• Bad Times at the El Royale

    October 11, 2018 - By 

    Drew Goddard has an attraction to high-concept ideas. The former Lost and Buffy The Vampire Slayer writer made his feature directorial debut with 2012’s Cabin in The Woods, a slasher meta-horror about a group of teens tormented by secret scientists and their army of canonical monsters and horror tropes. Cabin’s wall-breaking endeared it to genre die-hards, but it’s hard to recall much else the movie did that was scary or interesting. This problem is present, to much greater effect, in Bad Times at the El Royale. Goddard’s second film as writer-director isn’t quite as novel as Cabin, falling more comfortably…

  • Venom

    October 11, 2018 - By 

    Isn’t the point of anti-heroes that they’re not dull? Great power, great responsibility? That’s Peter Parker’s deal. He’s gotta defeat Doc Ock in time for date night for MJ, and pick up Aunt May’s prescription on the way. But Eddie Brock gets to be a shithead. In the tradition of superhero doppelgangers, Venom gets the super-abilities without the baggage, indulging in the petty, violent delights off-bounds for your friendly neighbourhood Spidey. But in Venom, Sony Pictures’ still-can’t-believe-it’s-real foray into the fringes of their Spiderverse IP, which doesn’t mention the wise-cracking web-slinger at all, Eddie Brock gets to save the world.…

  • Phosphorescent – C’est La Vie

    October 10, 2018 - By 

    Matthew Houck’s brand of roaming, questing country rock veers firmly into The War on Drugs’ crossover territory with Phosphorescent’s seventh record. Stark, bruised hymns of desolation such as ‘Wolves’ from Pride, or teary travelogues like ‘Mermaid Parade’ found on Here’s To Taking It Easy are not in supply here. After the short instrumental ‘Black Moon/Silver Waves,’ the opening lines of ‘C’est La Vie No. 2’ say as much: “I wrote all night/Like the fire of my words could burn a hole up to heaven/I don’t write all night burning holes up to heaven no more.” Unsurprisingly, the all-conquering ‘Song for Zula’…

  • Sea Pinks – Rockpool Blue

    October 9, 2018 - By 

    With the difficulty of making a proper living from music these days, it’s not uncommon to see the release schedules of bands on the more DIY end of the spectrum slow right down as they’re increasingly forced to balance music with work commitments and other general life admin. And yet, with the release of their seventh album a mere eight years on from their debut, Belfast’s Sea Pinks may surely by now have overtaken even Dublin’s No Monster Club for the title of Ireland’s most prolific band, and while one could be forgiven for assuming a case of quantity over…

  • Sleaford Mods – Sleaford Mods EP

    October 8, 2018 - By 

    When it comes to Sleaford Mods, there are two very distinct types of people in the world. Those of us who find ourselves instinctively drawn to the visceral fury and elusive musicality of the band’s butt ugly beats and those who struggle to separate the band’s sound from that of a Dragon Soup fuelled brawl out the back of an east Midlands lock-in. The duo’s excellent new EP is unlikely to challenge either camp’s perception… But this seething carnival of misplaced rage, artful profanity and darkly comic tales of divey bars and twitter feuds combines to create a vibrant rebuttal…

  • Exploded View – Obey

    October 3, 2018 - By 

    Exploded View are a band on a steady ascent. Formed a few years ago in Mexico City by Welsh-born, Berlin-based Anika in order to perform songs from her 2010 solo covers album on a tour of the country, the new group’s natural chemistry lead to 2016’s eponymous debut, an album of stellar original material influenced by “Can, dub and political revolution” on the ever reliable Sacred Bones label.  Coming seemingly from  out of nowhere, the album flew a little under the radar at first, but last year’s EP Summer Came Early, with its unusually catchy, breezy title track – albeit…

  • Terry Riley & Gyan Riley @ The Sugar Club, Dublin

    October 3, 2018 - By 

    “We’ve heard the bar will be closed during this performance, so this might be a long 45 minutes. But we’ll suffer through it together.” Gyan Riley is sat across from his 85-year-old father, Terry, on-stage at Dublin’s The Sugar Club. Before them, watching on from tiered cinema seating and plush velvet banquettes, is a small sea of muted smiles that strong suggest that sufferance – or anything resembling it – is far from on the cards this evening. Hosted by the city’s perennial gatekeepers of good taste, Choice Cuts, it’s the first of a two-night residency from The Rileys and the…

  • A Star Is Born

    October 3, 2018 - By 

    A Star Is Born is unstoppable. It’s got audience affection and Academy respectability in its sights, and it barrels straight at them. Produced, directed, written and starring Bradley Cooper, this is the Hangover star’s leap for high populist acclaim and he doesn’t take any chances, fashioning, alongside brilliant co-star Lady Gaga and mother! DP Matthew Libatique, a swelling, soapy, lens-flare multiplex ballad. While you’re busy tapping your foot, it eats your heart.  A Star Is Born’s primary achievement is how it escapes the orbit of well-thumbed, downright cliched, material through sheer performative will. Cooper is Jackson Maine, a damaged classic rock…

  • Anna Calvi @ Empire Music Hall, Belfast

    October 3, 2018 - By 

    Anna Calvi is a musician who seems deeply invested in the art of the crescendo. Blessed with a gargantuan set of pipes, she can veer from a hushed mumble to clarion operatic tone in an instant, archly imbuing her music with shade and suspense and conjuring up bombastic, room shaking coups de grace that punctuate her grand musical statements. Tonight Calvi’s darkly theatrical persona will dominate The Empire’s striking Victorian music hall, an ideal setting for her apocalyptic brand of cabaret which promises to bombard the audience with head spinning guitar pyrotechnics, dramatic key changes and thrilling, shrieked finales. Stepping…

  • Wild Nothing – Indigo

    October 2, 2018 - By 

    It’s difficult to listen to a Wild Nothing record and not think of Gemini, Jack Tatum’s 2010 debut. Not simply for nostalgia-induced reasoning, though the record’s dreamy ambience may lead one in that direction. Rather, Tatum himself won’t let us forget Gemini. While there’s nothing wrong with self reference and a narrative of progression throughout an artist’s lifetime, Indigo and the previous two Wild Nothing releases – Nocturne and Life of Pause – are overshadowed by that charming debut and Tatum does himself no favours in trying, quite half heartedly, to move on. When Gemini was released to the world,…