• Angel Olsen – My Woman

    September 5, 2016 - By 

    I’ve never been able keep a diary. Having to articulate and make sense of the thoughts that muddle my mind used to be a terrifying and daunting ordeal. The first song I heard by Angel Olsen was ‘The Waiting’, from her first full length studio album, Half Way Home. In this song, she sings about fruitlessly and foolishly waiting for someone to reciprocate a feeling of fulfilment that we are capable of giving to ourselves. It just takes a little time to reach that realisation.That shift from interdependence to independence allows you to appreciate the inevitable contentions in life as a twenty-something with an unfettered honesty…

  • Factory Floor – 25 25

    September 1, 2016 - By 

    Factory Floor’s 2013 debut record on DFA records was a feat of vicious genre blending: the hammering of analog synths together with frenetic live percussion, the creeping noise and post-punk vocals being layered on top of metallic guitars. From the tribal drums and robotic vocal echoes on ‘Turn It Up’ to the frenzied synths and disharmonious mantra of ‘Two Different Ways’ it was a debut that assaulted the boundaries between techno and punk, feeling industrial and at times cold but simultaneously enveloping and remarkable. It triumphed in its disjointedness, in its chaotic sultriness, as capable of triggering a mosh pit…

  • James Vincent McMorrow – We Move

    September 1, 2016 - By 

    This being his third musical endeavour, Dubliner James Vincent Mcmorrow’s We Move is an exciting and re-energized collection brimming with eleven brilliant laid back grooves. His 2010 debut, Early In The Morning, served as a charming introduction to his style, his sombre tone slotting nicely into the indie folk genre, a record comprised of melancholic, angst-laden tracks. His 2013 neo-soul influenced follow-up however took an unsuspected turn, echoing elements of hip hop, electronica and R&B. What he would delve into after that was anyone’s guess. Having worked with major league producer Nineteen85, McMorrow manages to blend his original folk-inspired sound with something more unique. There’s a…

  • Teenage Fanclub – Here

    August 31, 2016 - By 

    Summer’s over, but summer’s here…how can that be? That’s the perennial effect of a Teenage Fanclub album – “Simple pleasures are all we need/ Sinful leisure, it’s all we need.” Recorded between Provence, Glasgow and Hamburg, Here is album number ten from a band that took the seeds sown by the finest B-bands – Big Star above all else – and made the heartlands of Scotland a rival to the American west coast when it came to pristine pop music. The time between their records has been unhurriedly expanding – six years on from Shadows the template remains unchanged as ‘I’m In Love’ strums Here…

  • Glass Animals – How to Be a Human Being

    August 31, 2016 - By 

    Glass Animals’ sparse, trip-hop influenced sonic textures, coupled with Dave Bayley’s quietly seductive vocals, made debut album Zaba a critical and commercial hit, selling an impressive 500,000 copies worldwide. Bayley’s obscure lyrics added to the record’s haze, more concerned with extending it’s dreamy ambiguity than in storytelling. Their second long-player, How To Be A Human Being, is a different story entirely, with each song seeing Bayley assume the voice of a different character the band met on the road in support of Zaba. Following up a successful debut with a concept album may seem like an over the top risk, but this is no Drones: the…

  • The Pipes The Pipes @ Black Box, Belfast

    August 31, 2016 - By 

    The title may evoke a line from Frederick Weatherly’s famous ballad ‘Danny Boy’, but this multi-media project, where there are as many audio-visual artists as there are uilleann pipers, is about as far away from Irishry as imagined by sentimentalists the world over, as can be imagined. The music itself is traditional enough, though the printed program outlining the sequence and details of the twelve-piece set is more in tune with a classical music performance. Maitiú Ó Casaide, Leonard Barry and John Tuohy – the latter subbing for Padraig McGovern – deliver a set of jigs, hop jigs, slip jigs,…

  • Sam Beam & Jesca Hoop w/ Erika Wennerstrom @ Marine Court Hotel, Bangor

    August 31, 2016 - By 

    Erika Wennerstrom breaks down in tears several songs into her support slot. Open House Festival Director Kieran Gilmore proclaims that “Bangor is the new Cathedral Quarter.” Jesca Hoop suggests that she and Sam Beam could be married by the end of the evening. Some context: on hiatus from fronting garage-rockers Heartless Bastards, Wennerstrom (below) is road-testing some emotionally direct solo material in Bangor tonight and it shows in her early nervous delivery. This is an intense and at times uncomfortable opening set, but she makes it through thanks to a hugely supportive audience. This is the Open House Festival’s fourth…

  • Frank Ocean – Blond

    August 30, 2016 - By 

    Fame is a funny thing; mercurial, fickle and often fleeting. Once back in the mists of time people became famous just for what they did but now, in our pervasive, insistent culture it’s hard to even distinguish between what someone is and what they actually do. And that’s Frank’s story, ever since his rise as the most credible member of internet championed dysfunctionals OFWGKTA Frank has existed in a place where he and his music are scrutinised, obsessed over and disassembled. Yet it is a wave that Frank doesn’t just ride, but seems to have actively tamed. Ever since the comments on his sexuality, the…

  • Camino Na Sáile @ Ulster Museum, Belfast

    August 29, 2016 - By 

    “It’s important to do mad things. I don’t think it’s very wise not to do mad things.” So says Danny Sheehy, sagely. And what could be wiser than for a writer, an artist, a stonemason and two musicians to make a wooden-framed, canvas-covered boat and sail it, from Dublin, across a couple of seas, to join the route of the Camino de Santiago de Compostella? Sheehy is one of five wise men on the stage in the Ulster Museum, along with Glen Hansard, Brenden Begley, Brendan Ó Mhuircheartaigh and Liam Holden. Middle aged, weather beaten, grey haired, and with a…

  • Mom and Me

    August 24, 2016 - By 

    Laois-born Ken Wardrop has an Irishman’s fascination with mothers. His graduate film for Dun Laoghaire’s IADT, Undressing My Mother, was a frank and physically candid portrait of the Wardrop matriarch, glimpses of the widowed farmer’s wife’s bare flesh set to her ruminations on body, family and her late marriage. His first feature documentary, 2009’s His & Hers, profiled girls and women of all ages from the Irish Midlands, their testimonies tracing the arc of womanhood from teenage stress to last-call loneliness. For his latest doc, Mom and Me, Wardrop heads across the water to Oklahoma’s wide flats, bringing men into his frame for a look at Mama’s Boy Okies…