• 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…

  • Hive City Legacy: Dublin Chapter

    September 14, 2022 - By 

    Hive City Legacy: Dublin Chapter is here to shift the paradigm through dance, poetry, satire and song, mixing concert with social activism. The show is a Hot Brown Honey production. Creators Lisa Fa’alafi and Busty Beatz are joined with hip-hop artist Yami “Rowdy” Löfvenberg and the HCL Dublin ensemble to write the Dublin chapter of the tour. The live theatre production is led by eight femmes of colour. This extraordinary Irish cast consists of singer, songwriter, and poet Jess Kav, Afro-Brazilian dancer Capoeira, performer from Salvador, Alessandra Azevedo, and Irish-Nigerian artist and activist Osaro Azams. They are joined by singer…

  • Review: ABBA Voyage – “It has changed live music and performance forever”

    September 1, 2022 - By 

    Belfast-based Abba stan Shauna McLaughlin makes the pilgrimage to London to review the dazzling and groundbreaking virtual concert Traditionally reviews are written the day after the event. That didn’t happen with this review of ABBA Voyage because that day was spent hanging around outside the Arena in the hope of getting tickets to see it again immediately. Which is an impressive review in itself. The other point I want to make is that you’re better going in knowing nothing about what to expect. I may as well just stop writing here really. ABBA’s virtual concert residency, running since May 2022, with seven…

  • All Together Now 2022

    August 4, 2022 - By 

    Returning after its forced hiatus, Waterford’s All Together Now festival was back with a bang this weekend, bringing with it one of the most diverse and interesting lineups of any festival this summer. Armed with just his notes app and press pass  -and accompanied by the inimitable Celeste Burdon and her camera – Mike Ryan gives us a glimpse into the odyssey that engulfed Curraghmore Estate for the August bank holiday weekend. Photos by Celeste Burdon I arrive at All Together Now overburdened with probably unnecessary camping equipment, but just in time to catch the back half of The Altered…

  • Parquet Courts at The Helix, Dublin

    June 14, 2022 - By 

    As the stage crew carry out the last of their tasks, the countdown to Parquet Courts’ arrival draws imminently closer. The stage of Dublin’s Helix is bathed in a low red hue, which gives off more of a dance club aesthetic to proceedings, as opposed to the fact it is about to host one of Brooklyn’s foremost indie bands. With the crowd beginning to gather, the club vibe is emphasised even further as the sounds of Todd Terje’s take on M’s ‘Pop Muzik’, and a remix of Timmy Thomas’ 1970s’ song ‘Why Can’t We Live Together’, pulsate from the PA.…

  • Arborist at First Presbyterian Church, Belfast

    May 2, 2022 - By 

    On any day, Belfast First Presbyterian Church offers a quite spectacular setting for a concert. It’s even more so the case when the event organiser, namely Arthur Magee, decides to use the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival to honor the memory of former parishioner Thomas McCabe, who opposed the formation of the Belfast Slave Ship Company in 1786. In lieu of the usual opening band, the audience was offered an excerpt of the forthcoming play Sugar! by actor/writer Cillian Lenaghan. In his play, Lenaghan imagines Thomas McCabe’s visit to his church on the day after he prevented the formation of the…

  • Mitski at Vicar Street, Dublin

    April 27, 2022 - By 

    A large white wooden door hangs in the centre of the stage. Five musicians dressed in black step into position. Mitski begins to sing a capella, her haunting vocals emanating from the wings while her band members take the stage. She appears dressed in long, white flowing garments. Immediately, the crowd are in awe. Beginning with ‘Love Me More’ and ‘Should Have Been Me,’ she circles the stage, frantically, as if searching for a lost lover. Airy organs float above a wall of sound, as a tight rhythm section cuts through layers of keys and synths. She races in a…

  • HousePlants at Cyprus Avenue, Cork

    April 5, 2022 - By 

    The brainchild of electronic music wunderkind Daithí and Irish rock veteran Paul Noonan of Bell X1, HousePlants formed during lockdown and, through back and forth emails and messages, quickly started knocking out tunes. Their debut album Dry Goods is full of songs I couldn’t wait to see live while being churned around in a sweaty crowd at 2am at some backwoods music festival. So I was somewhat surprised by the relaxed atmosphere in Cyprus Avenue just before the main act took to the stage. Did the good people of Cork not know that there was dancing to be had tonight?…