• First Aid Kit @ Mandela Hall, Belfast

    September 19, 2014 - By 

    First Aid Kit have dressed for the occasion. They arrive onstage in shimmering outfits, faintly resembling the lost children of ABBA and take their places before a wall of gold lamé and glittering abstract alpine mountains. Their drummer wears a suit and bow tie. They are soon bathed in a warm golden hue and open their debut Belfast show with the rather fittingly titled, ‘Stay Gold’. First Aid Kit are Klara and Johanna Söderberg, who hail from Stockholm. The sisters have been writing songs together since 2007 and owe their international attention to the popularity of a YouTube video featuring the pair…

  • Death From Above 1979 – The Physical World

    September 18, 2014 - By 

    Death from Above 1979 swagger back into your life like that former lover you swore you’d gotten over years previously. You thought ‘yeah, that’s cool, good for them’ when they announced they were playing music again, but you genuinely weren’t convinced. You went back to listening to The Black Keys and secretly viewing live performances from way back when on Youtube in the dark when you thought no-one was looking. Then, boom – in they stride, and you’re the same weak-kneed simpleton you were in 2004. Ten years is a long time. The bare-cheeked audacity. They still have the nerve…

  • The Swapper (Facepalm Games, PS3/PS4/PS Vita/Wii U)

    September 10, 2014 - By 

    If the Sci-Fi genre has taught us anything, it is that there is nowhere lonelier than space. In Gravity, Sandra Bullock was left to drift through the desolate vastness of the cosmos, accompanied only by the voices inside her head. In Moon, Sam Rockwell was trapped in the purgatory of a facility on the other side of that titular heavenly body, trying to fend off madness through a humdrum routine of repairing equipment. That film’s spiritual predecessor, Silent Running, dealt with the same themes and a similar concept: Bruce Der, the sole remaining crewmate on a spacecraft, struggles to keep his mind together…

  • U2 – Songs of Innocence

    September 10, 2014 - By 

    So, straight off the bat – let’s forget about Apple, iTunes, hypocrisy, commerce, and even U2 themselves. Daunting though that may be, it doesn’t really help us when it comes to looking at Songs of Innocence, the thirteenth studio album by U2, arguably the biggest band in the world. Like looking at someone like Roman Polanski, or Woody Allen, or whomever, there comes a time when you have to separate the art from the artist, and attempt to consider that in isolation. And this time round, that’s never been more pertinent for U2.Songs of Innocence is eleven tracks of new material from…

  • Not I, Footfalls & Rockaby @ The Mac

    September 10, 2014 - By 

    In theatrical terms, Lisa Dwan’s trilogy of playwright Samuel Beckett’s celebrated short plays at The MAC represented a significant first, and in all likelihood, a last. The actress’s stated intention to retire from performing ‘Not I’ by the end of 2015 means that these handful of Belfast shows had an added spice. It’s hardly surprising that Dwan can see the finishing line for her role as Mouth, as the emotional, technical and psychological demands must surely exact a price. Head strapped to a board, eyes and ears covered, arms immobilized, enveloped in total darkness – this is sensory deprivation taken…

  • Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare (EA, PS3 / PS4)

    September 8, 2014 - By 

    The original Plants Vs. Zombies became a genuine phenomenon after being ported to nearly every handheld device and console on the market. One of the original tower defence games, it combined easy to learn, hard to master strategy with a deliciously gonzo sense of humour. Whereas so many other games featuring the shambling undead were morose affairs, PvZ was brightly coloured, cartoonish and genuinely funny. However, when developers PopCap Games announced that they were making a third-person shooter in the same well-tapped vein as Gears Of War (Epic, Multi), more than a few eyebrows were raised. How exactly would the off-the-wall (lack of) sensibilities of the…

  • The Guest

    September 8, 2014 - By 

    Interrupting the end-of-summer plainness like an ice bucket over the head is The Guest, a fun, nasty little slice of nuclear family devastation. It’s a tight, black domestic thriller from the seasoned horror partnership of Adam Winberg and Simon Barrett. Like the duo’s previous film, the rudimentary but spirited slasher You’re Next, it’s a genre piece about home invasion and family dysfunction. Here the threat isn’t a gang of animal-mask mercenaries, but a wolf in ship’s clothing. If the sheep shopped at Abercrombie and Finch. The Peterson family, still reeling from the death of son/brother Caleb in the Afghanistan conflict,…

  • Bonnie Prince Billy @ Bangor Open House

    September 4, 2014 - By 

    A reverent hush falls on Bangor Abbey, as it must do on a weekly basis in a working church, and Kieran Gilmore, director of the splendid Open House festival thanks the assembled throng for respecting this “sacred space”. To be fair, he does not need to make the request too firmly, because the sanctuary is already silent, and the air is crackling with anticipation. It is not often that an artist as original and bold as Bonnie “Prince” Billy plays in this humble town but his delicate and strange hymnals fit the scene perfectly. “When you ask me to sing…

  • What If

    September 2, 2014 - By 

    Hogwarts expatriate Daniel Radcliffe is the headliner here, but you might also recognise Zoe Kazan, one half of the meet-cute not-couple in Canadian-Irish production What If (retitled from The F-Word). She wrote Ruby Sparks (2009), a fun and acerbic satire of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope (an increasingly problematic term) in which she was the dreamt-up effervescent love interest for Paul Dano’s brooding, needy novelist. It is something of a pity, then, to see her taking on much more unchallenging genre material here. Adapted from T. J. Dawe and Michael Rinaldi’s Canadian play Toothpaste and Cigars, and directed by Michael Dowse (who did the winning The…

  • Electric Picnic 2014 @ Stradbally Estate, Co. Laois

    September 2, 2014 - By 

    With a sickeningly diverse lineup of local and international acts, both old and new, spanning more or less every genre under the glistening sun, Electric Picnic 2014 is the hottest ticket of the Irish summer, and upon exploration of the festival site (it would be unjust to ignore Electric Picnic’s attention to detail) there’s the essential Body & Soul zone, functioning as the hippie commune area of the site – the music and arts festival is, after all, the bedrock of the hippie dream – and the Trailer Park, which offers corn dogs, some cover bands and an assortment of…