• Choice Music Prize 2015

    March 6, 2015 - By 

    Contemporary Irish music supergroup The Gloaming walked away with the top prize of Irish Album of the year last night at 10th annual Meteor Choice Music Prize Awards. They beat off stiff competition from a stellar pack of nominees including a mix of well established and lesser known indie favourites. The judging panel, made up of Irish music media professionals and chaired by Tony-Clayton Lee, described the debate around choosing the winner as a somewhat “tricky and contentious” decision but ultimately it was the mix of contemporary, experimental and traditional music on the eponymously titled album from the Gloaming that won…

  • Snowpoet @ The Little Museum of Dublin

    March 3, 2015 - By 

    “Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence”, King Crimson’s Robert Fripp once observed when the poetic muse had taken hold. Or perhaps it was the wine. Regardless, Fripp would doubtless have approved as music, wine and silence, in various combinations, were all in good supply at Snowpoet’s Dublin concert. The concert was part of music production company and record label Ergodos’ series of specially curated concerts sponsored by Santa Rita, the legendary Chilean wine makers, whose stunning red and white wines on offer at the reception teased loose the tongues and gently flushed the cheeks of the…

  • PALS: The Irish at Gallipoli @ National Museum of Ireland, Dublin

    February 26, 2015 - By 

    A bleak Irish sky backdrops the frigid Collin’s Barracks, former military stronghold turned national museum turned proscenium for ANU Productions’ breathtaking new performance PALS.  Born out of the financial collapse in 2009, ANU (pronounced “anew”) has boldly challenged Irish theatre to tackle Irish issues in visceral ways, turning its site-specific method of performance into a niche, accessible, and affordable outlet for the Dublin theatre-going public. ANU’s total-immersion style of theatre forces audiences not only to witness a story, but to experience its place as an integral element of the narrative.  2012’s Boys of Foley Street revived a time and place…

  • Death From Above 1979 @ Limelight 1, Belfast

    February 23, 2015 - By 

    When Toronto dance punks par excellence Death From Above 1979 announced they were calling it a day back in the good old days of yore (2006), every second twenty-something rued through tear-soaked eyes somehow managing to miss arguably one of the finest duos of a generation live. And so, as has happened innumerable times before, in precisely the same fashion, the seeds of legacy were well and truly sown, reaped, a whole decade on, by an expectedly agog congregation of newcomers and “I was there, man” thirty-somethings at Belfast’s Limelight 1. Will the well-documented tension between Sebastien Grainger (drums/vocals) and Jesse Keeler (bass) – apparently resigned…

  • Echo & The Bunnymen w/ Arborist @ Mandela Hall, Belfast

    February 19, 2015 - By 

    Thirty-seven years in, Echo & The Bunnymen’s repute as one of the most vital and influential British rock bands ever is long beyond contention.  Notwithstanding a couple of reunions and several line-up changes, Ian McCullough and co – founding guitar/songwriter Will Sergeant and a considerably more callow touring band – have battened down the hatches for the long run, summoning their pioneering post-punk “glory days” on stage where recent recorded material has just fallen short of that early vitality. Tonight they offer up the timeless magic once more, an undeniably legendary proposition. With a steady stream of expectant heads herding into the Mandela Hall, singer-songwriter Mark…

  • Decemberists @ Vicar Street, Dublin

    February 14, 2015 - By 

    …in which the good ship Infanta sails into Dublin on a sea of whimsy and English tea, bearing forth a band of bohemian minstrels, sweating absinthe, smoking shisha pipes, brandishing muskets, sextants and satchels overflowing with sonnets scrawled on rolls of teletype paper. Right from the outset, it is clear that the audience, squeezed into a venue fittingly bedecked in wooden friezes, will be treated to something truly rare in modern music: originality. Firstly, there’s frontman and songwriter in chief Colin Meloy’s lyrics, which are uniquely literate, ribald and at times just a tad sinister in the best possible way.…

  • Quarter Block Party 2015

    February 11, 2015 - By 

    FRIDAY The excitement is palpable throughout the city’s creative communities in the run-up to the Block Party, and even before your writer gets to his relatively late start on proceedings, word filters through that the Structures and Strategies meeting will lead to more events in its vein, a forum for local creatives to air ideas and exchange thoughts. People’s gears are grinding already, it seems. We’re waiting outside the Gate Cinema for a few minutes and the small group outside is already conjecturing about what they’ll see out of charismatic American performer Kate McGrew (below), as well as plotting and…

  • The Afghan Whigs @ The Academy, Dublin

    February 4, 2015 - By 

    Ohio’s Afghan Whigs descend upon The Academy for their first show since November 2014. “Shaking the dust off,” frontman Greg Dulli facetiously states, with a self-confidence that seems his very essence. Aside from a few vocal pitching issues – admittedly rather befitting of the music’s obstreperous character – the set is masterfully delivered by the imposing sextet. From the first, the mix is impeccable. The soul-tinged alt-rock Americans have arrived with full sensory assault in mind. Whigs’ original John Curley leads an unrelenting rhythm section over which the guitar, keys and string parts compose ardently the musical parchment for Dulli’s…

  • Young Fathers @ Black Box, Belfast

    January 19, 2015 - By 

    Edinburgh trio Young Fathers play to a sold out Black Box as part of the tenth annual Out To Lunch Festival, and as one of the more highly anticipated acts in the programme, we can assure you that they do not disappoint. They open nearly in darkness with a single drum beat which slowly builds into a battle march and bleeds into the electrifying ‘No Way’. It’s menacing and theatrical and immediately sets up the extraordinary atmosphere spectacularly. Young Fathers have clearly approached their Belfast show with an attack mentality which by the end of their first track leaves many…

  • Stars @ Limelight 2, Belfast

    January 15, 2015 - By 

    The experience of going to see a band live usually depends upon two elements – the strength of the artists and the audience. As Stars clamber on to the Limelight stage, bursting enthusiastically into ‘From The Night’, it soon becomes clear that it’s not the standard of performance that leaves the whole evening feeling a little… well…off. Stars are in Belfast to tour their seventh album, No One Is Lost. They make likeable records which translate live with ease. Belfast receives a sharply executed set-list of classics mined from their extensive back catalogue offering a satisfying mix of haunting, eloquent…