• The Commuter

    January 23, 2018 - By 

    Liam Neeson’s late-career rejuvenation as your taxi driver’s favourite action hero has largely been down to three European film-makers. French pair Luc Besson and Olivier Megaton wrote and directed the vengeful paterfamilias fantasies of the Taken series, while Spain’s Jaume Collet-Serra has directed Neeson in a series of highish-concept movies with interchangably forgettable titles: Run All Night (ticking-clock cops), Unknown (amnesia) and Non-Stop (murder at 16,000 feet). The latter’s locked-box story of an Air Marshall sniffing out a killer above the Atlantic provides a pretty obvious blueprint for the train-tracks mystery of Collet-Serra’s latest, The Commuter, in which Neeson plays…

  • Hostiles

    January 22, 2018 - By 

    Scott Cooper (Black Mass) is a writer/director who always delves into the gritty underbelly of the US, casting an unflinching eye over its history and social traits. With Hostiles, he moves into the Western genre, and right from the shocking opening sequence, you know you are not in for a good ole boy, John Waynesque movie. And while he does occasionally move into the realm of cliche and generic storytelling that lurks in all his movies, I can’t help but admire his take on Donald E. Stewart’s (Patriot Games) manuscript and this much-flaunted genre, as he’s taken great pains to…

  • First Aid Kit – Ruins

    January 22, 2018 - By 

    Written predominantly in the wake of a break-up, the aptly named fourth album from Swedish folk-duo First Aid Kit wades through the aftermath of heartbreak, self-doubt and loneliness, in the search to find something among the ruins. Lead vocalist and guitarist Klara Söderberg had just broken up with her fiancé when she reunited with elder sister Johanna in Los Angeles to write their fourth record. She described the record to HMV as being about the ruins of a relationship, “How sad it is, but also how beautiful it was. That’s all you have left at the end.” It’s a perfect…

  • Porches – The House

    January 21, 2018 - By 

    There are few conflicts greater than those fought at home. These contests are never about the things themselves but more about the idea of what home should be. Should it be a place to relax or a place to play; a place to laugh or a place to learn. Aaron Maine addresses these inner/outer conflicts with his latest album The House. It’s an incredibly honest piece from the New Yorker and the logical next step from 2016’s Pool. Lyrically speaking, Maine has left the pool in name only. Everywhere you go there are references to water on this record. The…

  • The Academic – Tales From the Backseat

    January 20, 2018 - By 

    One of the most hotly tipped young indie-bands in Ireland,The Academic have released their debut album; a ten-track LP so radio friendly that you have probably heard most of the tracks already after months of extensive airplay. These four lads – all still in their early 20s – appear to have have risen from the rubble of the bygone era of rock boybands (The Vamps, 5SOS) with a charming debut that holds its own amid waves of similarly inclined young bands. Tales from the Backseat thrives on its own simplicity, along with their precocious gift for creating infectious earworms. The…

  • Tune-Yards – I can feel you creep into my private life

    January 20, 2018 - By 

    Timely is the return of Merill Garbus, better known as the bandleader behind Tune-Yards. For a variety of reasons. None more that Garbus’ almost elastic vocal range that is fit to bring out a  green eyed monster in just about anyone. Tune-Yards have consistently cram effervescent colour and fun into every note of their three LPs to date, so to get a fresh dose of that in the form of I can feel you creep into my private life should be able to finally get the ball rolling on an otherwise grey, bleak January. There are few other bands you’d want around…

  • Glen Hansard – Between Two Shores

    January 19, 2018 - By 

      Given that Glen Hansard’s live band tends to contain various members of his old band The Frames, it’d be easy at first glance to wonder what exactly differentiates his solo career from the band he made his name with. On closer inspection though, his solo records so far have marked a gradual divergence from that band’s stock in trade. Though 2012’s Rhythm and Repose wasn’t a huge departure, it gave him the freedom to collaborate with various new musicians in the studio, and 2015’s Didn’t He Ramble saw him both further mine his long standing interest in Irish folk…

  • A Grave With No Name – Passover

    January 18, 2018 - By 

    Death has always been and always will be a rich and necessary well for songwriters. Think back to the likes of Neil Young on Tonight’s The Night, Warren Zevon’s The Wind or, recently, Mount Eerie’s sublime A Crow Looked At Me. The finality of shuffling off the mortal coil can really bring out the best work from an artist. They’ve got a single shot to say goodbye correctly and if they’re slightly off then a well-intentioned farewell can become as unbearable as Puff Daddy’s ‘I’ll Be Missing You’. Writing about the passing of a life offers such a vast treasure…

  • The Final Year

    January 18, 2018 - By 

    ‘I keep saying we should get a countdown clock, with the weeks and days left’, suggests Samantha Power, the Obama administration’s representative to the United Nations, in Greg Barker’s up-close HBO documentary The Final Year. The appropriately named Power, an Irish child immigrant and former law professor bewitched by the promise of Senator Obama, is talking about instilling urgency in the President’s foreign policy team, who have twelve months left in his second term to wrap up their agendas and make them watertight for whoever comes next. The ticking clock — 10 months left, now 4, now 1 — is meant to cast their…

  • BØRNS – Blue Madonna

    January 18, 2018 - By 

    Returning with his highly anticipated sophomore effort Blue Madonna, Michigan born Garrett Børns captures the momentum from his debut Dopamine and transforms it into a catalyst for experimentation. Gone is the typical homogeneous album setup, replaced instead with kicks and flares from a medley of instruments that spring up from the spaces that break up the noise.  Where Dopamine reclined into a suave sofa of plush electro-pop beats, Blue Madonna erratically paces across a floor of glossy, facet tiles. Opening with the relatively reserved ’God Save Our Young Blood’, BØRNS‘ pace and tone matches that of his collaborator, one Lana Del…