• Minor Victories – Minor Victories

    June 21, 2016 - By 

    Just because some things seem like they could go together, doesn’t mean they should. Everyone can agree that roller coasters are fun, as is coitus, however, if you were to meld them though you’d probably end up as the subject of one of those Snopes verified urban legends. An album such as Minor Victories, the eponymous debut from a new supergroup featuring the Editors’ Justin Lockey, Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, and Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite, is the aural equivalent of the aforementioned Alton Towers copulation. Take every individual component on offer and you’ve got a recipe special; A record which might potentially…

  • Wye Oak – Tween

    June 21, 2016 - By 

    It’s been two years since the release of the critically acclaimed Shriek and the members of Baltimore’s Wye Oak have been quietly busy – Andy Stack has been the touring drummer for EL VY and Jenn Wasner has been touring her solo project, Flock of Dimes. So, the surprise release of Tween – alongside the statement that this is a collection of songs written and subsequently scrapped between the 2011 release Civilian and the aforementioned Shriek ­– makes this album a treat but one that is hard to place in the Wye Oak catalogue. Is it an album? A collection…

  • Plaid – The Digging Remedy

    June 15, 2016 - By 

    Since 1991, Plaid, the duo of of Andy Turner and Ed Handley, haven’t so much straddled the line between experimental and straightforward electronica as used it as their skipping rope. At times, they’ve been wholly unrecognisable in their wildly experimental sonic threshes (‘Cold’), they’ve made dark and demented electro anthems (‘Itsu’), and created some of the most accessible, yet weirdly unsettling music out there (‘Eyen’ ). It would be an understatement to profess that over their 25 years, Plaid have made some of the most exquisitely composed, highly-listenable electronica ever committed to wax, but in latest full-length The Digging Remedy, the former Black Dog founding fathers seem…

  • PAWS – No Grace

    June 15, 2016 - By 

    It’s the summer months and you all know what that means: it’s time for the latest slew of pop-punk records to stretch out their heavily tattooed arms and release their latest diatribe on the pains of being misunderstood just in time for the Summer festival season. Bring on the Warped Tour, yo! So amongst this crop which includes the likes of Modern Baseball, The Hotelier and White Lung, where does Scotland’s PAWS’ latest LP, No Grace, fit into this new crop of punkers? Well, it’s a record that seems to believe that the best way to go forward is to…

  • The Nice Guys

    June 14, 2016 - By 

    These guys aren’t really that nice. That’s the joke, I guess, but it’s hardly their fault. No-one’s particularly congenial in this 70s L. A. smogscape, where even the birds are giving up and dropping out of the sky. The Nice Guys, written and directed by Shane Black, Hollywood’s go-to guy for snappy, emotionally wounded buddy comedies, is smeared with the film-maker’s fingerprints. Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe are a mismatched pair of low-level private investigators. There’s a dead wife, quipy banter, a lot of boozing, a stray Christmas jingle and at its centre two figures of bruised, broken masculinity, struggling…

  • Buille @ An Droichead, Belfast

    June 14, 2016 - By 

    Irish folk music, for the most part, remains strongly traditional. That said, it’s easy to forget that the ubiquitous bodhrán – an ancient instrument – didn’t claim widespread legitimacy in the Irish folk idiom until the 1960s, much in the same way that the cajon only filtered into the fiercely conservative flamenco tradition in the 1970s. Traditions evolve, even in seemingly diehard cultures, just as everything else in nature evolves. Buille, which means ‘beat,’ has danced to its own rhythms since it was formed by Cork-based Armagh brothers Niall and Caiomhin Vallely in 2005, releasing three albums of roots-based, genre-bending…

  • Candi Staton @ The Sugar Club, Dublin

    June 13, 2016 - By 

    As the final few bars of New Orleans’ funk maestros The Meters’ ‘Handclapping Song’ filter through the Sugar Club’s sound system, the lights dim and the sold out crowd show their appreciation following the appearance on stage by the Queen of Southern Soul, Candi Staton. Having begun her musical career as a teenager in the early 1950’s as a member of a gospel trio, it’s hard to imagine by looking at the lady standing in front of a highly anticipated audience that she is now 76 years of age. Staton starts off tonight’s proceedings with the slow yet funk fuelled…

  • Mudhoney & Bog Log III @ Black Box, Belfast

    June 9, 2016 - By 

    It truly is silly season on the live circuit, and circumstance would have it that the same night grunge godfathers Mudhoney returned to Belfast would be when the granddaddy of them all, Neil Young, decided to play his first ever date in the city. Mudhoney have never been about huge arenas though: the demise of Mark Arm and Steve Turner’s previous act Green River came when he didn’t match the ambitions of the stadium hungry band mates Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard, and while the later dominated the 90s as the founders of Pearl Jam, Arm and co.’s Mudhoney provided…

  • Forbidden Fruit: Day One

    June 9, 2016 - By 

    It’s a cracker of an afternoon as I make my way through Kilmainham – a day ripped straight from the pages of old Junior Cert Irish essays, all erratic excitement and rock-splitting sun. I’m heading to Forbidden Fruit for the evening, and should mention that I’ve foolishly disregarded the tips on the festival’s website to dress appropriately for the weather. I’m wearing jeans and carrying a jacket, so I mostly feel like a rotisserie chicken for the majority of the afternoon & evening. Forbidden Fruit, with its faintly edenic name and location on the grounds of the Irish Museum of…

  • Bryan Ferry @ Olympia Theatre, Dublin

    June 9, 2016 - By 

    It’s only June but summer 2016 seems to be the one that just keeps on giving. The glorious weather is only the setting to our sweet isle being visited by not one, two but three musical giants in little over a week, and these standalone shows all sit in the midst of a rousing festival season. For some it may be a little too much but in a world losing legends at every turn it’s simply unthinkable to pass up an opportunity to take in another one who lies so comfortably in the canon. Bryan Ferry may not be the…