• Marika Hackman – Any Human Friend

    August 20, 2019 - By 

    A decade on from Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed A Girl’,  pop seems to have arrived at a place where girls kissing girls is no longer being treated as provocative or performative, or being fetishised for clout. Queer stars like Haley Kiyoko, Princess Nokia, Janelle Monáe, Christine and the Queens and St. Vincent are dominating the mainstream landscape, going beyond heteronormative boundaries and exploring what it means to be queer in 2019.  Marika Hackman’s latest release is a bold and brazen addition to the zeitgeist. Written in the wake of the English singer-songwriters break-up with fellow musician Amber Bain (The Japanese House),…

  • Irish musicians to speak on mental health panel in Dublin this weekend

    May 23, 2019 - By 

    A number of Irish musicians will be speaking about career-related mental health issues at the Mind YourSelf: Mental Health & Music event in Dublin’s Tara Building this Saturday, 25th May. Westport native Maria Kelly and Dublin’s Paddy Hanna, will be among the musicians coming together to speak on the importance of looking after one’s mental health in music industry careers’. The Mind YourSelf panel, hosted by Selfmade, will look at the factors affecting the mental health of artists and how these manifest, as well as the importance of open discussions, self-care, access to support and the need for positive cultural and…

  • MARINA – Love + Fear

    May 12, 2019 - By 

    Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross theorized that there are two primary emotions: fear and love. All positive emotions come from love, all negative emotions from fear. From love flows happiness, contentment, peace, and joy. From fear comes anger, hate, anxiety and guilt. She also believed fear and love are opposites writing that if you are in a place of fear, you cannot be in a place of love, if you are in a place of love, you cannot be in a place of fear. This theory forms the backbone of Marina’s (formerly Marina and the Diamonds) fourth record which is broken into…

  • Billie Eilish – When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?

    April 22, 2019 - By 

    On a recent episode of Vox music podcast ‘Switched On Pop,’ songwriter Charlie Harding explains the theory he has about superheroes and pop music. Superheros have to have a narrative that speaks to their time and to their generation. Eventually, they age out and are rebooted or a new superhero comes along. Harding suggests pop music follows a similar template, and there’s no one more equipped to be the next Generation’s superhero than seventeen year old Billie Eilish. Eilish has grown up in an America defined by mass shootings, rising suicide rates, poverty, and the opioid epidemic. Her home state…

  • Ariana Grande – thank u, next

    February 12, 2019 - By 

    Ariana Grande’s stratospheric rise to fame – with all its adoration, chaos, and residence at the top of the Billboard 100 – has been a tumultuous one. First breaking into the public sphere through virtue of a Nickelodeon show, everything about the Florida-born entertainer seemed innocent, childlike. The fact that her first scandal involved licking a donut speaks for itself. In the past two years however, the now 25- year-old has been forced to grow-up. And unlike many of her child-star peers, she has done it with a grace and defiance that has endeared her to the world and turned…

  • Maria Kelly – Notes To Self

    December 13, 2018 - By 

    Have you ever had that feeling of knowing something you shouldn’t? Something so intimate and raw, it creates a discomfort. Whether someone is opening up to you willingly, or passively through virtue of their lyrics, there’s something confronting about it. Maria Kelly confronts you. Her presence is gentle, maybe even unassuming. Her vocals, at times, barely a whisper. But in her delicacy, there is a cutting catharsis that hits with the strength of a train.   The singer-songwriter’s latest EP Notes To Self was written last summer when Kelly moved from Dublin to Berlin and it is the diary that the…

  • Years & Years – Palo Santo

    July 26, 2018 - By 

    In 1987, the Pet Shop Boys released ‘It’s A Sin’, detailing Neil Tennant’s relationship with his own sexuality and the sense of shame that came with it. It was years after the singer publicly came out. Thankfully, these days, singing about sex and love outside of heterosexual constraints isn’t a rarity. So many songs in the pop zeitgeist have gone beyond heteronormative boundaries, but still, it is often treated as something forbidden, experimental, taboo and something explicitly, solely sexual. Think Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed A Girl’ or Demi Lovato’s ‘Cool for the Summer.’ Years & Years’ Olly Alexander joyfully takes…

  • Ben Howard – Noonday Dream

    June 18, 2018 - By 

    Unusual though it may seem, Ben Howard has never been a predictable artist. The Devon born singer-songwriter first emerged onto the scene in 2011 with the timely folk-pop LP Every Kingdom, followed up three years later with I Forgot Where We Were which sounded more like James Blake than Ed Sheeran. Subsequently, after cursing some of his gig attendees out of it in Norwich and declaring “I couldn’t give a fuck” in response to a journalist who claimed Howard might fall into “the New Boring” music scene, Howard seemed to disappear off into the shadows and it was unclear when…

  • In Their Hands: A Conversation with Wyvern Lingo

    March 8, 2018 - By 

    Bray’s Wyvern Lingo chat to Nicole Glennon about being women in the Irish music industry,their camaraderie, activism and plans for the future. What does it mean to each of you to be a woman in 2018? Caoi: It’s socially more acceptable as a woman to dress in a garish fashion..? I don’t think about being a woman. The day our album was released, we were loading the van after our sold out gig in the Button Factory in Temple Bar, and some random prick walking past smacked my ass. When I ran after him, punched him in the back and screamed at…

  • S. Carey – Hundred Acres

    February 26, 2018 - By 

    Try as we may, it is difficult to separate S. Carey’s music from that of his long-term collaborator and Bon Iver bandmate, Justin Vernon. Despite two full-length solo albums and two EPs being released in the past eight years, it’s been hard to dispel that intrinsic comparison. His third LP, Hundred Acres, does little to change that.  Written over the course of a few years, Carey’s third full length release was crafted while his family grew and touring was intermittent. The Bon Iver influence is, as one might expect having listened to Carey’s previous offerings, obvious as ever. If there is a defining difference, it…