• We Cut Corners – Think Nothing

    May 23, 2014 - By 

    We Cut Corners debut, Today I Realised I Can Go Home Backwards, was one of the great under-heralded Irish debuts. At just thirty two minutes, it flits almost flippantly between heart-on-sleeve confessional pop melodies full of wonderfully oblique imagery in ‘Go Easy’ and ‘A Pirate’s Life’, and the White Stripes-inspired tuneful thrashings of ‘The Leopard’ and ‘Say Yes To Everything’. The album’s charm fell in its balance: its thoughtful, oblique lyrics, soaring vocals and ability to be scorchingly angry and pointedly self deprecating in the same three minute period. It sounds like it would take four people to play, yet the duo reproduce it perfectly live.…

  • Coldplay – Ghost Stories

    May 23, 2014 - By 

    Setting aside the fact that their sixth studio album coincides particularly poignantly with a very public ‘conscious uncoupling’, from the opening notes you are left in little doubt that Ghost Stories is Coldplay‘s ‘break up’ album. This is an album that is, if you will pardon the pun, haunted by failed relationships. When you are eating ice cream by the pint and stalking the Facebook profile page of the one who broke your heart, this album will certainly provide the appropriate soundtrack. A deeply personal, introspective and at times, self-indulgent record, Ghost Stories comes prepared to offer you music to…

  • Swans – To Be Kind

    May 21, 2014 - By 

    In 2012 something quite extraordinary happened. After reforming his band Swans following a hiatus of over thirteen years, Michael Gira and his select group of musicians released their masterpiece: The Seer. Hailed as their finest work by many, it was a colossal piece of music spanning over two hours, an extended exploration of the unknowable obscurities and mind-numbing repetitions that had become synonymous with the Swans name. But it was much more than that – it was an evolutionary step into uncharted territory for the band, and for contemporary rock music as a whole. In an age where the synthesiser…

  • The Horrors – Luminous

    May 16, 2014 - By 

    It’s safe to say most of us are probably glad The Horrors have, over time, evolved towards the more psychedelic end of the spectrum of nonchalance. Looking back to their 2007 album Strange House, it’s as though they are a completely different band. What we see now is a fully developed group without the trappings of their earlier (one would hope) record-label-enforced Goth gimmickry. Their career is almost a reflection of the transition from one’s adolescence to one’s mid-twenties (or am I projecting?). Strange House was full of blatant attitude, angst, hair-dye and eyeliner; and if you listen carefully, amid…

  • VerseChorusVerse – VerseChorusVerse

    May 8, 2014 - By 

    “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” So reads the opening line from L.P. Hartley’s 1953 novel, The Go-Between. Touching on the innocence of childhood and its loss, family life and more, it’s a classic in excavating the oft smoggy wasteland that is the past. For many artists, however, the most rewarding way of confronting what has come before is to delve, headstrong, into the immediate present; carefully side-stepping the grasp of nostalgia whilst following an inner path. For Tony Wright AKA singer-songwriter VerseChorusVerse, this is something that he has, for the most part, bravely and…

  • Kelis – Food

    May 1, 2014 - By 

    Kelis Rogers has always been somewhat of an enigmatic figurehead for the fringes of popular music. A sonic siren, her brand of off-centre RnB has historically enjoyed success with club-goers, channel hoppers and with those who just enjoy a bloody good hook and the occasional raucous holler or two. ‘I Hate You So Much Right Now,’ for instance, her 1999 vocal assault on a cheating spouse, provided Rogers with an opportunity to change the way RnB was to be perceived – it could be powerful, visceral even, but retain the soulful and jazz-influenced backdrop that many of Rogers’ contemporaries exploited…

  • Elastic Sleep – Leave You E.P.

    April 29, 2014 - By 

    The first thing that slaps you about the face about the debut E.P. from Elastic Sleep, is not the shimmering, foggy beauty they can conjure, hinted at in their dream-pop debut bijou, ‘Anywhere’, but the weight and conviction behind its execution. Cork shoegazers with a serious pedigree gleaned from their time in popgaze supermachine Agitate the Gravel/Terror Pop and synth-poppers Superblondes, the band’s collective experiences, disappointments, and refined vision have crystallised here in the form of six tracks that quickly embody a wide palate of influences, that not so much form the next stage of an ongoing evolution for the…

  • Mac DeMarco – Salad Days

    April 23, 2014 - By 

    “What Mom doesn’t know/ has taken its toll on me” sings Mac DeMarco on album number three’s lead single, ‘Passing Out the Pieces’. It’s a line that immediately anchors the listener in with what to expect from the rest of his critically praised, self-produced 2014 release, Salad Days. Remarkably the title of the album itself would be far more in line with the Mac (real name: Vernor Winfield McBriare Smith IV) of 2012; the Mac who gained a semi-cult following with some hilarious post-watershed Youtube clips and an anthemic ode to his favourite cigarettes, Viceroy. However in true Mac style…

  • Confab Review: Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks

    April 17, 2014 - By 

    Wait, who?  Avey Tare. He’s out of Animal Collective. Oh right. Has he gone solo? Not really, Animal Collective like to keep themselves busy with side projects. So what’s the Slasher Flicks bit? Is it horror picture music? Well I suppose that might depend on your tastes. But essentially no, there’s no long, suspenseful atmospherics followed by sudden dramatic explosions with added bone-crunching sound effects. Nor is it black metal. Is it just a name then? Good question. It does seem a little bit tacked on, a convenient story providing opportunities for blood-dripping photo shoots, spooky artwork and a comically…

  • Squarepusher / Z-Machines – Music for Robots

    April 11, 2014 - By 

    As one of Warp Records’ longest serving artists, Squarepusher (Tom Jenkinson) has rarely shied away from changing his direction or pushing the boundaries of music production; tropes of the label’s general output. One only need listen through his impressive back catalogue to understand that Jenkinson is an artist who thrives on the new and that stagnation, seemingly, is a very dirty word. Take his experiments with live instrumentation and sequenced beats for example; there is plenty of evidence to suggest that not only is Jenkinson an extremely talented live musician, but an enviably capable savant when it comes to processing…