• Lust for Youth – Compassion

    March 15, 2016 - By 

    On Lust For Youth’s breakthrough LPs, 2012’s Growing Seeds and 2013’s Perfect View, the band made music that sounded like a normal dance record left to warp and decay for a few years inside a nuclear reactor for a few years. There were beats and melodies, but they were pushed deep beneath fog and murk and cloaked in nausea and sick tension, with only a few ghostly hints at the music as we normally hear it appearing from time to time. It was concrete cold and frontman/ mastermind Hannes Norrvide’s ability to make something that sounded so alien to the…

  • Dead Stars – Bright Colors

    March 14, 2016 - By 

    A four note, staccato bass opening can’t help but throw you head first into Pixies territory. That niche was so intricately carved that even gesturing towards its opens up the floodgates to a whole host of connotations and comparisons that the majority of bands who do so buckle under. But Dead Stars opt to do so on the inaugural track of their second LP, Bright Colors, and you can see why. It’s a fitting place to begin, the group’s sound is entirely indebted to Frank Black as well as Evan Dando, Rivers Cuomo and Fountains of Wayne. There are shifting…

  • The Bonnevilles – Arrow Pierce My Heart

    March 13, 2016 - By 

    One word that is regularly attributed to bands that fall under the rock ’n’ roll, blues or garage-punk monikers is ‘raw’. By that I mean there is more often than not a pure and unadulterated rawness or dirtiness, as it were, related to an artist’s playing style that it can be classified as such. When it comes to Lurgan duo The Bonnevilles’ latest album Arrow Pierce My Heart, it is clear as day this term can be used when pinpointing their homage to these genres. Andrew McGibbon Jnr. and Chris McMullan have come out swinging on what is their third…

  • The Coral – Distance Inbetween

    March 11, 2016 - By 

    The Coral have always been outsiders. Springing up in 2002, this young and fully formed six-piece dazzled listeners with Captain Beefheart-esque psychedelia, pop hooks and classic songwriting. At the time, the NME led New Rock Revolution was in full swing and aside from The Zutons, they seemed completely out of step with the predominantly garage rock bands they were sharing column inches with. Producing outstanding albums as a frenetic pace –their first two albums in particular still sound spectacular—could not last and the past few years have been one of contemplation and regrouping for the band. Losing the outrageously talented Bill Ryder-Jones and original guitarist Lee Southall…

  • Little Green Cars – Ephemera

    March 11, 2016 - By 

    Following on from Little Green Cars’ stunning debut LP Absolute Zero was always going to be a challenge. The album, which was released in 2013, was a culmination of a young band’s determined and remarkably capable work up to that point. It was rife with brittle, anxious lyrics, ambitious yet subtle musicianship and stunning vocal harmonies, and was at times almost like listening to someone speak when their nerves have lead to a jarringly frantic output. Everything they had to give was thrown at us to ensure something stuck. And it did. Thankfully, there was scarcely a note on that…

  • Emmy The Great – Second Love

    March 9, 2016 - By 

    Second Love, the new LP by Emmy The Great and her first in five years, is secure enough to know exactly what it wants to be. The title, which by design immediately evokes her 2009 debut First Love, implies this continuation and growth that runs deep at the core of the album. Musically, ETG begins moving away from the acoustic folk styling which characterised her earlier releases in exchange for a more minimalist electronica. While the record as a whole is a very mixed bag, what shines throughout are the lyrics, which still retain the incisive power of her debut…

  • Big Ups – Before A Million Universes

    March 11, 2016 - By 

    Of all the notions one can fling at post-hardcore, the much maligned and misattributed genre, it does have one undeniable strength: tension. The key songs in the genre’s oeuvre are not built around a typical rock structure of verse-chorus-verse, but rather on a more fluid, almost progressive structure that emphasizes the disquiet over all else. It’s best envisioned like a constantly tightening torture rack, constantly ratcheting the tension, keeping the listener in this state of unease and the brink of real discomfort before discharging in the most cathartic manner possible. It’s one of punk’s hydra heads taken to its logical…

  • M. Ward – More Rain

    March 8, 2016 - By 

    More Rain has been four years in the making. In truth, M. Ward has been making this album his whole career, such is the omnipresence of the main ingredients weaving through the songwriter’s back catalogue. Sometimes, you just know what you are going to get with an album. Sometimes, that is a really good thing. More Rain continues to show Matthew Ward as a musician enthralled with capturing a 60s sound and wrapping it around skilled arrangements and engaging melodies. Though 12 songs long, it still feels like a piece of flash fiction, such is the tight and minimalist make up of the songs on…

  • Jeff Buckley – You and I

    March 7, 2016 - By 

    The late alternative rock icon Jeff Buckley was recently the subject of a documentary on BBC Radio Ulster’s Across the Line featuring contributions from friends, fans and fellow artists. The programme’s highlight, however, was a charming anecdote from Buckley’s sole Belfast date: after playing to a half empty Limelight, the practically unknown Buckley and his band were bemused when their simple tour rider request for ‘beer and soda’ saw them greeted with trays of filled soda farls on their arrival to the dressing room. Buckley’s confused encounter with Belfast’s finest luxury serves as a reminder of his relatively limited fame during his own lifetime: the small,…

  • Santigold – 99¢

    March 7, 2016 - By 

    Lousy Smarch weather! We’ve got Baltic temperatures, snow and whole host of other Winter wonderland treats that we were supposed to piss off back in February that have opted remain, ratcheting up the March misery. It’s cold and overcast and what we need is some good straightforward fun; fortunately, Philadelphia’s Santigold has kindly provided her new album, 99¢, to help get us through this tough time. The album offers up twelve slices of delightful poppy, reggae-tinged electro-pop songs that help to blast away remnants of the winter blues and, except a handful of cuts which should have been culled, the…