• Deerhoof – The Magic

    Spots of the Deerhoof discography can be as mad as a box of psychoactive toads, there’s no doubt about it – though it’s hard to imagine anyone experiencing anything but a journey of enlightenment through the San Francisco quartet’s two decades of aural experimentation. Recorded over seven days (their previous outing, La Isla Bonita, was recorded in ten – swift action clearly suits them) The Magic is in many ways one of their more accessible records, a bounty of joyous freakbeat and wrecking ball riffs; discordant delights and mellifluous genre-hopping that seems even more spiritually aligned with The Ramones than La Isla Bonita was. Three…

  • Islands – Taste

    From the ashes of The Unicorns came Islands, one sonically eccentric band’s demise giving rise to a new vehicle for mainstay Nick Thorburn’s endless imagination for quirky melodies and wry lyricism. Taste marks the sixth album for the band, but what is most remarkable about this release is that it’s being released simultaneously with their seventh album, Should I Remain Here At Sea? – our review of which you can read here. So, two records, one release date; the former an exploration of synth-based electro pop, the latter an indie pop record more in keeping with Islands’ invigorating debut album from 2006. Drum machines, programming and…

  • Islands – Should I Remain Here at Sea?

    It was a bittersweet thing when The Unicorns disbanded in 2004 after releasing one of the most fun records by anyone, ever. The trio’s paths diverged. Alden Penner trucked on as a solo artist before forming Clues a few years later, while Nicholas Thorburn and Jamie Thompson kept ‘er lit, forming two groups at once – the short-lived hip-hop outfit Th’ Corn Gangg, and Islands. One thing that was clear from Islands’ debut Return To The Sea and their subsequent run of records was that The Unicorns’ eccentricities, about-turns, and canny knack for an earworm were as much down to his colleagues – and Thorburn in…

  • Jesu/Sun Kil Moon – Jesu/Sun Kil Moon

    The name Justin Broadrick has previously been evoked by Sun Kil Moon on Universal Themes’ opening track – a gushing paean to “Godflesh’s guttural growls from hell.” Broadrick’s massively influential industrial metal band disintegrated in 2002 amidst various personal difficulties, with Jesu following in the wake of the break-up. Godlesh have since reconvened (as documented in ‘The Possum’), and it’s an astute move on Mark Kozelek’s part to change things up musically, hooking up with his long-time friend for this collaborative effort after the reflections of Benji and Universal Themes. With Jesu/Sun Kil Moon Kozelek’s lyrical ponderings are given a…

  • Chelsea Wolfe @ Button Factory, Dublin

    Chelsea Wolfe fans at this corner of Europe must have been keeping a close eye on the blogs and Twitter feeds over this tour, one fraught with trouble for the singer. A date in Poznan was cancelled due to Wolfe battling bronchitis. After losing her voice onstage in Budapest, the following night’s Vienna appearance was also cancelled, but the singer managed to gain the upper hand in the battle for the bronchial tubes to honour the rest of the schedule. In The Button Factory tonight, it’s as if each note is precious, each breath a blessing. Nothing is wasted. Wolfe…

  • Fuzz – Fuzz II

    Fuzz II is everything a good sequel should be. It’s the band’s Aliens, their Terminator 2 – bigger, bolder, ballsier and noisier than its predecessor but retaining the conventions that made that record great. With this release Fuzz once again harness the cosmic powers of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Hawkwind and a thousand gnarly garage bands, and the transmutation is a gratifyingly dense entanglement of heavy rock riffing and oppressive themes. Charles Moothart, Chad Ubovich, and the ubiquitous Ty Segall form a formidable triptych, and their second outing builds Cyclopean blocks on the first record’s foundation. Fuzz II slowly spatters…

  • DIY Dublin: The Co-Present on Radiomade.ie

    In this installment of DIY Dublin, Justin McDaid chats to Dwayne Woods, the founder of The Co-Present on Radiomade.ie about the origins of the show, Whelan’s Says Yes on Friday, May 15 and what the future holds. Photos by Abigail Denniston. For those who haven’t heard; what, where, and who is the Co-Present? The Co-Present is what I like to call an interactive alternative Irish music radio show based in Dublin city centre, we go live on Radiomade.ie every Friday between 1 and 3 pm. Each week we have two Irish acts come in to the studio one act will perform live…

  • Panda Bear – Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper

    Noah Lennox knows how to stir up a bit of intrigue. On his fifth album as Panda Bear, the Animal Collective co-conspirator has chosen a title that seems prophetic. Are we seeing the retirement of the Panda Bear avatar as we know it or is this simply a vague conceptual slant that the record seems to take? Lennox has said that the sequence of songs deals with the death of certain “character traits that are unnecessary or detrimental”, the dissolution of an identity, broken down until it is completely eradicated. In parts it’s reminiscent of The Terror by Flaming Lips,…

  • Morrissey w/ Anna Calvi @ 3Arena, Dublin

    What an indulgence it must be to be able to gather your gripes together and air them on a grand scale via music, imagery and the written word. Morrissey’s grievances are legion, his ire legendary, and the usual Morrissey-isms are cheerfully present and correct on his latest album World Peace Is None of Your Business. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer; four legs good, two legs bad; an unparalleled sense of self-righteousness – all of these things, already none too subtle on record, are bundled together for tonight’s Dublin crowd into an audio-visual feast of disdain. He…

  • Robert Plant w/ The Last Internacionale @ Olympia Theatre, Dublin

    It’s funny to think that Led Zeppelin spawned practically every rock’n’roll trope that elicits either an eye roll or a “fuck yeah!” (depending one’s state of inebriation). The old clichés have gone from birth through acceptance, weathering punk’s dismissal into irony and meta-referencing, and all the way around again until it’s hard to decipher what point on the rotation things currently fall. New Yorkers The Last Internationale are somewhere on that loop, a band that could comfortably populate the background scenery in Almost Famous, such is the posturing and rock-by-numbers shenanigans that are in progress onstage. The guitarist even gives…