• Ty Segall – Fudge Sandwich

    November 8, 2018 - By 

    Garage rock institution Ty Segall has always been insanely prolific, but in 2018 he’s taken things to extremes. So far he’s put out expansive double album Freedom’s Goblin, a long awaited second collaboration with White Fence and a second record from side project GØGGS. Now we can add to that an album of covers in Fudge Sandwich, but news has also surfaced of an ultra-limited cassette called Orange Rainbow distributed at a recent art exhibition, and a new side project with wife Denée called The C.I.A. with an album due out in December. Exhausting stuff, but back to Fudge Sandwich for…

  • Widows

    November 7, 2018 - By 

    The arc of the heist movie builds towards triumph and liberation. The thrill of a pulling off the perfect job is the same as performing a magic trick. There’s the plan, even if it’s discarded when things get hairy, and there’s a chance for a losers and rogues to get one back on the system, an impossible now-you-see-it that leaves coppers in an empty vault scratching their heads, stray notes bobbing in the breeze. A well-structured heist movie is one of cinema’s high pleasures. “Pleasure” is not a feeling that Steve McQueen’s work brings to mind: think Fassbender’s cum face…

  • Milo – Budding Ornithologists Are Weary Of Tired Analogies

    November 7, 2018 - By 

    Milo’s raps are that of internal monologues, paradoxical truths and caustic wit. His flow ricochets around the rap cosmos — choppy to smooth, elliptical to gratifyingly loquacious — before fate slots it away in pockets of dream-like production that is heavily indebted to jazz’s freest, most nakedly emotive, compulsions. Scallops Hotel, his side project and producer alias, is low stakes in the best possible understanding of the phrase. A sublime January release earlier this year, sovereign nose of (y​)​our arrogant face, marked newfound terrain for Ferreira through sheer uniformity in pace and a flow that is becoming increasingly screwed into…

  • The Prodigy – No Tourists

    November 6, 2018 - By 

    What does The Prodigy mean in 2018? More than 21 years after The Fat of the Land and Music For The Jilted Generation, this is a band who for many years pushed the limits of taste and aggression for mainstream dance music. Consider tracks like ‘Firestarter’, ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ and ‘Poison’ which are still intensely antagonistic and hostile. But after nearly three decades in the business and a comfortable position within collective consciousness, what in the holy hell can be done next? Look at our contemporary popular hip-hop and dance charts and you’ll find a much darker world than what…

  • Parquet Courts @ The Academy, Dublin

    November 5, 2018 - By 

    In the giddy days leading up to Parquet Courts‘ sold-out Academy show, social media was strewn with desperate pleas aimed squarely at the #ticketfairy. It came as no big surprise. Riding high off the back of their sixth – and easily most accessible album to date – Wide Awake!, the Brooklyn indie rock heroes are, without question, at their all-time most happening right now. Take a well-earned bow, the marketing team at Rough Trade. Capped at a cosy 850, the heaving Dublin venue tonight buzzes like a glorified in-store, relocated to what could feasibly be some neony student union of the early 2000s (that the room is promptly transformed into…

  • Johnny Marr @ Ulster Hall, Belfast

    November 3, 2018 - By 

    “Sorry, I forget to say shit in between songs. Oh yeah, politics. Fucking great, right? Don’t worry. This is a safe politics-free zone for tonight. I’m allowed to take the piss, though…” 34 years on from gracing its hallowed walls with the Smiths, Johnny Marr is mid-way through a generation-blurring set at Belfast’s iconic Ulster Hall. He’s one day into his 55th year, and with his recently-released third solo album, Call The Comet, marking a new creative resurgence, he’s twice the character and poise of that 21-year-old back in 1984. Kickstarting a new European tour, tonight bridges three eras into one seamless celebratory whole…

  • Documenta – Lady With The Ring

    October 31, 2018 - By 

    It’s a chilling story, that of a woman prematurely buried, presumed dead until awoken by a grave robber attempting to amputate her finger to make off with her valuable ring. Often attributed to early 18th century Lurgan woman Margorie McCall, her grave, pictured on the cover of this EP, does indeed state “lived once, buried twice” – though the existence of countless versions of this tale all over Europe, attributed to various different women from anywhere as early as the 14th century, does sow doubt on its veracity. Nonetheless it remains an infamous piece of local folklore, and Belfast’s finest…

  • Mac DeMarco @ Limelight 1, Belfast

    October 30, 2018 - By 

    Why does 28-year-old Mac DeMarco command so much reverence from so many younger fans, right across the world? It’s a question as old as time (or, well, circa 2013), and yet, a definitive answer is still outstanding. Sure, there’s the midpoint he strikes between authenticity and unconcern. There’s the albums and countless live shows that veer between inward-gazing, heart-stung, silly and fun as all fuck (and who, juvenile or flirting with the grave, can’t get behind that?) Then there’s the tattered baseball cap and rollies chic, which is every bit as dominant as a love of the harmonic twists and turns that…

  • Lisa O’Neill – Heard a Long Gone Song

    October 27, 2018 - By 

    Given Lisa O’Neill’s rising star in recent years, it’s surprising she hasn’t been snapped up by a bigger label sooner, with previous work being either self released or issued through The Frames’ Plateau Records. Having toured extensively over the last few years with the likes of Glen Hansard, James Yorkston and The Divine Comedy though, it seems pretty natural that at last the Cavan songwriter should follow fellow Irish folk luminaries Lankum onto the eminent Rough Trade label, or more accurately, Rough Trade’s brand new folk imprint River Lea, for album four. Where previous records, particularly 2013’s Same Cloth or…

  • Bohemian Rhapsody

    October 26, 2018 - By 

    Queen’s music is like the air. So if you’re going to give them the biopic treatment, you need to peel back the gloss and the familiarity a little, and give us a peek at the complications, the darkness and the extravagance of an icon like Freddie Mercury. Their tracks have been drilled into the DNA of modern background noise: for Bohemian Rhapsody to feel in any way fresh, it needed risk. It has none. The product of a difficult gestation, Rhapsody arrives after cycling through leads, screenwriters and directors. Bryan Singer gets the sole director credit, but he was fired…