• Rick Ross – Mastermind

    March 21, 2014 - By 

    Rick Ross’s sixth album Mastermind arrives to little ceremony. Throughout its promotion the usual rattle and hum of the internet hype machine has remained eerily silent for an artist considered to be among rap’s elite. Ross has always sold buckets of records and his fourth album Teflon Don – released in 2010 – granted him large scale critical acceptance that legitimised his ascendancy to hip-hop’s head table. But the past couple of years have stifled a career rise that once seemed so unstoppable. The Miami native’s recent misdeeds include some unfortunate lyrics that attracted accusations of condoning date rape, the termination of his…

  • Angel Olsen – Burn Your Fire for No Witness

    March 18, 2014 - By 

    Ah, Angel Olsen, sad-eyed lady of St. Louis. Where most musicians write of their love life, Olsen seems to be dealing in the death of love. In this respect, Burn Your Fire For No Witness is less eleven songs than a series of romantic crime scenes, the outline of the bodies chalked out in bewitching melody; cruel words lying like spent bullet casings. Yet, as the emotionally bruising, wonderfully titled, first track ‘Unfucktheworld’ makes clear, our girl is still holding out hope, “I wanted nothing but for this to be the end / For this to never be a tight…

  • Stiff Little Fingers @ The Academy

    March 14, 2014 - By 

    Jake Burns must surely hold the record for longest gestation period for a song in modern rock history. Back in 1983 when Stiff Little Fingers broke up, Burns met up with another singer from an Irish band who was in the same situation and they lamented their respective losses over a pint, or many. Burns went home and wrote the lyrics to ‘When We Were Young’, but it took him another thirty-five years to get around to the music. Phil Lynott was the man he shared his commiserations with back in that long-ago boozer, Burns tells the crowd in The…

  • Haim @ The Olympia, Dublin

    March 13, 2014 - By 

    The Thin Air is packed into the standing section of Haim’s sold-out show in Dublin and we are very excited. For the best part of the last year, the music of the Californian sororal trio has dominated our music library; stubbornly refusing to let us tire of debut album Days Are Gone. Any niggling concerns that the live experience will disappoint disappear instantly as the coltish Haim sisters march on stage to an enormous Irish roar. They jump straight in, starting with ‘Falling’, and thus begins a show which does not ask for but rather grips your full attention.  Delivering…

  • The Men – Tomorrow’s Hits

    March 12, 2014 - By 

    With a prodigious work ethic and a group of likeminded individuals, it’s often remarkable what can be achieved. For instance, while for some the process of creating a record from gestation to release can be a seemingly interminable operation, The Men have just produced their fourth LP of genuine quality in as many years. And with their latest release, the ironically titled Tomorrow’s Hits, the band are following a natural progression for arguably the first time. While 2011’s Leave Home – the band’s second release but the first that would be widely available – was seen as a critical success, its…

  • Cheatahs – Cheatahs

    March 11, 2014 - By 

    Nostalgia is a curious thing. If you are to believe reddit, Buzzfeed and Facebook posts about the nineties, you’d be under the impression that the decade was a some kind of cultural utopia; a place where real artists ruled the airwaves, television was dominated by classic shows and everything was made of sunshine, rainbows and gleeful apathy. But, as is always the case, all isn’t what it seems. For example, if you are to believe the teachings of Bill Hicks as laid out on Arizona Bay and Rant In E Minor, it’s hard to ascertain why anyone would even vaguely…

  • Maximo Park @ Limelight 2

    March 7, 2014 - By 

    Well and truly at the height of their indie-rock powers, Maximo Park are on the last leg of their European tour when they arrive in Belfast – and that very fact is backed up by what’s to be undeniably tight performance from the Newcastle band tonight. Starting, in true ‘album promo’ style, with the opening track off the new album, Give, Get, Take, the band set the bar for a highly energetic and for the most part, fast paced set of hip shuffling dance moves and near keyboard destruction chaos. With remarkably only one track from 2009’s Quicken The Heart on the list,…

  • Beck – Morning Phase

    March 6, 2014 - By 

    Morning Phase represents the welcome return of Beck with this his twelfth LP, but also a welcome return of an old sound with this record being pitched as a companion piece to 2002’s critically acclaimed Sea Change. Morning Phase is bathed from the outset in a light that Sea Change was not, and how could it be? The previous was said to have been written in the week following the breakup of a nine year relationship for the prolific musician. Where Sea Change dwells quite beautifully in raw, lonely heartbreak, Morning Phase is a very new day. Now, twelve years…

  • In Review: Choice Music Prize 2014

    March 1, 2014 - By 

    Now in its ninth year, perhaps the most pleasing thing about the Choice Music Prize – the undoubted impact of ten grand in a talented act’s bank account aside – is the chance to slow the pace and take a languid gander at just how much is good about the modern Irish music scene. The annual debate on those who lost out highlights encouraging depth (see Enemies, Nanu Nanu, Axis Of and God Is An Astronaut this year), and – as smaller past winners Julie Feeney, Super Extra Bonus Party, Jape and Adrian Crowley can attest – the award does…

  • Wild Beasts – Present Tense

    February 28, 2014 - By 

    When Kendal quartet Wild Beasts emerged in 2008 with debut album Limbo, Panto, it seemed that, at last, here was a band ready to rally to Neil Hannon’s battle-cry, “Elegance against ignorance. Difference against indifference. Wit against shit”. It’s an impression that subsequent albums have only served to strengthen. Fourth album Present Tense finds them venturing further out into the electronic wasteland first colonised on Smother. The sounds are scrubbed clean, in places glacially cool, a perfect contrast to emotions that bubble lava-hot beneath the surface. In most respects, it’s their most straightforward work – the vocal histrionics scaled back, sounds streamlined, ideas…