• Everything Sucks #002: Sweet ’95 – The Retortening

    July 19, 2013 - By 

    Looking at Dan Hegarty’s column on 1995 recently here on this site, I found that, for all the reminiscing on things like Britpop (which sucked, by and large, not that we knew better) and the WWF of the day (more on that later), it was summarily A Very Good Time for Irish music. Not as fervent and fertile as today’s jubilant mass of DIY gigs and indie labels, but a far cry from the marginalisation of independent and non-commercial music that had gone on a generation previous, where people like Phil Lynott were thrown out of the showband system that…

  • OST: Ciaran Lavery

    July 18, 2013 - By 

    In the latest installment of OST we get totally enchanting Aghnagallon singer-songwriter Ciaran Lavery to select and talk about ten tracks that have irrevocably altered his music listening, loving and making life; everyone from Tom Waits to Travis. ___ The Band – ‘It Makes No Difference’ The Band are a special collective I felt personally proud enough to have ‘got’ in my late teens. Their back catalogue is frightening but the amount of heartbreak in this song has always grabbed me, maybe due to Rick Danko’s vocals or generally the story of possibly one of the most under-rated bands to ever exist. I…

  • Tour Journal: Vanilla Gloom

    July 18, 2013 - By 

    A hotly-tipped “must see” act at the final ever Glasgowbury music festival this weekend, Belfast-based all-female post-punk band Vanilla Gloom have just returned from their first tour across the water – a brief but eventful little stint across Scotland beginning and ending in Glasgow. In the first installment of an occasional tour journal feature, Shannon O’Neill, vocalist and guitarist from the Derry three-piece details the band’s experiences on and off the stage via photos (courtesy of the very talented Ciara McMullan), doodles and day-to-day thoughts from on the road. ___    

  • The Chancer’s Guide To… Beck

    July 16, 2013 - By 

    Beck has been quiet for an uncharacteristically long time. During the five years since the Dangermouse produced Modern Guilt he has formed a Record Club in which he and a bunch of musician friends re-record classic albums (Skip Spence – Oar; INXS – Kick to name but two). He also completed Song Reader, a 20 song album only available on sheet music (meaning you need to gather together your own musician friends and play the songs yourselves if you want to hear them). Finally though, new music, written and recorded by Beck, is beginning to filter through. With two albums apparently…

  • Tour Diary #001: PigsAsPeople

    July 17, 2013 - By 

    In the first installment of the perhaps not-so-imaginatively titled Tour Diary, our Guide editor and PigsAsPeople axeman Stevie Lennox (above, middle) sums up his band’s recent UK tour was. Driven by More Than Conquerors’ Danny Mo on the tour, PigsAsPeople are: Wilson Davidson, Chris Leckey and the aforementioned, altogether handsome Stevie Lennox. Take it away, Steve… ___ After many, many hiccups when arranging this tour, it took More Than Conquerors bassist and all-around good guy Danny Morton to step in last minute so we could get on the road. We’ve only been together for about 11 months at this point,…

  • Getting Re-acquainted: Randy Newman – Rednecks

    July 16, 2013 - By 

    For a large number of people, Randy Newman is safe. His distinctive drawl has featured on some of the biggest grossing movies of all time, from Toy Story to Monsters Inc, telling family friendly songs of friendship and warmth. He’s a nice guy, and the kids love him. But this ignores the fact that Randy Newman has been – and always will be – a musical maverick. Right from his earliest days as one of a burgeoning scene of Los Angeles weirdo songwriters who weren’t afraid to follow their own muse, Newman has displayed a singular fearlessness at tackling subjects that few would dare to, in a style…

  • Classic album: Can – Future Days

    July 15, 2013 - By 

    Think of a colour. Think of another colour. Think of things that are the first colour, and imagine them in the second colour. Then think of them in a different shape. This – confusing as it might be – goes some way to explaining the creative processes behind a record like Future Days, a record that simply couldn’t sit back and accept things the way they are. And, in a testament to its success, people are still thinking about things in a different way to this very day. Can aren’t an easy band to get into. But then again, if something…

  • Everything Sucks #001: Shit Videos

    July 12, 2013 - By 

    So, now that we’re a few weeks removed from the colossal pant-wetting that happened online in the wake of Birmingham teenager Danish Ghaffar (or D4NNY, if that’s your thing) uploading his seminal masterwork ‘Goodbye’ to YouTube and its garnering of over a million views, let’s take a minute to consider the phenomenon of shit music videos before the next one arrives, shall we?   I’m as guilty as the next asshole of laughing at people who perhaps didn’t think their career choices through. I’m currently sitting on Drop-d.ie, a site I run, until we reboot it at some point in…

  • Dan Hegarty: Sweet 95

    July 12, 2013 - By 

    It was a time when the Blur Vs Oasis nonsense was reaching its peak; the Battle of Britpop as it was called. Bret ‘Hitman’ Hart was WWF (now WWE) Champion, and it would be just a number of years before Irish Rugby fans would become familiar with a man by the name of Brian O’Driscoll. Kerbdog – ‘Sally’   1995 was a year when the grit of what was known as grunge had been replaced by the aforementioned Britpop bands of varying merit. While on these shores bands like Rollerskate Skinny, Whipping Boy, Kerbdog, and Watercress were doing their respective…

  • Interview: Speed of Snakes

    July 11, 2013 - By 

    You may know them as Rupert Morris (lead screamer, lyricist and guitarist in science-dance-metal troupe BATS) and Vinny McCreith (red-hooded bassist in Adebisi Shank and electronic solo artist as The Vinny Club) but together they are Speed Of Snakes. The Dublin-based duo recently premiered the first track from the sci-fi themed electro-rock project, as well as setting out the suitably silly backstory for the whole project: On the first day, 88 trillion years ago, the great snake Metatraxium created the Universe, the Earth and all the life upon it. Each species birthed from a succession of fantastic and horrifying eggs.…