• Joan of Arc – He’s Got The Whole This Land Is Your Land In His Hands

    January 16, 2017 - By 

    On their latest LP, He’s Got The Whole This Land Is Your Land In His Hands, Joan of Arc have rather kindly telegraphed the initial reactions of those unfamiliar with the group in the opening lyrics: “What the fuuuuuuuuuuck?”. That line is immediately followed by sampled, compressed drums smashing in completely out of left field while random electronic bleeps float around the mix and vocals offer up curious anatomy lessons. This is just the first thirty seconds. Let’s rollback a tad and give some extra context. When emo legends Cap’n Jazz split, brothers Tim and Mike Kinsella formed Joan of…

  • Exploding Eyes – Exploding Eyes

    January 16, 2017 - By 

    With an eye cast to longer days, warmer weather, and the promise of a new year, the self-titled debut LP from Dublin’s gritty blues- rock trio Exploding Eyes greets you with a welcoming invitation to something a little less serious and a lot more fun. The album is scattered with callbacks to some of the more classic and legendary rock outfits from the golden age of blues pop culture, such as Cream, Janis Joplin, and even some Lynyrd Skynyrd in some of their softer tracks. Opening up the album in stellar form is the single ‘We Need Love’ – a track…

  • Half Japanese – Hear The Lions Roar

    January 13, 2017 - By 

    You know when you’re at a party, enjoying a group conversation and a member of your gaggle makes a private joke, the meaning behind you’re not privy to? It creates this terribly awkward and uncomfortable feeling as you’re left wondering what is so funny. From context and reaction, you can infer that something enjoyable, or at the very least interesting has occurred, but you’re completely at a loss as to what that is or what it even could be. Half Japanese is the musical equivalent of that sensation. Within their repertoire, you can hear the stylistic hints from the likes…

  • The XX – I See You

    January 13, 2017 - By 

    The XX are a band that harness negative space within music to create an atmosphere so chillingly retrospective that in most cases it need only be listened to underneath moonlight. The trio slid anxiously into the industry with their debut, XX, an album that, unbeknownst to them, would become an international success. The suave blend of spacious indie-electronic beats provided by Jamie (xx) Smith and the minimal vocals of Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim proved them to be the perfect vessel for conveying the vernacular of heartbreak and loss. Following this was 2012’s Coexist, an even more stripped back, sparsely…

  • David Bowie – No Plan

    January 11, 2017 - By 

    She held out her trembling hand to K. and had him sit down beside her, she spoke with great difficulty, it was difficult to understand her, but what she said Final Sentence of Franz Kafka’s The Castle History is littered with the infinite possibilities teased at within the unfinished work of great artists who died before their time. Think of Elliott Smith’s From A Basement On A Hill, David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King or George Sluizer’s Dark Blood; all released in an awkwardly assembled form, stitched together from whatever fragments the artist had left behind. While they vary wildly…

  • Run The Jewels – Run The Jewels 3

    January 10, 2017 - By 

    By releasing their fiercely political – and wickedly funny –  sophomore record Run The Jewels 2 at the end of 2014, MCs Killer Mike and El-P couldn’t have picked a better time to explode into the mainstream. Having kicked around just outside the rap mainstream for as well-respected solo artists during the 2000s, their 2012 joint tour lead to Run The Jewel’s self-titled debut the following year, although it’s party vibe gave little warning for it’s hard-nosed successor: El-P’s production rattled with the same intensity of The Bomb Squad, while Killer Mike spat angry truths about racism and social equality…

  • Gone Is Gone – Echolocation

    January 6, 2017 - By 

    There are three Ts at the heart of Gone Is Gone: Tony Hajjar, Troy Van Leeuwen, and Troy Sanders. For the uninitiated, that roughly translates to At The Drive-In, Queens Of The Stone Age and Mastodon occupying the same aural space. That’s the kind of lineup that makes a certain type of music fan’s eyes bulge out like a Looney Toons Character. It’s the stuff that dark, metal-inflected dreams are made of. Add to this trio multi-instrumentalist Mike Zarin and you’ve got the recipe for dark magic. Unfortunately, while their debut LP, Echolocation, has this threads and whispered hints of…

  • Nine Inch Nails – Not The Actual Events

    January 3, 2017 - By 

    It’s not unlike Nine Inch Nails to blindside you. The release structure for albums like The Slip and the Ghosts series have been very much an ad hoc affair and their latest, Not The Actual Events, is no different. The record, announced with the introduction of new full-time member Atticus Ross, owes a great deal to NIN’s past as well as Reznor and Ross’s soundtrack work over the last decade. While the EP isn’t groundbreaking, it’s been a welcome Christmas treat or long time fans. Proceedings blast off with the incendiary ‘Branches/Bones’ and it’s as though the last ten years…

  • Gross Net – Quantitative Easing

    December 16, 2016 - By 

    The issue of building your persona around darkness is that after a certain point it becomes ridiculous. An overwhelming sense of nihilism, an abhorrence of any kind of salvation and an unwavering fascination with misery can be profound, for a while. Those who can sustain careers built around gloom, the likes of Sun Kil Moon, Scott Walker and Nick Cave, know that you have to allow some light in. Because if you don’t and you’re unwilling to go the extreme, á la Ian Curtis or Richey Edwards, then all you doing is insincere posturing which will inevitably slide into unintentional…

  • Enemies – Valuables

    December 12, 2016 - By 

    It’s been a tough year of seeing some of Ireland’s best-loved acts announce that they would be calling time on their current incarnations. From Fight Likes Apes to Solar Bears, from The Funeral Suits to Land Lovers, it’s been a year of sobering reminders that no matter how many hours are notched up in the “joyful slog”, no matter how many momentous shows are played and records released, it is a Herculean task for independent bands to keep it going forever. No matter how much we want these acts to consistently be releasing albums and traversing the country to play…