• Maija Sofia – Bath Time

    January 5, 2020 - By 

      The best albums are like books. Each song should act like a chapter, with a clear purpose at the core, laying foundations to the narrative flow. This may sound simplistic, but it’s an achievement only a handful of artists can lay claim to. Maija Sofia is one of them. The Galway-born singer-songwriter began writing her long awaited debut Bath Time while living in London, before recording it upon resettling in Ireland. By writing over extended chapters of her life, Sofia never had any intention to produce a concept album, but found herself with a collection of nine tracks informed by her…

  • Little Women

    January 3, 2020 - By 

    Grab the green bin. Greta Gerwig’s dropped in one last gift. Little Women, the seventh cinematic (re)telling of Louisa May Alcott’s much-loved novel, is a perfect film for the dark, weird, listless days that trot along right behind Christmas. It’s Gerwig’s third directorial effort, and the second time she’s written and directed, after the slow-burn brilliance of 2017’s Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan’s best movie). The ensemble domestic drama follows the troubles and triumphs of the March’s, a contented but economically limited household in Civil War-era Massachusetts, as four sisters and their mother await their pastor patriarch’s return from the conflict,…

  • We Were Promised Jetpacks @ The Workman’s Club, Dublin

    December 10, 2019 - By 

    “Nice one, I can tell we’re gonna have a great night. Loving the air drumming too!” are the first words frontman Adam Thompson utters early doors. There’s an obvious likeability factor that oozes from Thompson, with his laidback and up for a laugh persona clear for all to see. Edinburgh’s We Were Promised Jetpacks are now into their sixteenth year and have returned to Dublin as part of the ten-year anniversary of their debut album These Four Walls. Thompson is accompanied by Sean Smith (bass) and Darren Lackie (drums), with former Frightened Rabbit member Andy Monaghan currently part of their…

  • Le Mans ’66 (Ford v Ferrari)

    November 29, 2019 - By 

    Is this film a Ford, or a Ferrari? Le Mans ‘66 (titled Ford v Ferrari in other territories) is pretty clear about which one it would like to be. Ford is ugly; Ferrari is beautiful. Ford spits its cars out with production-line urgency, in drab plants overseen by Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts), a wounded capitalist nursing second-generation anxiety, whose generous girth symbolises his enterprise’s quantitative bloat. Ferrari’s vehicles, on the other hand, are products of artisanal care and Mediterranean exuberance. Ford is efficiency; Ferrari is eros.  James Mangold’s film sides with the dreamers. It opens with a quasi-mystical voiceover…

  • Girl Band w/ PowPig @ Vicar Street, Dublin

    November 25, 2019 - By 

    As a line of punters stretches around the corner of Vicar Street, saturated to the bone by the pouring rain, a Dublin ‘aul fella’ passing by asks: “What’s on in there tonight?” “Girl Band” “No, but what are they called?” Inside, the crowd made up of skinny-jeaned punks and skinhead raver types funnels into the auditorium, the bar and the merch table. Within minutes there is a mad scramble for zines that are on sale and before anyone has even settled in they are gone. It’s difficult to ignore the intense sense of anticipation that is permeating every surface of…

  • Mountain Goats w/ Laura Cortese & Dance Cards @ Button Factory, Dublin

    November 23, 2019 - By 

    Having started out on his musical journey in the early ‘90’s recording self-penned songs through a cassette boombox, John Darnielle’s lo-fi aesthetic wasn’t too far removed from the likes of Robert Pollard or the late Daniel Johnston. Darnielle has an unnerving ability to cover the more downtrodden aspects of life such as addiction, isolation, death and abuse, yet somehow manages to create songs that include hook-laden pop sensibilities spliced with humour, that it makes it impossible not to be drawn into his desolate world. This tour is in support of The Mountain Goats’ seventeenth full-length record, In League With Dragons,…

  • Monos

    November 14, 2019 - By 

    Every so often, a movie comes along that completely rips up the rule book of filmmaking. Alejandro Landes’ (2011’s Porfirio) does so right from the beginning of Monos, with its unforgettable and surreal opening sequence of young protagonists playing football with blindfolds in some undisclosed, ethereal landscape in a Latin American mountain range, surrounded by clouds, as some sort of awareness drill,. The viewer’s attention is shoved, almost in a voyeuristic manner, into their bizarre, hedonistic, militaristic, yet juvenile world. The story progresses at a relentless pace into its premise and finale, leaving the viewer in awe at this wonderfully relevant, strangely realistic, yet ruthlessly brutal…

  • Mount Palomar – The Perils Of Youth

    November 11, 2019 - By 

    For those with a finger on the pulse of Ireland’s eminently reputable electronic music scene, Neil Kerr’s Mount Palomar alias and output – though in its semi-infancy – should be fairly familiar by now. With a burgeoning homegrown fanbase and increasingly frequent overseas appearances in the likes of Panorama Bar, Kerr’s development as an authentic purveyor of the analog has been a refreshing expedition to observe. While his debut offering Black Knight’s Tango saw the Falls Road native looking up and gazing into the endless cosmos beyond the nocturnal orange haze of inner city Belfast’s streetlamp sky, The Perils of…

  • Kim Gordon – No Home Record

    November 5, 2019 - By 

    “The way the word ‘empowered’ is used makes feminism more digestible … I wanted to make work that was maybe less digestible.” This was Kim Gordon in conversation with Sinéad Gleeson at Dublin’s Light House Cinema this past July, having launched an exhibition of her visual art at the IMMA entitled She bites her tender mind. Its title is derived from one of Sappho’s fragments, connecting the project to the ancient poet’s evocations of feminine beauty and desire – while also nodding to the broken-down language that has consistently graced Gordon’s own work, in both her coolly minimalist lyrics and the shredded phrases…

  • Battles – Juice B Crypts

    October 30, 2019 - By 

      To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one band member may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness. When Tyondai Braxton left Battles in 2010, fans were worried. Although the quartet had started out as an instrumental unit, Braxton’s distinctive pitch-shifted vocals had become the focal point of their acclaimed debut album Mirrored, and with his departure, expectations for the follow up plummeted. They needn’t have worried, as with the help of a few guest vocalists (including none other than Gary Numan), the band’s second album Gloss Drop was more than a match for its predecessor.…