• Other Voices 2023

    December 6, 2023 - By 

    Other Voices drew the best of Irish music to Dingle, Co. Kerry for three days of intimate performances, secret sessions and a vibrating air of magic. Now in its twenty-second year, it maintains its position as a stand-out music festival full of surprises, facilitating close access to unique performances by and for music lovers. Lines are blurred between musician and music lover, bringing a special element to the weekend that differentiates it from any other music festival. Renowned for creating a pocket of magic in Dingle every December, this year’s festival was no different.  With lit streets and pub doors…

  • Arctic Monkeys at SSE Arena, Belfast

    October 17, 2023 - By 

    There’s nothing like a sold-out arena gig to remind you that online discourse is only a small part of any artist’s story. Viewed from behind a screen, Arctic Monkeys’ headline set at Glastonbury this year appeared divisive. ‘The new songs are boring’, ‘Alex Turner’s affectations have gone too far’, ‘they’ve lost their mojo’. Try telling that to the thousands of adoring fans inside a sold-out arena tonight. The crowd is young – astonishingly so for a band with nearly two decades under its belt and seven albums, the last two of which have been daringly, even deliberately uncommercial. The Arctic…

  • Dispatches From A Field: All Together Now 2023

    August 10, 2023 - By 

    Mike Ryan reports back from Sugababes, Iggy Pop, Beak>, Villagers and more at the latest and greatest All Together Now to date. Photos by Celeste Burdon All Together Now returned last weekend for its fourth instalment, and with the memory of last year’s stellar line-up still fresh in people’s minds, it was always going to have an uphill battle to impress returning punters. It didn’t help matters that on Friday night that hill was covered in mud and into 50km winds. But before the weather turned, the evening got off to a rocking start. After an impressive set in one…

  • Pulp at St. Annes Park, Dublin

    June 13, 2023 - By 

    Is this the way they say the future’s meant to feel? Or just 20,000 people standing in a field? Well, it was both on Friday night as, nearly thirty years after the practically perfect Different Class was released, that future became the present for the thousands of people in St Anne’s Park in Dublin. And this time round we really understood what the feeling was – utter joy that Jarvis Cocker hasn’t changed at all and Pulp with their ‘This is What We Do for an Encore’ tour, delivered exactly what we wanted. Full of promise from the minute it’s…

  • Sugababes at Botanic Gardens, Belfast

    May 31, 2023 - By 

    Almost a year after their return as one of the unexpected hits at Glastonbury, when such a crowd turned up that entry to the Avalon gig had to be shut to any more fans, Sugababes brought their summer festivities to Belfast on Friday night, as part of the Live at Botanic Gardens series of concerts. While I never had the joy of seeing them the first time around (my hero then was Morrissey as opposed to fun pop girl bands, but sure, we live and learn) I can’t imagine that this original line-up, known for some years by the altogether less…

  • Unthank : Smith at Empire Music Hall, Belfast

    March 29, 2023 - By 

    Paul Smith and Rachel Unthank reimagine radical futures through the lens of traditional folk and new songs from and about the north of England during a spellbinding Monday evening in the Empire Music Hall. Shape-shifting arrangements veer from unaccompanied close harmony to mesmerising full band jazz-inflected work-outs. Alex Neilson from free-improvisation folk group Trembling Bells provides an eerie psych-folk backdrop on drums. Accompaniment on clarinet is provided by Faye McCalman from avant-jazz group Archipelago. The Maximo Park frontman adds a sharp pop nous to the songs from their recent record Nowhere and Everywhere – performed in its entirety tonight. The…

  • Scooter at 3Arena, Dublin

    December 6, 2022 - By 

    Rave music in the mid-nineties always seemed otherworldly to me and its connoisseurs were as alien as the sounds. Tropical hot Summers with swarms of lads buzzing and cycling through the area with haircuts like sweaty spider legs crushed under the weight of a baseball cap. Postman Pat sweets, Tangle Twisters and a can of Lilt for 36p. Booted out of the house to play on the road but instead melting the black tarmac lines with a magnifying glass while a half-licked ice cream dripped down my legs. I’d stare for hours aimlessly at galaxies forming in oil stains left…

  • Wet Leg at Limelight 1, Belfast

    November 29, 2022 - By 

    Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers are having some year. The buzzy hype from ‘Chaise Longue’ has been followed up with a well-received debut album and a series of smart, knowing promotional videos. Tonight’s show at the Limelight is at the tail-end of a victory lap of smaller venues that Wet Leg have admirably remained committed to despite a rising profile. Belfast city centre four Sundays before Christmas is a weirdly inaccessible place. Buses stop early in the evening. The last Glider leaves Wellington Place at 10pm. Excuse me? What? Yet this familiar venue is packed to the rafters and tonight’s…

  • Howe Gelb & Mark McCaulsand at The Court House, Bangor

    October 26, 2022 - By 

    Though often true, the term “good things come to wait” doesn’t always account for the bigger picture. It neglects vision, hard work and perseverance. It disregards the hoop-jumping, private stumbles and many victories along the way. Good things come to wait, yes, but great – often very special – things come to those who take care of all of the above and more. On these shores, Open House Festival is a textbook case in point. Helmed by Kieran Gilmore and Alison Gordon, the not-for-profit charity has long been committed to not only dreaming big but fully investing in the radical…

  • I Went to Garth Brooks and It Was Great

    September 21, 2022 - By 

    Let me start this by saying that I’m from The Moy. You know Garth Brooks’ songs by osmosis. They’re in the sheep dip and the wee bottles of McGuigans. We all stand around burning piles of household waste, out the back field, learning them with our cousinwifes. I went with my sister, we both live in Belfast or thereabouts and have the sort of fractured relationship that everyone has when they grow up in a household of people. I can distinctly remember learning all the songs on In Pieces (I had to look up the name of this album as it…