• ShitKid – Duo Limbo/”Mellan Himmel å Helvete”

    February 13, 2020 - By 

    With a name as unashamedly playful and juvenile as ShitKid, Åsa Söderqvist knows exactly what her audience wants. Under this moniker, she offers up some delightful stoner pop nuggets with more than a dash of irony and ire. The strings are fuzzy, the drums are heavy and the melodies are sweet treats shoved through the grime of old school punk. There’s a decidedly scrappy, almost DIY, nature to everything she’s doing here. Her sound is lo-fi and has the atmosphere of being recorded quickly at a friend’s house using Garageband. Even in the visuals, this mindset is present as the…

  • Algiers – There Is No Year

    January 30, 2020 - By 

    One thing that you can’t fault Algiers on is the fact that they know how to start all guns blazing. The title track and album opener for their latest LP, There Is No Year, grabs you by the lobes in the first few seconds and does not let go. It’s pulsating and bumping and filled will an anxious, impassioned cry over a world that is too far gone to save. Franklin James Fisher’s vocals oscillate between a soulful croon and desperate warble over a rip-roaring death march. Your blood begins bumping, things begin to coalesce and the feeling that your…

  • Field Music – Making A New World

    January 18, 2020 - By 

    One of the under-discussed merits of living in the post-streaming age is that musicians are limited only by their ambition. It used to be that if your label hated your record you either had to bite your tongue and make it more commercial or try to wrangle out of your contract and sell it somewhere else. But now that those Goliaths are largely gone and anyone can host their music for next to nothing, the sky’s the limit. This is an idea which prog-poppers Field Music have embraced wholeheartedly on their seventh album, Making A New World. This LP is…

  • Beyond Contrived, Bandwagonesque Bullshit: An Interview With Shrug Life

    September 10, 2019 - By 

    It’s long been the contention of this publication that if any songwriter could claim to be the voice of Dublin it’s Danny Carroll, lead singer and guitarist for Shrug Life. Since 2015’s The Grand Stretch EP, the indie trio have consistently floored us with earworm hooks and existential despair with an empathetic smirk. The songs encapsulate so much of what it means to be alive in Ireland at the moment; the ennui, uncertainty and the oddly humourous nature of it all. With their latest single, ‘Strangers’, having dropped, Will Murphy has a little chat with Mr. Carroll to see where…

  • The Hold Steady – Thrashing Thru The Passion

    August 27, 2019 - By 

    Back at the turn of the decade, The Hold Steady were on the top of their game. The self-described “best bar band in the world” had four phenomenal LPs under their belt and were poised to carve out their own niche and achieve the same level of devotion of someone like Bruce Springsteen. Their sound was a fusion of classic arena rock, mid ‘80s hardcore and hip-hop inflected beat poetry about drugs, drunks, and Christianity in Minneapolis. Everything was vital and taut and elevated to these wonderful theatrical heights by off-kilter time signatures, unconventional structures and a veritable hodgepodge of…

  • Teeth Bared and Tongues in Cheek: An Interview With BATS

    April 9, 2019 - By 

    BATS are easily one of Irish musical landscapes’ greatest oddities. A five piece playing a fusion of post-punk, prog and metal with lyrics devoted to topics such as the Higgs Boson Particle, New Earth Creationist Kent Hovind and the Cthulhu mythos. Proudly outspoken with teeth bared and tongues firmly in cheek, there has been silence in the BATS camp since 2012’s superb Sleep of Reason. Now having just completed a Kickstarter campaign for their forthcoming album, Alter Nature the group are back to pick up where they left off. Words by Will Murphy Photos by Moira Reilly Let’s start with the…

  • Maria Somerville – All My People

    March 25, 2019 - By 

    It’s quite rare to encounter a debut album as self-assured as Maria Somerville’s All My People. The Galway native has crafted 27 minutes of impossibly tight and well constructed music that possess a confidence which is seldom encountered so early in a career. Drawing from the deep wells of everything from folk and ambient to doo-wop and post-punk and the experiences of Irish youth, Somerville mixes these elements into a beautiful concoction of dream pop goodness. What’s so striking about these seven cuts is how well defined each actually is. By its very nature, the sort of ethereal mood that…

  • 19 for ’19: Extravision

    January 28, 2019 - By 

    We continue 19 for ‘19 – our feature looking at nineteen Irish acts that we’re convinced are going places in 2019 – with Dublin post-punk threesome Extravision. Photo by Moira Reilly There is a shortage of great post-punk in the world today. While we’re a long ways away from the genre’s 1980s heyday, there are a number of contemporary bands, shrouded in darkness and the macabre, who are keeping that flame burning. One such band is Dublin’s Extravision. This three piece have successfully managed to recapture that Manchester sensibility all while infusing it with dream pop to create a woozy…

  • 19 for ’19: Music City

    January 22, 2019 - By 

    We continue 19 for ’19 – our series profiling nineteen Irish acts that we’re certain will do great things in 2019 – with Music City, AKA Dublin power pop artist Conor Lumsden and co. Photo by Moira Reilly. There’s this curious belief that pop music is easy. It’s simple, generic and any idiot with the ability to keep time can do it. But the truth is, it’s hard. Just because you can drip paint on a canvas, doesn’t mean you’re Jackson Pollack. Similarly, just because you can put the I-V-VI-IV progression over a basic beat, doesn’t make you Paul McCartney.…

  • The Prodigy – No Tourists

    November 6, 2018 - By 

    What does The Prodigy mean in 2018? More than 21 years after The Fat of the Land and Music For The Jilted Generation, this is a band who for many years pushed the limits of taste and aggression for mainstream dance music. Consider tracks like ‘Firestarter’, ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ and ‘Poison’ which are still intensely antagonistic and hostile. But after nearly three decades in the business and a comfortable position within collective consciousness, what in the holy hell can be done next? Look at our contemporary popular hip-hop and dance charts and you’ll find a much darker world than what…