• Junior Brother – Pull The Right Rope

    May 29, 2019 - By 

    Imagine Joanna Newsom had gorged on grainy VHS tapes of Richie Kavanagh instead of the modernist compositions of Ruth Crawford Seeger, weaving guitar stabs and tambourine whacks to soundtrack drunken treks through rural Ireland. This verdant picture, brought forward by Kerry bard Junior Brother, glistens to life on his enchanting debut album, Pull the Right Rope, released through Galway’s Strange Brew label. Born and raised just outside of Killarney, the origin story of Junior Brother, the performance name Ronan Kealy nabbed from an early 17th century play he studied in college, is equally as pristine and adventurous as his music.…

  • Fixity – No Man Can Tell

    May 27, 2019 - By 

      Cork has fostered a healthy collaborative atmosphere among its musical populace in the last number of years, with an ever-expanding community of fusion groups, side projects, one-off jam sessions and young, experimental collectives sprouting to exchange ideas, explore new creative avenues and perform one-off collaborations never to be played again. One of those at the centre of it all is multi-instrumentalist Dan Walsh, whose monthly Cork Improvised Music Club night (formerly at Gulpd café, now at The Roundy) and previous work at the helm of improvisational outfit, Fixity, have done more than satisfy Cork’s thirst for psychedelic exploration. An…

  • Bitflower Bb – Mastalgia

    May 24, 2019 - By 

    The word “Mastalgia” is a medical term referring to the heavy, dull tight breast pain commonly experienced by most women, and usually without utterance. It’s also the name of the new six-track record from Dublin’s Bitflower Bb (the side project of DJ and producer Dream~cycles.) A lush, evocative blend of electronic and organic sounds, it’s a close, intimate collection of bedroom-pop songs produced throughout 2017-2018. Simultaneously dreamy and affecting, at times Mastalgia recalls the lo-fi experimental pop of Galway-native, Dublin-based Maria Somerville or the vast soundscapes of Grouper, but overall, it’s an undeniably unusual record.  The title’s reference to a private, interior…

  • The National – I Am Easy To Find

    May 23, 2019 - By 

    In recent years, The National have shifted towards a communal approach in music making, altering their compositional practices to be more inclusive, and concerned with offering new perspectives. With Aaron and Bryce Dessner’s involvement in PEOPLE – a collective of creatives collaborating on music projects, live performances and podcasts – The National have embraced a collaborative space, and I Am Easy To Find may be the absolute embodiment of this new form. Maintaining some of the gloomy aura of 2016’s highly acclaimed Sleep Well Beast, the record avoids burden, chiefly due to the addition of vocals from artists like Lisa…

  • Arms That Fit Like Legs – Legwork

    May 22, 2019 - By 

    The terms “post-rock” and “math-rock” can leave many eyes rolled firmly back in one’s skull, or just leave some scratching their heads. Although the genres have long been fleshed out with artists such as Explosions in the Sky, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mogwai, And So I Watch You From Afar and TTNG, lingering questions remain. Clearly there’s texture, expanse, intricate time signatures, and often an overhanging emotional heft, but otherwise, it seems to have an anything-goes, gung-ho spirit more than most genres. Dublin four-piece Arms That Fit Like Legs do little to cement any working definitions. Since releasing their self-titled debut EP in…

  • Frankie Cosmos – Haunted Items

    May 14, 2019 - By 

    The word “haunted” brings ghost and ghouls to mind but, in Frankie Cosmos’ latest releases, Greta Kline shows that everyday items can be tainted by memories that, when pushed to the back of the mind, can be just as frightening. Haunted items was released in four mini digital-only EPs, rationed out over the course of March. The collection contains all of the classic Frankie Cosmos properties we heard in 2018’s Vessel – catchy major chord progressions with witty melancholic lyrics – but this time it’s just Kline and her piano. Piano was the first instrument that Kline learnt as a child…

  • 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…

  • Marissa Nadler & Stephen Brodsky – Droneflower

    May 10, 2019 - By 

    Ethereal gothic folk and experimental post-hardcore are convenient, if broad, brushstrokes to describe the individual styles of Marissa Nadler & Stephen Brodsky, but those labels would be to do both a disservice. Theirs at first seems a disparate pairing that might never otherwise have come about save for the fact that they both drank in the same Brooklyn bar. Nadler though has previously dabbled with Scott “Malefic” Conner of black metal outfit Xasthur, among others, not to mention a single released with John Cale earlier this year. Brodsky, best known from the heavier realms of Cave In and Mutoid Man,…

  • Vampire Weekend – Father of the Bride

    May 8, 2019 - By 

    Six years on from Modern Vampires of the City, Vampire Weekend have returned with Father of the Bride, a sprawling double album which finds singer Ezra Koenig trying to find his voice since the departure of Rostam Batmanglij (Rostam) from the band. When the New York outfit first appeared in 2008, they owed their unique sound to a mix of classical, African and western pop influences – never before had a combination of harpsichord, strings, bass, and drums sounded as good as it did on ‘M79’. This evidently was largely due to Rostam, the band’s multi-instrumentalist who has since taken…

  • Fat White Family – Serfs Up!

    May 7, 2019 - By 

    The spirit of Jean Genet has been invoked far too often by would-be provocateurs for his warped aphorisms, especially tiresome when sputtered by indie-rock’s supposed enfants terribles; so many wannabe-libertines have cited The Thief’s Journal in justifying their decadent posturing, I wonder whether Genet’s had a moment’s rest amid his turning in the dirt. When Fat White Family frontman Lias Saoudi told The Quietus recently that Genet was the “lyrical bedrock of the album”, I feared that the band’s raucous black comedy might have begun to curdle into banal pretence. No such worries. While the group has straightened up in some ways…