• Ex Hex – Rips

    October 30, 2014 - By 

    Rips is as explanatory as album titles come. Ex Hex hail from Washington D.C., a long-time hardcore stronghold; not that the scene’s legacy is the one that leaves its mark on the power trio of Mary Timony, Betty White, and Laura Harris. Timony, last seen singing and slinging in Wild Flag, a band made up of ex-members of Sleater-Kinney and The Minders, has said that she and her current cohorts “all wanted to write songs that could be on the radio in the early ‘80s.” Rips does just what it says: twelve slices of instant garage sweeping by with the…

  • Jozef Van Wissem @ Whelan’s

    October 3, 2014 - By 

    The last time we encountered the tall, black-clothed figure of Jozef Van Wissem it was at a holiday camp in the southeast of England. The lone lute player delivered a unique set at the final ATP festival in December of last year. On that occasion he had just provided the soundtrack for Domingo García-Huidobro’s film Partir To Live, which premiered at the festival, but his collaborations with another director have garnered more attention in recent times. Jozef met Jim Jarmusch in New York and gave him a CD of his work. Both have a history in New Wave and noise…

  • Stiff Little Fingers @ The Academy

    March 14, 2014 - By 

    Jake Burns must surely hold the record for longest gestation period for a song in modern rock history. Back in 1983 when Stiff Little Fingers broke up, Burns met up with another singer from an Irish band who was in the same situation and they lamented their respective losses over a pint, or many. Burns went home and wrote the lyrics to ‘When We Were Young’, but it took him another thirty-five years to get around to the music. Phil Lynott was the man he shared his commiserations with back in that long-ago boozer, Burns tells the crowd in The…

  • Spiritualized @ National Concert Hall, Dublin

    August 15, 2013 - By 

    There was no small sense of anticipation in the run-up to this one. Not only did Spiritualized announce that they were playing their Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space album in its entirety, they were doing so in Dublin’s National Concert Hall with an orchestra, and it would be the only such performance of 2013. So, tickets were duly snapped up for what was a pretty low-key announcement, all things considered. As the more NCH-savvy members of the audience file in for the eight o’clock sharp start time, there is a palpable air of excitement in the ornate…

  • The Who – 02, Dublin

    June 11, 2013 - By 

    Is Quadrophenia the greatest Who album? It’s a simple question asked of a complex album, one fans have debated and will continue to do so for many a year. It’s not the most successful, nor one who’s songs turn up in Best Of… collections, but it’s certainly the last really great Who record, and the one that typifies them as an ideal more so than anything they’ve done. Pete Townshend has always been the greatest curator of The Who’s past, and with Quadrophenia he created, shaped and immortalised the Who myth once and for all. For all its flaws, it’s…