• Conor Walsh – The Lucid LP Launch @ The Sugar Club, Dublin

    March 17, 2019 - By 

    Conor Walsh’s debut release, The Front, was a glimpse of a talent in development. Though Walsh’s playing was similar to that of other contemporary minimal musicians – most obviously Nils Frahm – his experimentation with treating and processing the sound of his piano showed how he was already forging his own path away from them. His untimely death just months after the EP’s release was therefore a huge musical loss as well as a personal one, as it seemed that we would be left with only that small glimpse. But Walsh’s family, after guessing the password to his laptop, found…

  • The Kindergarten Teacher

    March 15, 2019 - By 

    For a film about a frustrated, unhappy child educator, The Kindergarten Teacher is surprisingly quiet. No chaotic scenes of brats in meltdowns and screaming teachers wilting with stress. In fact, New York teacher Lisa Spinelli (Maggie Gyllenhaal) seems to have lucked out. Her little ones are well-behaved and she seems to genuinely like them, navigating her classroom with that airy, benign, vaguely lupine air Gyllenhaal does so well. Her days tick along in well-observed routine: cleaning toilets, pouring fruit juice and washing dishes in tiny sink. But there is unfulfilment seeping out of her. In the downtime it is deafening. Sara Colangelo’s…

  • Far Cry New Dawn (Ubisoft, Multiformat)

    March 12, 2019 - By 

    Seventeen years after the denouement of Far Cry 5, whose narrative culminated with the detonation of an actual nuclear bomb, the fictional location of Hope County, Montana is in a period of what one might politely call “social regeneration”. Pockets of survivors are rebuilding shared communities, assisted in part by your character, a male or female cipher who goes by the moniker “The Captain”. As with all previous Far Cry instalments,  your mute avatar is dropped into a nightmarish scenario, ill-equipped and lacking in the necessary skills to cope with this irradiated new world, and must subsequently complete quests to build up the…

  • Sleaford Mods – Eton Alive

    March 12, 2019 - By 

    Jason Williamson’s response to a DWP case officer on 2013 single ‘Jobseeker’ – “I’ve got drugs to take, and a mind to break” – articulated a central anxiety in the work of Sleaford Mods: that a state of unreality, induced by whatever means possible, might be preferable to the unmediated experience of working-class life – and that the people who are supposed to help either don’t understand or, more likely, don’t care. Williamson’s lyrics have brought us to pubs, to drug-deals, to myopia and self-loathing, and Andrew Fearn’s music to what sound like some of the dingiest, strangest nightclubs in…

  • Trials Rising (Ubisoft, Multi)

    March 12, 2019 - By 

    Those readers of a certain age will remember Kick Start, a fun for all the family television programme in which amateur motorcyclists rode their steeds over and around an obstacle course comprising hay bales, planks and cabers. Inevitably, the rider would fail to ascend a vertiginous mud bank or tumble into a water trough, much to the hilarity of Dave Lee Travis and those watching at home. Such schadenfreude is at the core of the Trials franchise, in which the gamer rides a motorbike through increasingly ludicrous tracks while trying not to plummet to be bottom of a ravine, into a pit of…

  • Foals – Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1

    March 11, 2019 - By 

    Foals have returned with their fifth album, or at least the first part of it. Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost is a double album released in separate parts with the second half scheduled for release in the Autumn. Double albums are a risky move, and often end up feeling bloated and add weight to the adage that less is more. They’re an endeavour usually reserved for stadium sized acts with little to lose and material to dump, and this is where Foals now find themselves. Having survived the exodus of bassist Walter Gervers, they stride forward carrying the torch…

  • Tyrel

    March 11, 2019 - By 

    Like Sebastián Silva’s previous films, Tyrel walks the tightrope between psychological drama and out-and-out horror. Interpersonal conflicts come to the fore in strange, unpredictable ways. The tension is palpable, the level of cringe punishing. The film takes place over the course of one wild weekend. Tyler has been invited by his friend Johnny to drink with his childhood buddies. Being thrown into a new group of people can be anxiety-inducing enough, but once Tyler meets Johnny’s fratboy mates, it quickly becomes clear that he’s the only black man among them, adding an extra layer of unspoken tension. What makes Tyrel…

  • Hozier – Wasteland, Baby!

    March 9, 2019 - By 

    It’s been five years since the release of Hozier’s hugely acclaimed self-titled debut. Tracks like ‘Take Me to Church’ and ‘Someone New’ catapulted the Greystones-native to international attention. Now, having left fans waiting, we’ve been landed with follow-up, Wasteland, Baby! The world has been waiting to see if Hozier would manage to dodge the classic “difficult second album” pitfall. With Wasteland, Baby!, it seems he has. Wasteland, Baby! – despite its name – is an album that feels infinitely more positive and bright than its predecessor. It feels like Hozier is allowing himself to have fun on this record, despite…

  • RTÉ Choice Music Prize 2018

    March 8, 2019 - By 

    It’s hard to convey the buzz in Vicar Street as the place starts filling up. You can’t look anywhere without spotting a handful of familiar faces. From my vantage point. rappers Kojaque and Luka Palm can be seen relaxing on the right side of the balcony, while blogger Nialler9 sits further to my left. Anybody that is a somebody in the Irish music industry is present. The show kicks off with a little introduction from presenter Eoghan McDermott. There’s the usual spiel of “Are we doing well?… I said, ‘Are we doing well?’” before he cracks on introducing the first…

  • Isn’t It Romantic

    March 7, 2019 - By 

    A young girl named Natalie watches Pretty Woman in an early 1990s sitting room. Her mother pours a glass of wine and warns that they don’t make movies about girls like us. Except Hollywood does. Isn’t It Romantic is a romantic comedy disguised as a parody of the genre. The characters run through every convention of the sometimes unfairly maligned genre while proclaiming that they are not falling for its charms. You can guess what happens next. Adult Natalie (Rebel Wilson) is disenchanted with idea of love and a cynic about romantic comedies. After a mugging, she wakes up in…