• Pillow Queens at Cyprus Avenue, Cork

    October 12, 2022 - By 

    Pillow Queens made a triumphant return to Cyprus Avenue, Cork, this past weekend, having last played in 2021 during that weird phase of the pandemic where people were allowed to aggressively breathe into each other’s mouths at the bar but couldn’t be trusted to stand upright in a half capacity gig venue. At the time, the band opted to pull double duty and played two gigs a day so as to avoid cancelling tickets in what they called their “2 Shows 1 Cup” tour. An inspirational effort in both commitment to their fans and to bad jokes. Those in attendance…

  • I Went to Garth Brooks and It Was Great

    September 21, 2022 - By 

    Let me start this by saying that I’m from The Moy. You know Garth Brooks’ songs by osmosis. They’re in the sheep dip and the wee bottles of McGuigans. We all stand around burning piles of household waste, out the back field, learning them with our cousinwifes. I went with my sister, we both live in Belfast or thereabouts and have the sort of fractured relationship that everyone has when they grow up in a household of people. I can distinctly remember learning all the songs on In Pieces (I had to look up the name of this album as it…

  • Hive City Legacy: Dublin Chapter

    September 14, 2022 - By 

    Hive City Legacy: Dublin Chapter is here to shift the paradigm through dance, poetry, satire and song, mixing concert with social activism. The show is a Hot Brown Honey production. Creators Lisa Fa’alafi and Busty Beatz are joined with hip-hop artist Yami “Rowdy” Löfvenberg and the HCL Dublin ensemble to write the Dublin chapter of the tour. The live theatre production is led by eight femmes of colour. This extraordinary Irish cast consists of singer, songwriter, and poet Jess Kav, Afro-Brazilian dancer Capoeira, performer from Salvador, Alessandra Azevedo, and Irish-Nigerian artist and activist Osaro Azams. They are joined by singer…

  • Review: ABBA Voyage – “It has changed live music and performance forever”

    September 1, 2022 - By 

    Belfast-based Abba stan Shauna McLaughlin makes the pilgrimage to London to review the dazzling and groundbreaking virtual concert Traditionally reviews are written the day after the event. That didn’t happen with this review of ABBA Voyage because that day was spent hanging around outside the Arena in the hope of getting tickets to see it again immediately. Which is an impressive review in itself. The other point I want to make is that you’re better going in knowing nothing about what to expect. I may as well just stop writing here really. ABBA’s virtual concert residency, running since May 2022, with seven…

  • Yawning Chasm – The Golden Hour

    August 31, 2022 - By 

    Galway’s Aaron Coyne has been making music as Yawning Chasm for over a decade now, but has flown conspicuously under the radar in that time. While some releases have come out via Galway’s low key but always excellent Rusted Rail label, others have simply been self-released on Bandcamp with all too little fanfare, including latest – and seventh – album The Golden Hour. While primarily a singer-songwriter, Coyne’s style steers clear of the generic. His unconventional main instrument is the four stringed tenor guitar, perhaps most well-known these days for its use by Warren Ellis on latter day Bad Seeds…

  • Muldoon’s Picnic at Lyric Theatre, Belfast

    August 18, 2022 - By 

    As one of the most fêted literary voices from these shores, Paul Muldoon surely knows there’s no favour in feigning wisdom. It’s an accumulation, not a ransacking—a life’s work sprung from the ups, downs and in-betweens. It’s in knowing that for all one’s ascribed or self-worth, success—like wisdom—is a goose egg without the gaze and concert of others. Produced by Poetry Ireland, and curated by the widely celebrated Co. Armagh poet in question, Muldoon’s Picnic is an omnium-gatherum of poetry, prose and music that takes that essential esprit de corps and sprints with it. Following ten sold-out seasons at the Irish Arts…

  • All Together Now 2022

    August 4, 2022 - By 

    Returning after its forced hiatus, Waterford’s All Together Now festival was back with a bang this weekend, bringing with it one of the most diverse and interesting lineups of any festival this summer. Armed with just his notes app and press pass  -and accompanied by the inimitable Celeste Burdon and her camera – Mike Ryan gives us a glimpse into the odyssey that engulfed Curraghmore Estate for the August bank holiday weekend. Photos by Celeste Burdon I arrive at All Together Now overburdened with probably unnecessary camping equipment, but just in time to catch the back half of The Altered…

  • Dreamachine at Carlisle Memorial Church, Belfast

    July 28, 2022 - By 

    “Whether you experience heaven or hell, remember that it is your mind which creates them.” Six years before Timothy Leary wrote these words in his seminal 1966 text, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Brion Gysin quite literally saw the light. On a bus journey to Marseille, the British-Canadian artist-inventor had an encounter that could be described as a pretty textbook psychedelic experience — one without the aid of psychotropic drugs, foundational Tibetan guides or anything in between. As the setting sun cut through rapidly-passing trees, Gysin shut his eyes before observing what he called “a…

  • Parquet Courts at The Helix, Dublin

    June 14, 2022 - By 

    As the stage crew carry out the last of their tasks, the countdown to Parquet Courts’ arrival draws imminently closer. The stage of Dublin’s Helix is bathed in a low red hue, which gives off more of a dance club aesthetic to proceedings, as opposed to the fact it is about to host one of Brooklyn’s foremost indie bands. With the crowd beginning to gather, the club vibe is emphasised even further as the sounds of Todd Terje’s take on M’s ‘Pop Muzik’, and a remix of Timmy Thomas’ 1970s’ song ‘Why Can’t We Live Together’, pulsate from the PA.…

  • Arborist at First Presbyterian Church, Belfast

    May 2, 2022 - By 

    On any day, Belfast First Presbyterian Church offers a quite spectacular setting for a concert. It’s even more so the case when the event organiser, namely Arthur Magee, decides to use the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival to honor the memory of former parishioner Thomas McCabe, who opposed the formation of the Belfast Slave Ship Company in 1786. In lieu of the usual opening band, the audience was offered an excerpt of the forthcoming play Sugar! by actor/writer Cillian Lenaghan. In his play, Lenaghan imagines Thomas McCabe’s visit to his church on the day after he prevented the formation of the…