• Dublin Film Fest: First Reformed

    February 27, 2018 - By 

    Questions of faith are easy to ask yet hard to answer. In the modern parable First Reformed, Reverend Toller (Ethan Hawke) is experiencing a crisis of faith. A former military chaplain, Toller is grieving for a son who he encouraged to join the military. He is also coming to terms with his own mortality while serving his tiny congregation at First Reformed Chapel. As his despair deepens, he refuses to accept support from his colleague Esther (Victoria Hill) and superior Pastor Jeffers (Cedric Kyres). Instead, Toller begins to counsel Michael (Philip Ettinger), a radical environmentalist, and his pregnant wife Mary (Amanda…

  • Dublin Film Fest: Beast

    February 27, 2018 - By 

    Lies told to protect the feelings of a loved one can have untold consequences. In Beast, troubled Moll (Jessie Buckley) decides to leave her birthday party to go dancing. After staying out all night, she meets Pascal (Johnny Flynn), a handsome outsider in grubby jeans and a torn t-shirt. On impulse, Moll covers for him when they are stopped at a police checkpoint. The initial attraction between Moll and Pascal develops into a passionate connection, much to the distress of Moll’s family. Her mother Hilary (Gerarldine James) is distant and controlling while her siblings treat Moll with casual disdain. Every…

  • S. Carey – Hundred Acres

    February 26, 2018 - By 

    Try as we may, it is difficult to separate S. Carey’s music from that of his long-term collaborator and Bon Iver bandmate, Justin Vernon. Despite two full-length solo albums and two EPs being released in the past eight years, it’s been hard to dispel that intrinsic comparison. His third LP, Hundred Acres, does little to change that.  Written over the course of a few years, Carey’s third full length release was crafted while his family grew and touring was intermittent. The Bon Iver influence is, as one might expect having listened to Carey’s previous offerings, obvious as ever. If there is a defining difference, it…

  • Lady Bird

    February 23, 2018 - By 

    Screenwriting 101, they say, is create conflict. Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), the protagonist of writer-director Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, is a constant source of conflict, perennially fighting with all those around her. For what, she’s not always sure, it’s simply who she is. Her fighting is a form of self-expression, she’s fighting for her self-expression. As she says when a Father at her Catholic high school asks if “Lady Bird” is her given name- “Yes, I gave it to myself. It’s given to me, by me.” Set in 2002, Christine’s roller coaster final year of high school provides…

  • Dublin Film Fest: Black 47

    February 23, 2018 - By 

    The blackness is in the land, of course, the blight that’s reduced potatoes to asbestos, but, in Dublin Film Festival opener Black 47, it’s also in the hearts of the men who hold dominion over the land, and in the empire that produces them. Set in 1847, as crop failure and fever decimates the native Irish population, Lance Daly’s fourth feature reimagines the Great Irish Famine as a righteous revenge Western, a muddy, politically cynical chase thriller with shades of Rambo. James Frecheville stars as Michael Feeney, a Connacht man who returns home from overseas service in the British Army, to…

  • Ought – Room Inside The World

    February 21, 2018 - By 

      The word ‘ought’ touches on probability; the coulds, woulds and shoulds. It is a word often used with critical intent to highlight the shortcomings of a project. Room Inside The World, the third album from Canadian post-punk quartet Ought brings forth an unfortunate case of nominative determinism. What should have been a triumphant return instead presents a band struggling to find their identity and a cohesive sound in the light of a changed dynamic. On their latest record Ought scarcely resemble their formerly distinct selves, shifting instead towards a style that veils their individuality. This is a record that…

  • U.S. Girls – In a Poem Unlimited

    February 20, 2018 - By 

    Six albums in, Meghan Remy’s U.S. Girls project shows few resting on its laurels. Having originally dealt in lo-fi loops and drones on earlier records like Go Grey, subsequent releases saw her pop sensibility rise increasingly to the fore, culminating in her 4AD debut and one of 2015’s finest albums, Half Free. Eagerly anticipated follow up In a Poem Unlimited has carried that trend on with aplomb. Not only is the new LP Remy’s most widescreen, pop-heavy outing yet, it’s also her most political. Her lyrical ethos here can be summed up with the title of ‘M.A.H.’, short for ‘Mad…

  • Wild Beasts @ Olympia Theatre, Dublin

    February 18, 2018 - By 

    This is the end of the indie technocrats. Nearly a decade after the release of Limbo, Panto Wild Beasts graced the Olympia stage for the last time. While this signals a very real end for the Kendal four-piece, it also serves as a more abstract end for an era of indie as a whole. Everywhere you look, mid-noughties bands are calling it a day. The age of four blokes and a guitar is over. But then, Wild Beasts never subscribed to this image of the scene. Their music was meant as the antithesis of the cheap lager and a pack…

  • Dedekind Cut – Tahoe

    February 20, 2018 - By 

    Dedekind Cut is the current pseudonym of Northern California based experimental composer & producer Fred Welton Warmsley III. His 2016 debut $uccessor was a singular piece of work, an abstract, opaquely kaleidoscopic fusion of paranoia and dread, sonically teased out via digital/analogue and synthetic/organic contradictions. If that record edged into the far corners of noise and drone music, then its true successor plumbs depths equally as distant. Named after the mountain lake town in which its creator – who used to produce and release music as Lee Bannon – resides, a multitude of sonic components make up the macrocosm of…

  • Rejjie Snow – Dear Annie

    February 16, 2018 - By 

    Rejjie Snow had been knocking around for the best part of a decade now without a “proper” release under his belt (though 2017’s The Moon & You mixtape was excellent). In the six years since he broke onto the scene with ‘Trumpets’, the Dublin-born rapper has gone from being a YouTube buzz artist to collaborating with Joey Bada$$, supporting Madonna and hanging out with King Krule so fast that it’s hard to know exactly when the turning point really was. Any one of these things would have been the dream come true for a boy from Drumcondra and yet Mr. Snow – real name  Alexa Anyaegbunam – achieved…