• Primavera 2017

    June 8, 2017 - By 

    After 16 years, there’s no doubt that Primavera is Europe’s premier festival, for everyone from the capped-up indie kids to right-on middle-agers seeking some escapism, from the techno heads on through to High Fidelity type nerf herders and vinyl hoarders. So: how does Europe’s best music festival follow up on a last year’s best-ever edition – a mammoth lineup topped by Radiohead. Well, partially through sticking with what works – every sub-genre well catered for and then some, and not just on the three main days at Parc del Forum, but in venues across the city in the preceding weeks.…

  • Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly & James McAlister – Planetarium

    June 7, 2017 - By 

    “I am the god of war. I reside in every creature. Dispose of the future or put away your sword.” Michigan’s musical polymath Sufjan Stevens takes aim at the stars to reflect on the best and worst of our human nature on this collaborative record with Bryce Dessner of The National, composer Nico Muhly, and drummer James McAlister. The arrangements may be stellar, but earth is never too far away. “Love me completely in song” opines Stevens on ‘Venus’, with its references to Methodist summer camp and formative sexual experience. Each of the planets is a canvas for Stevens to ruminate on…

  • My Life As A Courgette

    June 7, 2017 - By 

    Children’s films don’t come much finer than My Life As A Courgette, simply because of how in tune and empathetic debut director Claude Barras and writer Celine Sciamma (Girlhood) are charting the trials and tribulations of being a kid growing up, especially when broken homes and traumatic childhoods are involved. There is a level of intelligence, sensitivity and realism throughout that sets it on a level all of its own, but most of all, it lets the children’s (quite often hilarious) perspective do the talking at all times, making it a true breath of fresh air. Courgette is a young…

  • Forbidden Fruit 2017

    June 7, 2017 - By 

    With photos courtesy of Lucy Foster, Eoghain Meakin reports back from Forbidden Fruit at the weekend, featuring Aphex Twin, Bon Iver, Flying Lotus, Moderat, Orbital and more. Saturday Turn off Facebook, no one needs to see those sunny pictures coming in from Spain. Instead check YR there or Accuweather so we can time the rain falls. Because today is the first day of Forbidden Fruit, the festival on your doorstep and a bit of rain is an inconvenience not an inhibitor round here. However it does have its immediate drawbacks; clogging the entrance system as people attempt to shove their…

  • Beach Fossils – Somersault

    June 6, 2017 - By 

    It’s fairly easy to write off a group like Beach Fossils upon the first impression. While we can’t judge books by their cover, those sleeves are designed to give you the most concise definition of its contents, so there must be some merit. A cursory glance at the group reveals exactly what you need to know about them. These are four dudes from Brooklyn dressed in thrift shop finest and baseball caps. They produce lo-fi, Yo La Tengo inflected indie rock-and-droll with whispery vocals and enough irony to make Malkmus look sincere. They’re another group of stoned hipsters talking about…

  • alt-J – Relaxer

    June 5, 2017 - By 

      Relaxer, alt-j’s third album, opens with the track ‘3WW’. It begins more than reminiscent of Massive Attacks’ ‘Teardrop’, digresses into a passage of medieval-pastoral before flowing into a Kate Bush crescendo à la ‘Don’t Give Up’ courtesy of Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell’s vocal contributions. It’s a good choice of introduction to the album which, over the course of eight tracks, is chameleon in nature, varied in scope and only really held on its axis by the distinct idiosyncrasies of the band. In many ways Relaxer is a raging success as Alt-j take creative risks and come out largely unscathed…

  • James Vincent McMorrow – True Care

    June 5, 2017 - By 

    Just nine months ago James Vincent McMorrow released his third studio album, We Move to widespread acclaim. Still revelling in the success of the record and with a slew of live dates keeping him busy for the foreseeable future, McMorrow has dropped his latest offering much to the surprise of everyone bar himself. True Care is an album created in just five months which has been released in a suitably hasty manner with JVM citing a discomfort with the typically grandiose release cycles in modern music as his motive to do so. With this in mind, there seems to be…

  • Wonder Woman

    June 5, 2017 - By 

    Diana, Princess of the Amazons, is here to save the world, or at least the DC Cinematic Universe. “They don’t deserve you”, coos her arch-nemesis, the war-mongering Aries, referring to the flaky humans Diana has abandoned Paradise to help. He may as well be speaking about the creative team at Warner Bros and DC Films, who have thus far battered and demoralised eager audiences with dour, cynical, wildly plotted movies. They don’t deserve Diana, but she’s here anyway. The 2017 blockbuster most destined to be damned by faint praise, Wonder Woman breaks from the DC pack by provoking a reaction…

  • Maria Kelly – The Things I Should

    May 31, 2017 - By 

    Dublin-based indie-folk artist Maria Kelly has been writing music since she was 10 years old. The Things I Should, Kelly’s debut EP, is inspired by the artist’s difficulties with self-expression, and focuses on a series of personal experiences in which a lack of honesty only caused her further difficulty. The concept is highly relatable, and is executed skilfully; the tone of the tracks reflects this sense of sombre nostalgia and regret that permeates the EP, as it moves from what seems to be a reserved sense of longing in the opening tracks to frustration and determination in the latter half.…

  • Damo Suzuki w/ Blue Whale & Paul Stapleton and Robocobra Quartet @ Black Box, Belfast

    May 29, 2017 - By 

    When former Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit died in January this year, the tributes that poured in were a potent reminder, if one were needed, of just how influential the krautrock pioneers were. With the German band’s original American vocalist Malcolm Mooney leaving the band at the dawn of the 70s, erstwhile Japanese busker Damo Suzuki was installed in time for 1971’s seminal Tago Mago, remaining with the group for the equally classic Ege Bamyasi and Future Days, albums that within just a few short years were influencing Berlin-era Bowie and the entire post-punk scene, not to mention countless rock bands…