• Knockanstockan 2019

    July 23, 2019 - By 

    2019 will be remembered as a phenomenal year for fans of Irish music with so many genres showing substantial growth and development. Hype has been reverberating throughout the whole scene but too often these acts that are doing so well are overlooked by festival line-ups. This year, Knockanstockan is an exception to that rule with the entire line-up feeling like a homage to Irish growth. Boasting a line-up that incorporates the vast range of sounds on display in Ireland’s musical canon right now, Knockanstockan 2019 is admirable in its dedication to eclecticism and musical inclusivity and makes itself a fore-runner…

  • Mac Demarco w/ Kirin J Callinan and Beabadoobee @ Iveagh Gardens, Dublin

    July 15, 2019 - By 

    In the sweltering heat of an early July evening swarms of young Irish hipsters enter the Iveagh Gardens. Amongst the sea of blunt fringes, ratty facial hair and cuffed jeans there are brief pieces of chatter that you would expect from the audience of a Mac Demarco concert. There’s talk of drinking cheap booze and, of course, every other second the word “cigarette” is heard. Without even an ounce of an introduction the first support act, Kirin J Callinan takes to the stage wearing a beret, all black clothing and holding in his hand a fluorescent pink guitar. A few…

  • Villagers w/ Aldous Harding @ Iveagh Gardens, Dublin

    July 15, 2019 - By 

    It’s an overcast but stiflingly warm evening as concert-goers begin to filter into Dublin’s Iveagh Gardens. Amongst this crowd is a varied mix of personnel. Business types still clad in their work attire, pensioners dressed like pensioners and a select few younger audience members that either appear to have been dragged along by their parents or are decked out in tola vintage streetwear. An eclectic crowd, to say the least. As a decent amount of punters settle in on the grass, New Zealand-born singer-songwriter Aldous Harding takes to the stage with her band. There has been a lot of buzz…

  • Thom Yorke – ANIMA

    July 12, 2019 - By 

    A potent side-effect of modernity is the prevalent disconnection we experience from our inner selves; Freud identified the basic, instinctual drive of humans as the ‘id’, Jung was interested in the ‘anima’ of man — the ‘feminine’ aspect of the brain underlying the conscious self. These concepts of double identities had been prevalent in psychology before the mass subsumption of digital technology, but have since gained a new and increasingly urgent significance. With OK Computer in 1997, Radiohead developed a seminal text reflecting on modern technological anxiety. 22 years later, Thom Yorke’s perspective has shifted from the potentiality of the…

  • Palehound – Black Friday 

    July 9, 2019 - By 

    With a warm, longing ode to a friend, Palehound’s third record opens with the kind of astutely observed, compassionately wrought sketch that we have come to expect from Ellen Kempner since her 2015 Dry Food, and indeed its 2017 follow-up, A Place I’ll Always Go. Where the former dealt largely with Kempner embracing her own sexuality, the follow-up was more mournful in tone, although encased in Palehound’s exuberant and often inventive indie rock they never felt maudlin or morose. ‘Company’, just Kempner and an organ, is the introduction to a Palehound record that, while tackling the same uncertainties of relationships as those previous,…

  • Bill Callahan – Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest

    July 5, 2019 - By 

    From his extremely ramshackle 1990 debut Sewn to the Sky up until 2013’s far more polished Dream River, Bill Callahan – better known for the first half of his career by the alias Smog – managed to maintain a reasonably prolific rate of output. Following a dub remix album in 2014, however, things fell rather silent. Had the man often referred to as the spiritual successor to Leonard Cohen finally run out of ideas after fifteen albums? Well, as it turns out, no – life merely got in the way. As Callahan found himself getting married and fathering his first…

  • Foals w/ Yak @ Trinity Summer Series, Dublin

    July 3, 2019 - By 

    Spirits are high on the grounds of Dublin’s Trinity College, as British psychedelic outfit Yak perform for a sizeable crowd of early punters. With a sound that blends elements similar to contemporaries Boy Azooga and Ireland’s Girl Band, the Wolverhampton natives have done well for an early Tuesday evening timeslot. Despite this, the crowd grows quite noticeably larger as they polish off their set with ‘Harbour the Feeling’ from debut album Alas Salvation. As people begin to filter into the surprisingly intimate surroundings of Trinity’s Summer Series arena, it can be noted that the clientele is somewhat eclectic. Lads in…

  • Beauty Sleep – Be Kind Album Launch @ The MAC, Belfast

    July 2, 2019 - By 

    A burst of unseasonable warm weather (for June) grips Belfast, spending an evening in the MAC’s windowless theatre space to listen to Beauty Sleep officially launch the launch of their album ‘Be Kind’ feels a touch counter-intuitive. We’ve seen precious little of the big yellow ball in the sky of late and perversely fate has decided place two of the summeriest things to happen to the city all year in direct competition. Pathetic fallacy is all well and good when it’s pissing down outside but on days like this it’s just annoying. In spite of the glorious showing outside a…

  • Docs Ireland: Town of Strangers & When All Is Ruin Once Again

    June 28, 2019 - By 

    A weird coincidence treated Docs Ireland attendees to a pair of documentaries set in and around Gort, a small Galway town near the Clare border. Treasa O’Brien’s Town of Strangers is the more immediately charming of the two, an assemblage of residents who find themselves, through birth, accident or chance, sharing the town. O’Brien herself is a casual presence in the film: she was in the town trying to cast non-actors for a scripted feature, but found herself drawn towards the energy and personality of the people who showed up at auditions, and decided to stick around, living out of her van.…