• Jurassic 5 @ Vicar Street

    June 19, 2014 - By 

    Excitement’s been building for this, the latter of two sell-out shows in Dublin’s Vicar Street as part of Jurassic 5’s reunion tour, ever since the six original members appeared onstage for the first time since 2006 at Coachella last year, featuring DJ Cut Chemist’s return to the fold after he left the group for the old chestnut of ‘musical differences’ in the months prior to the recording of their final album – the least true representation of the qualities that gave J5 their reputation in the first place – Feedback. As Cut Chemist and his foil, Nu-Mark, enter the eyeline, what’s…

  • Bob Dylan – 02, Dublin

    June 19, 2014 - By 

    Six decades, thirty five studio albums and several reinventions in, it has long been a certified fact that Bob Dylan – showing few signs of slowing down at seventy-three – has no-one or nothing left to prove. With his critically-acclaimed thirty-fifth album, Tempest, once more stoking the embers of his altogether extraordinary career, a varied legion of hardened fans and sprightly newcomers to the Sacred Word of Dylan converge to Dublin’s 02 tonight for a concert that could well be filed under the “Mass” on Ticketmaster. The question remains, however: how many of tonight’s mixed audience will leave content having spent top dollar for a show that has little interest in…

  • Fucked Up – Glass Boys

    June 18, 2014 - By 

    Fucked Up are a band living in the shadow of some powerful things. In 2008, the band released their second record, Chemistry of Common Life, an immensely satisfying and exhilarating album that challenges the very essence of hardcore and distills it into something new and exciting. In 2011, they followed it up with David Come To Life, an ambitious, grandiose concept album which explores love, betrayal and metatextual analysis in Thatcher’s Britain over its seventy-eight minute run time. These records can be mentioned in the same breath as Refused’s Shape of Punk To Come or Husker Du’s Zen Arcade as vital punk albums…

  • Road

    June 17, 2014 - By 

    For those of us only superficially aware of the annual TT road racing season, an internationally respected series of two-wheel races which run in Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man over the spring and summer months, Richard de Aragues’ 2011 film TT3D: Closer to the Edge was a fascinating introduction to the daredevil sport. Road, from local film-makers Diarmuid Lavery and Michael Hewitt of Doubleband Films, serves as a more thematically rich follow-up or companion piece. Narrower in scope and sharper in feeling with its focus on the story of Ballymoney’s Dunlop racing dynasty, the documentary charts the road…

  • Lone – Reality Testing

    June 12, 2014 - By 

    Nottingham’s most colourful son, Lone, AKA Matt Cutler, has returned to inject our dreary, overcast days with some lush, strobing shades of fluorescence; as has historically been the case since his Kids in Tracksuits days. Reality Testing,Cutler’s – latest full-length effort courtesy of R&S records – is quite frankly a testament to the LPs that have preceded it. No mean feat, but Cutler has had ample time to hone his production skills that bend and shake the boundaries of house, hip hop and electro (with a pinch of jazz for good measure, of course), culminating in a sound which is so rich and…

  • Angel Olsen @ Whelan’s

    June 10, 2014 - By 

    Angel Olsen takes to the stage of Whelan’s on the first leg of a three date tour of Ireland surrounded by a three-piece backing band to a highly anticipatory Dublin audience. The Missouri born singer has taken quite a jump forward in popularity this year with the release of her second album, Burn Your Fire for No Witness, which has established Olsen as not only a force to be reckoned with, but also the aforementioned release as an early contender for standout album of the year. You get the impression that the album has both cemented her talent and credibility…

  • The Eagles @ The 02, Dublin

    June 9, 2014 - By 

    “We’re not doing this for the money. We’re not doing it because we’re borrrred. We’re doing it because it’s the greatest fucking job in the world” – Don Henley. There’s a tacit acknowledgement in the title of this latestEagles tour, ‘The History of the Eagles’, that things might finally be edging towards a conclusion. While central characters Henley and Glenn Frey haven’t publicly decided whether things will continue beyond the tours 2015 conclusion, it has been seven years since The Eagles last put out anything new worth mentioning, and even Long Road Out Of Eden was the only release since 1979. Six…

  • Tiger Jaws – Charmer

    June 9, 2014 - By 

    It would have been all too easy to write off Tigers Jaw as a forgone conclusion. In March of last year, the Scranton, PA band announced they were going on a hiatus – with three-fifths of the five piece unable to continue to be part of the band. A summer of confusion and assumptions that Tigers Jaw were done forever followed until Run For Cover Records eventually made clear to the world that when Tigers Jaw said “hiatus”, they didn’t actually mean ‘hiatus’ and that we were still going to enjoy the band’s scrappy brand of emo-punk, just now it…

  • Röyksopp & Robyn – Do It Again

    June 5, 2014 - By 

    The coming together of Röyksopp and Robyn on Do It Again is a pretty perfect collaboration that seems like such a natural progression for the two acts. The sound they produce as a unit is quite different from what they create as separate acts. Combined, they have made something altogether new, that could best be described as a melding together of electro, dance and a little pop thrown in for good measure. Röyksopp and Robyn previously worked together in 2009 on the track ‘The Girl with the Robot’, and this five track mini album is just the right length for…

  • Mongol Horde – Mongol Horde

    June 4, 2014 - By 

    Look, Frank Turner’s folk stuff is by and large really enjoyable. It’s nice, well meaning and at times quite poignant, but there does seem to be something missing. With so many songs about love, life and the road; a sojourn to the old fertile hardcore punk grounds which Turner left behind would not go amiss. A blast of 200 bpm noise to cleanse the pallet. With Mongol Horde, the big man seems to have given himself just that. Mongol Horde are a three piece made up of Mr. Turner on vocals, Sleeping Souls keyboardist Matt Nasir on baritone guitar and…