• PJ Harvey – The Hope Six Demolition Project

    April 22, 2016 - By 

    PJ Harvey’s back catalogue is a sight to behold. Over eight solo records, the woman hasn’t even skimmed the surface of a bad record. She’s toyed with a multitude of genres from Albini noise to electronica to English folk and fit into each with alarming ease. Yet in spite of her mercurial ability, she still finds a way to challenge her listeners, even this late in the game. Her previous album, Let England Shake, was a concept album the first world war as viewed through English folk music. Her latest LP, The Hope Six Demolition Project, is a vicious polemic…

  • Mission of Burma @ Opium Rooms, Dublin

    April 21, 2016 - By 

    In this day and age, it’s more surprising when old bands don’t reform than when they do, but very few bands have returned as gracefully as post-punk legends Mission of Burma. Having broken up in 1983 with just one album, an EP and a couple of singles to their name, due to their notoriously loud live shows taking their toll on guitarist Roger Miller’s hearing, 2004’s long overdue second LP ONoffON actually seemed to pick up exactly where they left off, and follow up The Obliterati was bafflingly even better. It’s been four years since they released their fifth and…

  • John Carpenter – Lost Themes II

    April 20, 2016 - By 

    Lost Themes 2 is legendary filmmaker and composer John Carpenter’s follow-up to his 2015 effort, Lost Themes. The central concept behind the record is simple: themes for films that Carpenter never made. To anyone who has seen the likes of Assault on Precinct 13, Escape From New York or Halloween, this is a salivating promise as it distills one of the man’s greatest strengths into a single cohesive package. Lost Themes 2 is an expansion on that same idea, and not unlike a sequel, it builds upon the groundwork laid in the first outing in bigger, more polished way. The…

  • Reverberation Psych Fest 2016 (Day Two) @ The Grand Social, Dublin

    April 18, 2016 - By 

    With my ears having gone through the mill during night one of Reverberation, it was only right to see if they could last for the duration of round two! First up to the mound was Derry duo Fabric, who really falls into the post-punk side of things as opposed to psych rock. Ruairi Coyle (Percussion/Drums & Backing Vocals) and Lorcan Hamilton (Bass & Lead Vocals) manage to put on quite the performance, which considering the low turnout for their slot, they can only be applauded for. There are hints of Joy Division, Young Marble Giants and Gang of Four dotted…

  • Iggy Pop – Post Pop Depression

    April 18, 2016 - By 

    The biggest challenge for an older artist with a lengthy career is to stay relevant and keep their audience interested. Some manage this with ease – Nick Cave has rarely put a foot wrong since the beginning of the 80s, for example – but most, including ‘godfather of punk’ Iggy Pop (on the scene a decade or so longer than Cave), will inevitably start to fly slightly under the radar after a while. In his early days he always worked best with strong collaborator, be it the rest of the original Stooges, James Williamson in their later incarnation – though none of these were quite able…

  • Reverberation Psych Fest 2016 (Day One) @ The Grand Social, Dublin

    April 12, 2016 - By 

    Following the success of last August’s inaugural outing, this year’s Reverberation Psych Fest returns to Dublin’s Grand Social for another two nights of intoxicating psychedelia, with more than a smidgen of mind-throbbing noise added into the mix. Donegal’s Tuath are tasked with opening night one on the Friday – no easy task given such a small number are in attendance by the time their time slot arrives. However the four-piece of Robert Mulhern, Ashley Mobasser, Shane McFadden and Scott Carlin grasp their time on stage with all guns blazing. Tuath’s style of play hints at elements of jazz fusion, which sits alongside a seriously heavy-metal…

  • Rusangano Family @ The Sugar Club, Dublin

    April 11, 2016 - By 

    There’s been something special brewing in Ireland for the last year or so. If you’ve been lucky you’ve caught glimpses of it here and there, or heard the rumours; something big from the Mid-West. Something new. But after nearly a full year of hor d’ouvres in the shape of feverish shows and tantalising single track releases one of Ireland’s most exciting bands finally has a full album to offer. And while it’s justifiably whipping critics and fans into a frenzy, many know that for the full Rusangano Family hip hop experience you’ve got to see it live. So while the…

  • Two Door Cinema Club @ Roisin Dubh, Galway

    April 10, 2016 - By 

    The last time I saw Two Door Cinema Club was at Oxegen 2011, at the peak of their remarkably fast climb to being the most hyped indie-pop band of the time… their drummer flung a drumstick into the crowd at the end and it hit me square in the eye. Aside from that painful memory however I do remember it being one of the most uplifting and downright fun gigs of the weekend. Still on the back of their spritely debut Tourist History and wildly successful singles ‘Undercover Martin’ and ‘What You Know’, the group of lads from Bangor seemed…

  • Laura Gibson – Empire Builder

    April 11, 2016 - By 

    There aren’t many labels in popular music that come with as many unspoken assumptions as ‘singer-songwriter’ does. As cultural archetypes go, it’s uniquely malleable and somewhat slippery – images are conjured both of introverted Moleskine-clutching creatives & street-busking dilettantes,  haunting cafés as they wrestle with personal demons. It’s a label that could be reasonably applied to artists across a broad spectrum of creativity/popularity/influence while still retaining its diagnostic value – Nick Drake and Ben Howard are both ‘singer-songwriters’ in some sense or another. There also tends to be a smuggled expectation among listeners that the songwriting of a ‘singer-songwriter’ will…

  • Bitchin Bajas & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties

    April 8, 2016 - By 

    The music of Will Oldham aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billie has always had a rusty quality to it, as if his songs were assembled with nuts and bolts that rattled as they moved, always slightly out of place yet somehow holding everything together. This has, by and large, lent to his previous releases having a consolatory quality, as if their rickety composition and his own quivering, fragile vocals provide some comforting projection of listeners’ most emotionally brittle, bare moments. That comforting aspect that has pervaded Oldham’s previous output has been given a far more meditative twist on his latest collaboration, one…