• Menace Beach – Black Rainbow Sound

    September 22, 2018 - By 

    Over the last few years, Leeds has been quietly asserting its place as one of the UK’s most reliable cities for guitar music. Bands like Alt-J, Pulled Apart By Horses and Sky Larkin have consistently been putting out material that can’t help but restore people’s faith in the classic format. Within this scene, one group who’ve been etching out a serious name for themselves is Menace Beach. The punk five-piece have been dropping excellent releases without much fuss over the last six years. Their most recent releases, 2015’s Ratworld and 2017’s Lemon Memory, are excellent examples of what this group…

  • David Kitt – Like Lightning

    September 21, 2018 - By 

    David Kitt rounded off the first quarter of 2018 with Yous, a welcomed return to the sound he’s cultivated over the last two decades. The Dublin-based musician greets the autumn with Like Lightning, a six track EP led by the title-track which was originally featured on the quietly acclaimed album that preceded it. Like Lightning offers fans of Kitt’s varied repertoire of records under his own name an introduction to his more immediately electronic New Jackson material. On the surface, this EP could be construed as a compilation of B-sides and offcuts from the Yous recording sessions. These five songs…

  • Villagers – The Art Of Pretending To Swim

    September 20, 2018 - By 

      Not to put too fine a point on it, the latest full-length release from Villagers is a lovely thing. At times so fragile it appears as though the music itself might break, at others dense and swirling with otherworldly sounds, the album never fails to intrigue and surprise whoever takes some much-needed time out from the day’s push and pull. Opener ‘Again’ immediately sets both the tone and style of the entire work: delicate fingerpicking is counterbalanced by a strange, robotic voice repeating the title while Conor O’Brien, sounding as sweet and forlorn as ever, sings of dejection and searching for…

  • Wooden Shjips + Cian Nugent @ Empire Music Hall, Belfast

    September 19, 2018 - By 

    It takes a very special kind of band to, at least in the right setting, meddle with one’s most basic understanding of time. Wooden Shjips are one such band. Tonight at Belfast’s Empire Music Hall, the San Francisco psych rock alchemists’ reiterative, lysergic-dappled craft induces a trip that all but stretches the parameters of chronological perception. Laying the groundwork is one of the country’s most singular solo talents, Cian Nugent (below). Despite almost being consumed by the frankly shameful hubbub of tonight’s growing crowd, he casts a subtle, yet potent spell as tonight’s sole support. Stripped-back and drawn-out is the order of the day for a set…

  • Death Cab for Cutie – Thank You For Today

    September 15, 2018 - By 

    In the midst of a tumultuous period in the revered band’s development, Death Cab for Cutie have stripped back to basics for ninth album, their most accomplished of the past eight years, Thank you For Today. Thank you for Today is without a doubt Death Cab’s most retrospective album in over a decade, and is in many ways a celebration of the past. As the past four albums have been burdened by darker and more personal tones, Thank you for Today comes as a welcome relief in many ways but never risking flipancy. The buoyant and Beck-reminiscent single, ‘Gold Rush’…

  • Hozier – Nina Cried Power

    September 13, 2018 - By 

    There was a while where the world wasn’t sure if it had seen the last of Hozier. Quiet bar the odd tweet, after the thunderous success of his debut album in 2014, the Wicklow native retreated back to the studio, appearing only to tease his return or offer social commentary, aware of the gnawing fans clambering for more tracks as devastating and ethereal as that of his self-titled debut. With Nina Cried Power, his first release since that album, it feels as though Hozier is testing the waters of reaction and criticism to see what listeners want and expect from…

  • Spiritualized – And Nothing Hurt

    September 13, 2018 - By 

    Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt – Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce should not be with us. After nearly 30 years in the music industry, the man has gone through so many trials and tribulations that it really is a surprise for him to be alive, nevermind kicking. Heroin addiction, suicidal despair and and cancer are tough to manage on their own, but encountering all three in such a short space is dumbfounding. Yet through all this, he’s still managed to produce some truly staggeringly good work. With Spaceman 3, you’ve got The Perfect Prescription and Playing With…

  • The Predator

    September 14, 2018 - By 

    The main action of The Predator, the unconvincing, Shane Black-helmed attempt to return the thirty year-old franchise to box office credibility, takes place on the night of October 31st. Which seems right: the film looks like it was kitted out by raiding the nearest discount Halloween supply shop. It’s one ugly motherfucker. Probably the main problem with The Predator series is the Predator himself: the galaxy’s most cold-blooded hunter is a goofy-looking alien. The dreads; the Boba Fett getup; the Bobblehead proportions; the seafish pig snout of a face. It’s an aesthetic blot emphasized by the Alien v. Predator experiments,…

  • Elaine Malone – Land

    September 12, 2018 - By 

    On first listen, Elaine Malone’s debut EP Land seems to have arrived in timely fashion. Built upon a homespun foundation of spartan guitar picking and Malone’s darkly burnished vocals, the release seems to encapsulate the end of summer with its rain storms, dimming evenings and the creaking resurgence of central heating systems country wide. This autumnal cosiness proves to be something of a red herring though, acting as sumptuous camouflage for a release at least partially strewn with dark themes and blood chilling turns of phrase. On ‘Vonnegut’ Malone wastes little time grabbing the listener’s attention, intoning the arresting opening…

  • Incubus @ Ulster Hall, Belfast

    September 13, 2018 - By 

    Unlike many of their MTV2-approved peers whose day in the sun came to end many years ago, Incubus, it would seem, have aged surprisingly well. Having weathered getting older via a string of latter-era albums that aren’t (entirely) unlistenable, live, Brandon Boyd, Mike Einziger and co. still possess that which helped set them apart at the turn of the millennium. Doubling up as their long-awaited Belfast debut, tonight’s show at the iconic Ulster Hall is full testament to that. 27 years and eight albums in, the Californian band have long known what their fans have come to expect and deliver accordingly.…