• Young Fathers w/ Simi Crowns @ The Academy, Dublin

    March 30, 2015 - By 

    A chatty Thursday night crowd sit through an increasingly punchy, but not overtly engaging opening few minutes from support Simi Crowns. The Dublin-reared rapper throws out some strong armed but inaccurate hooks that fail to engage all but the most enthusiastic in the audience. Such is the lot of the support slot, right? Except Simi Crowns does not pack up his things and go home. With a bit of charm and a hint of exuberance he manages to make his pop-esque, Chase and Status inflected style of hip-hop hit home. By the time the set is over the crowd are…

  • Left Behind: Songs of the 1916 Widows @ The Little Museum of Dublin

    March 30, 2015 - By 

    Capping its series of fine wine and classical music in performance, the Little Museum of Dublin has embarked on its own little tradition in its maiden season of Santa Rita Concerts.  Named in honor of the winemakers responsible for the pre-show libations, these evenings boast fireside chats with musicians, often connected with classical label Ergodos Records, followed by their intimate performances in the drawing room of the museum’s grand Georgian house.  To end the season, the floor was given to Ergodos‘ own Michelle O’Rourke this past Wednesday evening.  The enchanting songstress presented a hauntingly graceful set of songs entitled Left Behind: Songs…

  • While We’re Young

    March 25, 2015 - By 

    Two years ago, Noah Baumbach made an absolute treat of a film called Frances Ha. It was an intelligent and emotionally resonant film about Millennials, finding direction in life and the idea of maturity in the modern age; basically a version of Girls wherein you didn’t want every character to hurl themselves into a great big bin. For his next film, While We’re Young, Baumbach wisely has chosen to go back to the same well, albeit with a slightly different viewpoint. This time around, Baumbach shifts the view from people in the early 20s to those in their early 40s.…

  • White Hills – Walks For Motorists

    March 25, 2015 - By 

    Good old Space Rock: for when you need songs to last ten minutes but you’re not in the mood for all that proggy, time signature business. When you need to rock out but still wanna feel mellow, man. When you want to think about the vastness and complexity of the universe but you aren’t really up for much thinking. The genre provides so much and demands little in return. Zone out under your headphones at home, or wig out in the front row behind your fringe, head shaking from side to side, rib cage secretly on the verge of collapse…

  • Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp A Butterfly

    March 24, 2015 - By 

    Precursor: the hype was justified. The long awaited “good kid, m.A.A.d city 2.0” is here, and well, it’s not that. It’s something else. It’s somehow bigger, darker, catchier and more socially significant all at once. Kendrick Lamar’s third studio release To Pimp a Butterfly is all of those things, and nothing like what we expected. Opener ‘Wesley’s Theory’ – featuring George Clinton, produced by Flying Lotus, sampling Boris Gardiner and a voice clip of Dr Dre – is an eye-opening funk monster to end all preconceptions. Aside from the immediately clear difference in instrumentals – good kid’s slick trap beats…

  • Idlewild @ Limelight 2, Belfast

    March 23, 2015 - By 

    It was shortly after delivering a memorable, thrashy show in Stiff Kitten back in 2010 that Idlewild quietly disappeared from music. It is fair to say that we missed them. Now, with the itches for solo projects having been successfully scratched and the time taken to patiently develop new material, the band returned to Belfast touring on the back of their first album in five years. The Limelight 2 was packed to absolute capacity. ‘Everything Ever Written’, despite being a good album, is unlikely to have brought such a crowd. This was clearly a loyal audience collected many years before…

  • Kindred: Ital w/ Matt Burns (Twitch) @ Menagerie, Belfast

    March 21, 2015 - By 

    Tonight, as we approach the beginning of the weekend with all the vigour one can muster from a Monday through Friday work-a-day existence, the only logical decision is to go big or go home, right? Choosing the former, the ‘go big option’, with total and firm disregard for the inevitable suffering to be endured post-partying, our sights are set firmly on The Menagerie, Belfast, so that we may dance, groove and lap up some of the finest house and techno courtesy of Brooklyn-based producer and electronica explorer, Ital, AKA Daniel Martin-McCormick. Kicking off ever so slightly later than planned, we…

  • Cobain: Montage of Heck

    March 22, 2015 - By 

    In April of 1994, Kurt Cobain died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He left behind a wife, an infant daughter and a legacy as one of the last true rock gods. In the intervening 21 years, a messianic persona has been grafted onto this young man from Aberdeen, Washington. His face is plastered on t-shirts and posters the world over to the point where he has become an apolitical Che Guevara for angry misunderstood adolescents to identify with. There is a plethora of retrospective articles, unauthorized biographies and crackpot theories relating to the man, his music and…

  • The Order: 1886 (Sony, PS4)

    March 19, 2015 - By 

    Style versus substance. The eternal question. Which you favour, of course, very much depends upon your personality. There are those who will be wowed by the purest aesthetics of an art form, in this case videogames, who will froth and rave about graphical detail, texture pop-in, draw distance, facial animations, particle blur and so on. And then there are those who will prefer to be immersed in an engaging story deftly told with empathic characters, surprising twists and an emotional pay-off. Unfortunately, The Order: 1886 falls between these two stools, and is more often that not perched uncomfortably on the former. There…

  • I ♥ Alice ♥ I @ Project Arts Centre, Dublin

    March 19, 2015 - By 

    “We will be seen.  They will be seen.” Back for a limited engagement at Dublin’s Project Arts Centre, Amy Conroy’s moving production I ♥ Alice ♥ I returns to its hometown for another run with specific aims in mind.  Teaming up with Marriage Equality, Conroy’s own HotForTheatre productions is reviving yet another run of the world-traveled piece for just four nights, marking 2015 as the five-year epoch since premiering at Dublin Fringe Festival 2010.  Awards and accolades decorate the show’s success, including a Fishamble for Conroy’s writing.  Yet the story of these two ladies, these two lovers, these two Alices,…