• The Altered Hours – On My Tongue EP

    December 8, 2017 - By 

    In many eyes the country’s best band, Cork’s The Altered Hours have just announced details of a forthcoming new EP, On My Tongue, and an accompanying European tour. The follow-up to their stellar 2016 full-length In Heat Not Sorry, the five-piece will release the four-track On My Tongue via Art For Blind Records and Penske Recordings early next year. A typically first-rate effort from the band, lead single ‘Open Wide’ premiered over on Clash. To coincide with the release, the band will also embark on a nine-date European tour across February-April, which incorporates shows on March 29th at Dublin’s DBD Venue, Letterkenny’s Regional Cultural Centre on 30th. Yours truly will…

  • Five to Two – How Tall Do You Think You Could Grow (If You Wanted To Be So Tall)

    November 25, 2017 - By 

    Dublin jazz outfit Five To Two have just released their debut album at Workman’s Club through Dublin-based indie, Soft Boy Records. The trio, comprising Matthew Breen on piano, Jonah Byrne on double bass & Finn Mac Anna on drums, lean towards a traditional piano-led jazz combo sound, with some of the progressional hallmarks and playfulness of the likes of Kamasi Washington & other contemporary jazz that’s allowed the influence of hip-hop & r’n’b to seep into its blend. It’s out now, available to stream on Spotify, Bandcamp, iTunes and the usuals. Stream it below: How Tall Do You Think You Could…

  • Buí – Eugene

    November 20, 2017 - By 

    There’s not much to beat a cathartic wallow from an earnest dose of honest-to-goodness indie rock, so if that’s what you’re after, look no further than Eugene, the album that emerges from singer-songwriter Josh Healy, aka Buí. Released on November 27, accompanied with a launch show, the LP was recorded at Earth Music Studios by Vic Bronzini-Fulton, and features appearances from a range of local names like Joel Harkin, and members of Colonel Chocolate & the Justice Triangle. Healy is also, in this project, joined by Eoin Johnson & Rónán McQuillan of his previous project, Josh The Human. Written throughout 2014-2017, Eugene is dripping with emotion, sincerity and character;…

  • Alien She – Feeler

    November 6, 2017 - By 

    Dublin’s Alien She have been dazzling us with their snappy, experimental art-punk since the start, and have lifted the cloche on their much-anticipated debut LP, Feeler, released through Sligo DIY distro, Art For Blind Records (Altered Hours, Wild Rocket, I Am The Cosmos). Musically, the trio play a blend of agit. punk, shoegaze and alt. pop, tied together with an in-the-moment sense of experimentalism and febrile live energy, giving weight to Alien She’s politically & socially conscious impulse. The artistic inclination of founding members Katie & Aoife, both of whom are heavily Dublin’s art & poetry community in Dublin, first came together at a feminist meeting, and having spent the last two…

  • Autre Monde – Autre Monde EP

    November 2, 2017 - By 

    We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Dublin quartet Autre Monde are one of the very best indie bands in the country at the moment – the proof being scattered all over their eponymous debut physical release, out now on borderline-iconic Dublin indie label Popical Island. Barely allowing us to sit upon their opening (acclaimed, by our reckoning) batch of singles – available on Bandcamp – the act are undeniably referential to contemporary pop & art-rock from the mid-sixties through today. Indeed, they make an art out of mining genuine originality from a breadth of genre touchstones like Talking Heads, Can or Pavement, simultaneously giving a nod to underground movements like CBGBs new wave…

  • Rory Nellis – There Are Enough Songs In The World

    October 31, 2017 - By 

    One of the country’s finest songwriting voices, Rory Nellis, releases his second album, There Are Enough Songs In The World on November 11. The frontman of deeply-respected Belfast power-pop outfit Seven Summits, his 2015 debut LP Ready For You Now was followed by a string of numbered singles, drip-fed to us over the space of 18 months in a typically curated fashion, to make up There Are Enough Songs In The World. It’s an approach, as we’ve already said, has served to isolate each song in its own right, building up and developing a narrative that is clearly threaded throughout the release. A collection of parables, ruminations, and the many suspects of the…

  • Static Vision – What is and Now

    October 31, 2017 - By 

    We have to say – per capita, there’s no other town or city in Ireland producing DIY indie rock at the rate of Limerick. We’ve got Hot Cops in Belfast, Slouch in Dublin, but we can now happily add Static Vision‘s self-released 10-track debut to the likes of Eraser TV,  Cruiser, Anna’s Anchor, oh, and The Rubberbandits, to the city’s list of self-made accolades. Equal parts effervescent and slack, What is and Now is a stab of garage post-punk in the ’80s SST, Wipers-esque vein that could pass for an undiscovered proto-grunge gem from the midwest in 1989 fronted by a time-travelling Will Toledo, and having been…

  • The Sunshine Factory – Cruelest Animal EP

    November 6, 2017 - By 

    Cork, ever Ireland’s unexpected cornerstone of hazy psych, can boast another fine release, with The Sunshine Factory having just announced their debut EP proper, Cruelest Animal, the title track of which was released last year following a string of extremely promising demos and homemade recordings. Firmly establishing their neo-psychedelic chops with slots alongside the likes of KXP, The Orange Kyte, and tour support to psychedelic legends The Telescopes on their most recent Irish jaunt. It comes out on November 30th, accompanied by a hometown launch, through their own independent label, Sunshine Cult Records, and was recorded with Chris Somers at One Chance Out Studios. While Cruelest Animal was recorded a year ago, it seems that a healthy gestation…

  • The Tragedy of Dr Hannigan – Fawkes Ache

    October 27, 2017 - By 

    The vaudevillian, murder balladeering musical theatre of The Tragedy of Dr Hannigan sees the release of its inaugural LP, Fawkes Ache on November 24. Having first reared its curious little head back in July via the swaggering ‘Hey Little Worried One’, the collaboration is the self-proclaimed bastard child project of North Coast chameleonic rock troubadour par excellence Tony Wright and producer & multi-instrumentalist Dead Stevens AKA Deany Darko. The sonic warmth of rock’n’roll fused with the cold, hard truths of the blues, it would, in the hands of anyone else, be just about any grizzled blues-rock album. But, in the same way the genius of Nick Cave’s Grinderman lies in its total & utter…

  • Track-by-Track: Feather Beds – Blooming

    October 26, 2017 - By 

      Ahead of the release of his second album Blooming, Dublin’s Michael Orange AKA Feather Beds has been kind enough to give us a track by track rundown of the record. Set for release this Friday 27 October on Montreal-based label Moderna Records, Blooming is a dreamy alt-folk venture written and recorded when the songwriter was living in Canada. Following his debut LP in 2015, The Skeletal System, Blooming is mixed and co-produced by Stephen Shannon (Adrian Crowley, Strands) and is a dreamy, multi-layered a that evokes the likes of The Antlers and Mutual Benefit‘s Love’s Crushing Diamond in its ambient folk atmosphere, but owes just as much to the hypnotic, minimal compositions of Steve Reich and to the…