• The Pet Shop Boys at SSE Arena, Belfast

    June 14, 2024 - By 

    I’m no stranger to finding myself in situations that make me question my life choices but sitting in the SSE Arena watching Dave Pearce play Dance Anthems and telling me to lift my arms in the air is a new one. I’ll admit I’d been surprised and sceptical on finding this was the support for the Pet Shop Boys’ Dreamland: The Greatest Hits Tour. I’m immediately proven wrong in my incredulity, however, by the middle-aged Kevin and Perry beside me, who are already joyously immersed in Faithless’s ‘Insomnia’ as I arrive, fisherman’s hats perched on their heads. Pet Shop Boys…

  • Open Ear 2024 at Sherkin Island

    June 10, 2024 - By 

    “Lads, do you know anywhere I could hear some progressive techno? I could go some music I can’t fucken understand. Tell you wha, fer the price of the ticket, I’ll buy a cement mixer, a big bag of ket, and play for ye all fucken weekend.” – The dose of Tralee.  It was around a nine-hour drive, stopping off at every Circle K en route from Belfast to Sherkin and Open Ear Festival. Meant we missed Gnod, but with four in a car you can’t ensure everyone has been doing their Kegels. I had stolen one of those wee blue…

  • In The Meadows at Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin

    June 11, 2024 - By 

    Despite royally messing it up at the end, All Tomorrow’s Parties showed us that, with the right heads at the helm, bands can be entrusted to curate their very own festival – often with spectacular results. In the here and now, the inaugural edition of In The Meadows, curated by rightly the most beloved Irish band of a generation, Lankum, summons that precise spirit while packing in a magic all its own. After a heady, wonderfully omnipresent period following the release of their universally-lauded fourth album False Lankum, Lankum’s only Irish show of the year, closing out the main East…

  • The Personal Vanity Project – The Personal Vanity Project

    June 10, 2024 - By 

    Anyone who’s ever been to Féile na Gréine or watched their excellent 2023 documentary film Out of Place will know all about the strength of the resolutely DIY Limerick music scene. Formed as something of a local supergroup, The PVP – short for The Personal Vanity Project – was put together by Cruiser guitarist Chris Quigley, who began recording demos alone during lockdown (initially trying to replicate the imagined sound of Kevin Shields’ fabled unreleased drum’n’bass album), before recruiting James Reidy of His Father’s Voice on keyboards along with drummer Brendan McInerney, who’s played with everyone from Bleeding Heart Pigeons,…

  • Gary Numan at Limelight 1, Belfast

    May 22, 2024 - By 

    It’s almost 45 years to the day since Gary Numan appeared with Tubeway Army in one of the all-time memorable Old Grey Whistle Test performances, promoting the then-new album Replicas. The band, led by some shamanic, androgynous alien cyborg, felt like a transmission of Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders as imagined by William Gibson or Philip K. Dick. A totem for the lost and alienated, his words sought out glimpses of humanity and connection in the darkest corners of a dystopia caused by the excesses of technology, and this was reflected in the music, a literal post-punk antithesis to the…

  • Pillow Queens – Name Your Sorrow

    April 23, 2024 - By 

    Pillow Queens’ third album Name Your Sorrow is a raucous feat of passion and disdain that explores the many facets of sorrow. The Dublin quartet have returned with something that offers little new, but brings to light the weaknesses of previous albums in its refinement of their shortcomings. Toeing the line between their first two albums, it lands in a sweet middle ground where we find Pillow Queens at their most refined. “Let’s just play some rock n roll music,” exclaims the opening track ‘February 8th’, punctuated by each instrument as they re-introduce the band one by one. Instruments are…

  • Pixies at 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin

    March 11, 2024 - By 

    One afternoon in 2016, I necked an industrial vat of coffee and proceeded to make the case for the Quietus that, when all is said and done and hyped and re-issued, ad infinitum, Trompe le Monde was Pixies 1.0 at their most downright irresistible. Marking their shapeshifting, space-obsessed last hurrah before combusting two years after its release in 1993, it’s spent the last three decades astride its predecessor, Bossanova, as a genre-mangling snapshot of the band being indie rock’s OG mentalists par excellence.  Eight years on, I’m more sure than ever that, for all their relative dearth of Kim Deal, it’s…

  • Other Voices 2023

    December 6, 2023 - By 

    Other Voices drew the best of Irish music to Dingle, Co. Kerry for three days of intimate performances, secret sessions and a vibrating air of magic. Now in its twenty-second year, it maintains its position as a stand-out music festival full of surprises, facilitating close access to unique performances by and for music lovers. Lines are blurred between musician and music lover, bringing a special element to the weekend that differentiates it from any other music festival. Renowned for creating a pocket of magic in Dingle every December, this year’s festival was no different.  With lit streets and pub doors…

  • Under the Island: Experimental Music in Ireland 1960 – 1994

    November 24, 2023 - By 

    The mission to track down all traces of an Irish avant-garde has received a boost with the release of this delightful compilation, compiled by Nyahh Records. The label has left no dusty attic unexplored in its efforts to drag subterranean Ireland to the surface, providing documentary proof of free-thinking at a time of joint church/state hegemony. This experimental impulse could apparently be found at all levels of society. Take the aristocratic UFO hunter Desmond Leslie, who created electronic soundscapes in his Monaghan castle and took his place with the Meeks and Derbyshires of the world. Outside the country estate, there were pioneers…

  • Rachael Lavelle – Big Dreams

    November 21, 2023 - By 

    Swirling and surreal, Rachael Lavelle’s Big Dreams is a coming of age that pokes holes in the digital, postmodern reality it exists within. Self-professed by the Dublin artist as “an introspective journey that invites the listener to ask what it means to be alive in the 21st century,” it throws you the answer in the form of another question – who knows? Conceptually faultless from its gleaming and buoyant visuals to its unnerving dream-like soundscapes, the record is both languid and urgent. Co-produced by Lavelle alongside Ryan Hargadon, cinematic orchestral structures swathe over manipulated vocals and fragmented electronic beats on…