• Everything Shook – Drinking About You

    August 11, 2016 - By 

    Everything Shook have proven one of the more interesting outfits on the Irish live circuit of late, a kinetic and technicolour blend of music, electro-performance art and synchronised choreography. The trouble with such visual bombardment is often that while it’s entertaining in the moment, it’s a transient thing. However, Robyn Bromfield, Jessica Kennedy and Áine Stapleton demonstrated on their debut release, Argento Nights, that they had the songs to back up the schtick. That three-track EP – as its title implied – was a louche, low-key and murky snippet of the brooding electronica that was to come on Drinking About You. It’s with the foreboding march…

  • Dinosaur Jr. – Give A Glimpse Of What Yer Not

    August 9, 2016 - By 

    “All I know is that we play hard and a lot of this shit is not fun. Playing is great but the way we live is not the life of a rockstar.” Henry Rollins’ classic tour diary Get In The Van is an hilarious and often harrowing reminder of how deeply unglamorous life on the road was for Black Flag and their hardcore and college rock contemporaries. The leading lights of that scene eventually found financial reward from their sterling work in the pre-Nevermind era, with greatest hits tours by Jane’s Addiction, The Pixies and the Replacements finding them before huge audiences that were simply inconceivable…

  • Drown – Drown EP

    August 8, 2016 - By 

    Galway based experimental pop outfit Drown are set to drop their debut EP this month, a snappy four-track release that immediately beams with potential. The post-punk outfit were drawn together by their passion for experimental pop music, emerging with a punch towards the end of last year. Their sound however, suggests otherwise. Self-dubbed unintentional pop, the tracks appear heavily influenced by the more ethereal elements of 80s underground rock, drawing upon the likes of Sonic Youth and DIIV for inspiration. The release sees the five-piece noise outfit rebel against typical pop music, creating a sound that is intoxicating, honest and thought-provoking. Leavened melodies are carried by heavy angular guitar…

  • Russian Circles – Guidance

    August 5, 2016 - By 

    In many ways, post-rock is an easy genre. Get a guitar, bass, and drums, load them with enough pedals to make Kevin Shields gasp and repeat a single musical phrase for the guts of seventy minutes and, voilà, you’re the next Explosions In The Sky, This Will Destroy or The Album Leaf. Freebasers will line up far and wide to catch a glimpse of what you’re doing, tv shows will contact you to write the score for their uplifting emotional scene and you’ll write variants of an identical theme for about decade, replacing members faster than an 80’s hair metal…

  • Ben Chatwin – Heat and Entropy

    August 2, 2016 - By 

    It’s nice when an LP’s cover so succinctly summarises what the album holds. Heat and Entropy, the latest LP from experimental Scottish composer Ben Chatwin, has one of those images. The picture in question is of the underside of a squid against a purely black backdrop. It’s crisp, detailed and leaves to the imagination as the mouth, suction cups and moisture of the cephalopod’s underside are prominently visible. It’s a striking and almost hideous vision of the natural world that because of the void-like darkness that surrounds it; it looks as though it would torment you were you in a…

  • TTNG – Disappointment Island

    July 26, 2016 - By 

    Despite the vast number of changes in line-up since their formation just over twelve years ago, TTNG have been a steady trio for the past five years. This comes across in what is over all, a solid and consistent third album from the math-rock Brits. Even the title, Disappointment Island could suggest a bout of confidence for them, as had they failed to produce a somewhat decent listen the title itself would provide an ideal base for thoughtless, crummy criticism. Instead, they have succeeded in compiling a reliable set of ten tracks that hold true to the sound that TTNG (or This Town Needs Guns as they…

  • Róisín Murphy – Take Her Up To Monto

    July 26, 2016 - By 

    With the promotional admission that Róisín Murphy’s latest full-length album Take Her Up To Monto was born from sessions concurrent to her last LP, the faultlessly idiosyncratic Hairless Toys, the worry listeners faced was that the ‘new’ material on offer so shortly after might have been, well, old. But in typically daring fashion, what has resulted from these sessions is a collection of tracks that boasts the same verve and vibrancy as heard on Hairless Toys, but with a razor’s edge running throughout that’s explicit in differentiating THUTM from its predecessor – a feat that few manage to coherently demonstrate. The thing is though, fans can…

  • Biffy Clyro – Ellipsis

    July 19, 2016 - By 

    There is that Morrissey line that seems rather pertinent when discussing the latter part of Biffy Clyro’s career: we hate it when our friends become successful. Witnessing one of the UK’s most beloved cult acts completely dominate the charts was always going to be true sight to behold. On their journey to the top however, the group lost what made them so fascinating in the first place; their ridiculous tonal shifts sidelined in favour of more straightforward pop-oriented direction. Their previous album – the bloated, underwhelming double album Opposites – was a testament to this fact as none of its twenty…

  • Johnny Foreigner – Mono No Aware

    July 14, 2016 - By 

    After just shy of ten years performing together Johnny Foreigner have just released their fifth album. The indie four-piece, hailing from Birmingham, show both promise and consistency with their latest release, Mono No Aware. Consistency is blatantly obvious, with the album comprising of eleven solid, terrifically upbeat indie rock tracks with elements of pop punk regularly bursting through in the form of catchy riffs and tight, snappy drum pieces. Promise is a term that is perhaps to be used with more caution. For those familiar with JoFo, from the opening quarter they will immediately melt into the quirky and comfortable musical space that the band provides for its’ adoring…

  • The Julie Ruin – Hit Reset

    July 13, 2016 - By 

    Julie Ruin isn’t a new concept for Kathleen Hanna. The moniker has been around since the mid- nineties as the title of her post-Bikini Kill solo album, one that bridged the gap and foreshadowed what was to come with Le Tigre. That trio’s explorations with sampled music and drum machines expanded on Julie Ruin’s bedroom-recorded experiments, and the pseudonym was put to bed for over a decade, during which time Hanna’s productivity was curtailed by a long-term debilitating illness. Her struggle with Lyme disease, undiagnosed for years, is documented with stark candour in the 2013 film The Punk Singer, and it’s a topic that crops up…