• Hozier @ Irving Plaza, New York City

    November 10, 2014 - By 

    Hozier played the second night of his two date stint in Irving Plaza, in midtown Manhattan on Friday night, as the incredible and seemingly unstoppable rise of the Bray singer continues apace. Playing to new-found, but diehard fans and a thronged enclosure of New York’s finest, chattering VIPs, is evidence that Hozier is the man of the moment, as he rounded off his 2014 US tour in a venue that will soon not be fit to hold his ever-growing followers. Support act James Bay, accompanied by just a piano/percussionist player had a tough job getting his message out across a venue…

  • Interstellar

    November 7, 2014 - By 

    Houston, we have a problem. Christopher Nolan may be a spectacularly skilled constructor of film, but he’s no storyteller. In his last non-Batman film, Inception (2010), Nolan marshalled his technical enthusiasm into a giddy, multi-layered hacking of subconscious dreamworlds. With Interstellar he rockets off in the opposite direction, sling-shoting Matthew MaConaughey and a band of cosmonauts into the cold blackness of the far-away night, a fantastic voyage through wormholes, black holes and narrative rabbit holes. The feverishly anticipated Interstellar is a gorgeous, meticulously staged, hyper-expensive celebration of human discovery and a thrilling rebuke to the timidity of the average studio…

  • Grouper – Ruins

    November 4, 2014 - By 

    As far as an album’s backstory goes, Portland’s Liz Harris has given us a good one for her latest release as Grouper. Recorded predominantly in a remote cottage in Portugal in 2011, far from the trappings of what we call civilisation, Ruins is a collection of quiet, deeply personal songs. After last year’s The Man Who Died In His Boat, a companion piece to her most famous work Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill – both of which circle around distorted guitar and chilling vocal layers – Ruins is not so much back to basics as a rejection of…

  • Ex Hex – Rips

    October 30, 2014 - By 

    Rips is as explanatory as album titles come. Ex Hex hail from Washington D.C., a long-time hardcore stronghold; not that the scene’s legacy is the one that leaves its mark on the power trio of Mary Timony, Betty White, and Laura Harris. Timony, last seen singing and slinging in Wild Flag, a band made up of ex-members of Sleater-Kinney and The Minders, has said that she and her current cohorts “all wanted to write songs that could be on the radio in the early ‘80s.” Rips does just what it says: twelve slices of instant garage sweeping by with the…

  • The Book Of Life

    October 29, 2014 - By 

    Perhaps more than even Christmas and Halloween, the Mexican Dia de los Muertos (‘Day of the Dead’) is a holiday ripe for cinematic exploitation: it is, after all, a festival of colourful and gothic storytelling. Jorge Gutierrez, who has previously channeled his love for Mexican folklore into the award-winning El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera for Nickelodeon, pairs up with screenwriter Doug Langdale and uses the day as a backdrop for The Book of Life‘s imaginative story of childhood rivalry and feuding gods. It’s a moderately ambitious but highly charming fantasy-animation with a fun multi-level narrative. We open on…

  • Black Stone Cherry w/ Theory of a Dead Man @ The Academy, Dublin

    October 28, 2014 - By 

    Who said Ireland wouldn’t welcome the sound of American southern rock this side of the seas?  Hosting a roaring avalanche of sound from the Kentucky boys of Black Stone Cherry, Dublin’s Academy exploded with an onslaught of American heavy metal Thursday evening, continuing record-label Roadrunner’s long tradition of importing this genre of American rock into European audiences. Fresh off a tour warming up for Lynard Skynard, Black Stone Cherry’s electrifying performance proved yet again that they too are a headlining bastion of hard rock. Roused by a titillating set from Canadian rock group Theory of a Dead Man, the sold-out…

  • Kindness – Otherness

    October 22, 2014 - By 

    The solo project of British musician Adam Bainbridge, Kindness emerged in 2012 with World, You Need a Change of Mind, an album that synthesised diffuse influences into a svelte whole, co-produced by Philippe Zdar. On its follow-up, Otherness, Bainbridge moves away from glossy surfaces in pursuit of a more tactile sound, with a new emphasis placed on collaboration and live musicianship. Bainbridge describes Otherness as “another choice”, a self-styled alternative to what he calls “direct contemporary-sounding pop music”. That’s an intriguing endeavour, of course, but it’s also one that defines the music primarily by what it is not, rather than…

  • Girl Band @ Triskel Arts Centre

    October 21, 2014 - By 

    Since when is a Cork based live event sold out? Since Girl Band are in town. The Dublin based four-piece are making a long-awaited appearance tonight courtesy of Aisling and Caoilian at Southern Hospitality (formerly of the Pavilion, Cork) and it’s very sold out. Many casually stroll up to the door of the Triskel Arts Centre assuming business as usual only to be turned away. Many a disappointed fan is spotted with their heads in their hands. Sure, Girl Band have a reputation for turning out an incredible live show but a reception of this magnitude wasn’t expected. To put…

  • The Amazing Snakeheads w/ New Valley Wolves @ The Grand Social

    October 21, 2014 - By 

    As the venue starts to fill slowly with a colourful smorgasboard of leopard print, docs and leather, it’s evident that this Glaswegian punk three-piece have captivated not only music-lovers and hipsters alike, but they have also lured the original punks out of the woodwork. Opening the night’s abrasive proceedings are Dublin duo New Valley Wolves (below). Whilst following on in similar vein to fellow duos Royal Blood and Death From Above 1979, their blend of rock/ metal airs more on the Metallica side of proceedings. Stepping up from the one hundred and twenty capacity venue upstairs at Whelan’s in April this…

  • Israel Galvan @ The MAC, Belfast

    October 20, 2014 - By 

    La Edad de Oro (The Golden Age), the title of flamenco dancer Israel Galván’s programme suggests an evening of nostalgia. Certainly, there’s a human tendency to idiolize the past and this is true also of music. The Golden Age of Jazz is a much used term to refer to the period between the 1920s and 1940s, despite the racial discrimination against black jazz musicians. Flamenco purists too, point to the times when a singer, guitarist and dancer defined the art form, despite the fact that flamenco in its earliest incarnation was just a singer accompanied by rudimentary rhythm.  Memories can…