• X-Men: Days of Future Past

    May 26, 2014 - By 

    Before Sam Raimi’s Spiderman films, before Iron Man, the Avengers and even Marvel Studios, before Christopher Nolan’s Batman, there was X-Men. The film that jumpstarted this comic book movie boom, Bryan Singer’s effort from 2000 remains perhaps the best installment in the series, along with the sequel that followed, X-2: X-Men United. Then Singer jumped ship to helm Superman Returns and the franchise went belly up with a series of misfires. That is until Matthew Vaughn restored some prestige with X-Men: First Class. But now Singer is back and he’s brought a few friends along too. Days of Future Past…

  • Titanfall (EA, PC/Xbox 360/Xbox One)

    May 23, 2014 - By 

    Tearing out of the gates like a rocket-powered greyhound, Titanfall has one objective only: to give the player an extremely good time. Taking its cue from the Seinfeld maxim of “no hugging, no learning”, this much needed flagship title for the Xbox One dispatches with the usual perfunctory introductory plot of goodies versus baddies before never really referring to it again, choosing instead to focus on the fine art of making things go “boom!”, “dugga dugga dugga!” and “aaaargh!”. Titanfall is deeply satisfying and immaculately polished first person shooter that offers up hours of entertainment to newbies and seasoned players alike. The polar opposite of po-faced…

  • Fading Gigolo

    May 23, 2014 - By 

    John Turturro has carved out an incredible career as a character actor in the films of the Coen brothers and Spike Lee in particular. Fading Gigolo sees him breaking new ground as writer, director and star and he’s brought the undisputed master of this art along for the ride in Woody Allen. A comedy about sex and religion sounds like vintage Woody, but while Fading Gigolo may be about the oldest profession in the world, it’s far from vintage. Fading Gigolo sees Woody Allen break new ground, playing pimp to Turturro’s reluctant prostitute and as a premise it’s a pretty…

  • We Cut Corners – Think Nothing

    May 23, 2014 - By 

    We Cut Corners debut, Today I Realised I Can Go Home Backwards, was one of the great under-heralded Irish debuts. At just thirty two minutes, it flits almost flippantly between heart-on-sleeve confessional pop melodies full of wonderfully oblique imagery in ‘Go Easy’ and ‘A Pirate’s Life’, and the White Stripes-inspired tuneful thrashings of ‘The Leopard’ and ‘Say Yes To Everything’. The album’s charm fell in its balance: its thoughtful, oblique lyrics, soaring vocals and ability to be scorchingly angry and pointedly self deprecating in the same three minute period. It sounds like it would take four people to play, yet the duo reproduce it perfectly live.…

  • Coldplay – Ghost Stories

    May 23, 2014 - By 

    Setting aside the fact that their sixth studio album coincides particularly poignantly with a very public ‘conscious uncoupling’, from the opening notes you are left in little doubt that Ghost Stories is Coldplay‘s ‘break up’ album. This is an album that is, if you will pardon the pun, haunted by failed relationships. When you are eating ice cream by the pint and stalking the Facebook profile page of the one who broke your heart, this album will certainly provide the appropriate soundtrack. A deeply personal, introspective and at times, self-indulgent record, Ghost Stories comes prepared to offer you music to…

  • Swans – To Be Kind

    May 21, 2014 - By 

    In 2012 something quite extraordinary happened. After reforming his band Swans following a hiatus of over thirteen years, Michael Gira and his select group of musicians released their masterpiece: The Seer. Hailed as their finest work by many, it was a colossal piece of music spanning over two hours, an extended exploration of the unknowable obscurities and mind-numbing repetitions that had become synonymous with the Swans name. But it was much more than that – it was an evolutionary step into uncharted territory for the band, and for contemporary rock music as a whole. In an age where the synthesiser…

  • Neutral Milk Hotel @ Vicar Street

    May 19, 2014 - By 

    Indie cult legends Neutral Milk Hotel paid Dublin a visit on Friday night. As elusive and mysterious as ever, they banned the presence of photographers and indeed any photo-taking devices whatsoever; the absence of tiny bright lights among the crowd proving a startlingly refreshing experience. Jeff Mangum himself is an enigmatic presence, skulking at the side of the stage, hiding behind his bushy beard and a cap that concealed his eyes. He barely speaks a word all evening, but that’s to be expected from a man who has shied away from the spotlight throughout his career, and it’s the music that…

  • The Horrors – Luminous

    May 16, 2014 - By 

    It’s safe to say most of us are probably glad The Horrors have, over time, evolved towards the more psychedelic end of the spectrum of nonchalance. Looking back to their 2007 album Strange House, it’s as though they are a completely different band. What we see now is a fully developed group without the trappings of their earlier (one would hope) record-label-enforced Goth gimmickry. Their career is almost a reflection of the transition from one’s adolescence to one’s mid-twenties (or am I projecting?). Strange House was full of blatant attitude, angst, hair-dye and eyeliner; and if you listen carefully, amid…

  • De La Soul w/ Joe Lindsay @ CQAF

    May 13, 2014 - By 

    Tonight, as the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival sadly draws to its inevitable close, Belfast is fortunate enough to have hip hop royalty De La Soul performing at Custom House Square, ensuring that the festival should go out with a bang. An oldskool hip hop sort of bang, rather. Upon arriving at tonight’ s venue, mingling throngs of hip hop fans old and young line up in eager anticipation of what’s starting to look like a belter of an evening. Through the entrance to the square, there are a few of the usual vendors selling their cold, delicious, life giving, good-time-having beery…

  • VerseChorusVerse – VerseChorusVerse

    May 8, 2014 - By 

    “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” So reads the opening line from L.P. Hartley’s 1953 novel, The Go-Between. Touching on the innocence of childhood and its loss, family life and more, it’s a classic in excavating the oft smoggy wasteland that is the past. For many artists, however, the most rewarding way of confronting what has come before is to delve, headstrong, into the immediate present; carefully side-stepping the grasp of nostalgia whilst following an inner path. For Tony Wright AKA singer-songwriter VerseChorusVerse, this is something that he has, for the most part, bravely and…