye drawn on his palm and saying ‘Shazam’ into a GMTV camera or even an uncle asking you to pick a card, any card, from a messily shuffled deck. In Ireland ‘I feel magic’ is a way of saying that we’re doing brilliantly. That we’re absolutely flying. On top of our game. Although there seems to be more than a hint of irony in that title here on Bobby Aherne’s twelfth release under the No Monster Club banner. He maintains the nursery rhyme-esque beats but gone are the…

  • Preview: Outloud @ Outburst 2015

    November 12, 2015 - By 

    As part of this year’s Outburst Arts Festival, the inaugural Outburst: Outloud this Saturday (November 14) will be a day long event of stalls, talks, workshops and music all with a feminist/trans/queer slant. On the day there will be stalls, talks and workshops from Belfast Feminist Network, Hollaback, Sail, GenderJam, Anchor, Reclaim the Night, The Belfast City Rockets and more. There will also be zine-making and lyric-writing workshops, and a discussion based around the play Scorch (which is showing at the Mac). As well as all that there will be loads of bands playing throughout the day with headliners in Edinburgh’s…

  • Bully w/ The Winter Passing & Fangclub @ Whelan’s, Dublin

    November 12, 2015 - By 

    Monday is a strange night for gigs in Ireland and it shows in the mostly empty main venue of Whelan’s. Fangclub take the stage as a line forms almost as far away from the stage as possible as though the crowd are sizing these lads up which can only make for a more daunting performance. Unfortunately there is little here that appears to win the crowd over. There are elements of grunge and Britpop, both musically and aesthetically, but nothing really new is offered from this. Fangclub are tight onstage and very good at what they do but they fail…

  • Deerhunter w/ Atlas Sound @ Button Factory, Dublin

    November 3, 2015 - By 

    Situated amidst the roar of stag dos and Central European tourists lying drunken on the wet cobblestones of Temple Bar there is a quiet anticipation in the Button Factory. Inside, ambient electronic music fills the near empty hall as a line of people gather by the thick metal guardrails to ensure they get a good view. The room continues to fill until there is little space left for those weaving their way to and from the bar. The quiet anticipation grows as some drink and chat whilst others stare to the stage waiting for any sign of activity. Bradford Cox…

  • SlowPlaceLikeHome – Romola

    October 31, 2015 - By 

    Fishing boats come in and out, young men and women in wetsuits ride slices of polyurethane on foamy waves and dogs run after luminous tennis balls on the sandy beach. The coastline has potential for escape but the oppressiveness of being surrounded by the sea can take its toll. The Atlantic North-West’s SlowPlaceLikeHome manage to walk this line between an oppressiveness and freedom. Album opener ‘Our Rules’ starts off with the synth taking the lead and allowing Mannion to take the song in directions you wouldn’t expect but which don’t feel jarring to the listener. The song ends with the…

  • Label Mixtape: Merge Records

    July 7, 2015 - By 

    Started by Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan of Superchunk in 1989 as a vehicle to release their own music Merge has moved from small-town record label to one of the most respected and successful indie labels in the world. Based in Durham, North Carolina, and never feeling the urge move to a more “hip” city, Ballance and McCaughan captured an NC Sound at a time when Grunge was taking off in the North-East of the US. What really makes Merge stand out is their ability to gauge the zeitgeist of what was coming next. Whether it was Arcade Fire’s global…