• Tandem Felix – Comma EP

    May 26, 2015 - By 

    On their new EP, Comma, Dublin’s Tandem Felix have toned down the gritty anxiety that added a particularly distorted, glitching atmosphere to their 2013 EP, Popcorn. That grit, which gave Tandem Felix’s folkier basis a very psychedelic edge, has been twisted slightly to incorporate less abrasion and a little more lap steel guitar. The result is that Comma’s five tracks bear a lot of similarity to the likes of Beck’s Sea Change or Morning Phase, or to the more tender points in Wilco’s discography.  That’s not to say that the anxiety is gone, however. The lyrics express the same sense of…

  • The Fall – Sub-Lingual Tablet

    May 20, 2015 - By 

    Only a fool writes off The Fall, a band that have had more returns to form than most bands have had records. With the current lineup now being their longest serving as a complete unit (aside from the recent addition of second drummer Daren Garratt), some have accused them of getting too comfortable and being in need of another shake-up like the days of old, since 2011’s sloppy Ersatz GB, a surprising misstep after the back-to-back excellence of Imperial Wax Solvent and Your Future Our Clutter before it. 2013’s Re-Mit then failed to fully compensate, being a mish-mash of greatness…

  • Donal Scullion – Superpowers

    May 12, 2015 - By 

    As an NI Soul Troop mainstay, Donal Scullion is more than familiar with the nuances of jazz, funk and, of course, soul, not to mention the work that goes into arranging tracks that bear those generic attributes.  This is what contributes to Scullion’s grasp of composition and style on his debut solo offering Superpowers; an album that is full of all the tropes of big-band splendour but tows the line quite sweetly between the singer/songwriter and pop-soloist milieus.  In theory, that’s a tall order and not without its pitfalls, but Scullion has obviously approacehed Superpowers with enthusiasm and vigour, and…

  • Ciaran Lavery & Ryan Vail – Sea Legs

    April 22, 2015 - By 

    While people will continue to argue tirelessly about whether the internet has been a good or a bad thing for music, here comes another argument for ‘good’. Derry minimal electronic musician Ryan Vail and Aghagallon alt-folkster Ciaran Lavery first became friends online before finally meeting up at a festival they were both appearing at and decided to collaborate on this mini-album. Regardless of whether or not you think streaming music is as bad as killing elephants like Tom DeLonge claims, the sense of community that the internet affords to bring together musicians from different musical backgrounds to try out collaborations…

  • Villagers – Darling Arithmetic

    April 21, 2015 - By 

    Villagers has always been something of a vehicle for Conor O’Briens creative vision. Early on as a band it enabled him to explore the rich soundscapes we heard on Becoming A Jackal; the arrangements were complex, brooding and gave more than a tip of the cap to Nick Drake’s darkest days and recordings, but was most certainly foregrounded with O’Brien’s soloist vernacular. {Awayland} had a different, but no less focused modus operandi, with O’Brien and co. expanding a sound that ultimately felt like a more colourful, collaborative experience. Now on album number three, Villagers’ Darling Arithmetic goes beyond a back…

  • The Mighty Stef – Year of the Horse

    April 27, 2015 - By 

    Dublin’s The Mighty Stef went for nailed-on quality with the production of The Year Of The Horse, traveling to California to splash out on Arctic Monkeys and QOTSA studio legend Alain Johannes. It’s a solid tactic, and sees the rocker’s tight, clean yet snarling stomp polished to a complex gem of a guitar album. It’s been a long road at a full eight year since Stefan Murphy released his debut, entitled The Sins Of Sainte Catherine. Perhaps that heady sense of an album slimmed down and refined over an extended period is a product of the wait; the outcome of…

  • Robocobra Quartet – Bomber EP

    April 16, 2015 - By 

    In the quest for the new sound, the path is one paved with ambitious intentions and fraught with admirable failed experiments and laughable attempts at the avant garde. Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music is a terrible album that forces the listener to reconsider what they might constitute as real music, while Lulu is an album where James Hetfield feels it appropriate to yell “I am the table”, while Lou Reed’s withered husk struggles to sing some Burrowsian tripe. Both of these releases are burying their fingers in the earth, digging for something and coming up with dirty fingers. There are…

  • Therapy? – Disquiet

    April 9, 2015 - By 

    When talk first began of a sequel to ‘Troublegum’, the 1994 punk-metal opus that made legends of Co. Antrim trio Therapy?, your writer couldn’t help but feel pangs of uncertainty. From a band that over the course of 25 years plowed a fiercely independent furrow, and did so while thinking about ten steps ahead of the musical sentiment of the time, a move for nostalgia would be surely a massive anti-climax after producing two career-defining albums in ‘Crooked Timber’ and ‘A Brief Crack of Light’. Is it? Well… the jury is still out after a fortnight’s constant listening, which, for…

  • Shlohmo – Dark Red

    April 9, 2015 - By 

    Up until this record, the first since 2011’s Bad Vibes, Shlohmo existed in that murky area of electronica that throws up morpheme collisions like glitchhop, witchtrap and future-garage. His particular brand of emotive electronica had, on his solo releases, hovered just a few notches over the ambient dissonance line and on his collaborations he exhibited a chameleon like ability that let him lend his talents over the genre boundary without stretching too far out of shape. Just look at last year’s collaboration with Jeremih that saw the LA based producer slip seamlessly into RnB like a seasoned pro. While that…

  • White Hills – Walks For Motorists

    March 25, 2015 - By 

    Good old Space Rock: for when you need songs to last ten minutes but you’re not in the mood for all that proggy, time signature business. When you need to rock out but still wanna feel mellow, man. When you want to think about the vastness and complexity of the universe but you aren’t really up for much thinking. The genre provides so much and demands little in return. Zone out under your headphones at home, or wig out in the front row behind your fringe, head shaking from side to side, rib cage secretly on the verge of collapse…