• Katie Kim & Radie Peat set to collaborate for A Night of Musical Stories

    February 7, 2018 - By 

    In association with MusicTown, two of Ireland’s finest contemporary artistic voices bring a one-off, collaborative show at Dublin’s Pepper Canister Church on April 14. Amongst a handful of folk-rooted artists in recent years to demarcate themselves from the rest of the pack, drone-folk songwriter Katie Kim – listen to her fourth album Salt – and multi-instrumentalist vocalist Radie Peat – also known for her groundbreaking approach to folk with Lankum & Rue – are right at the top. This all-ages concert encompasses murder ballads, folklore, traditional and contemporary musical arrangements, performing music both self-penned, and from past traditions to bing together themes of the human condition. “Darkness through light, misadventure and…

  • 18 for ’18: Any Joy

    January 30, 2018 - By 

    We continue 18 for ’18, our feature showcasing eighteen Irish acts we’re convinced are going places in 2018. Throughout January we’re going to be previewing each of those acts, accompanied by words from our writers and an original photograph from one of our photographers. Next up, Any Joy. Photo by Silvio Severino We’ve written platitudes on Cork’s tendency to function as Ireland’s bastion of cosmically-inclined guitar music, and its latest export is Any Joy, who, while tinted with the hue of its primary contemporary export, simultaneously demarcate themselves from the trappings of being a genre band, forever doomed to lay in…

  • Shopping – The Official Body

    January 24, 2018 - By 

    Rachel Agg must be one of the UK’s busiest musicians today. Not content with fronting Trash Kit and last year’s Scottish Album of the Year winners Sacred Paws, she also heads up London trio Shopping, who have somehow managed to find the time to record a third album in amidst it all. While those first two bands possess similar melodic indie-pop leanings, Shopping are leaner, tauter and more heavily indebted to their post-punk forebears. Their first two albums, 2013’s Consumer Complaints and 2015’s Why Choose, sound so much like products of the late 70s/early 80s that it would be tempting…

  • Festival Preview: It Takes A Village 2018

    January 12, 2018 - By 

    At the final All Tomorrows Parties festival at Pontins Holiday Camp, East Sussex in 2013, one music fan-in-residence jovially likened the rows of chalets and wandering music fans that inhabited them as being like some kind of ‘dystopian playground’. They didn’t realise the prescience of their reflection at the time. All Tomorrow’s Parties subsequently went down in an inglorious debt-ridden blaze after so many stellar festivals – events that took the holiday camp model and created a communal event where artist and punter stood on equal footing. They ate, drank, and slept together, got fucked up and came back down together; they…

  • The Thin Air’s Top 15 Irish EPs of 2017

    December 22, 2017 - By 

    Looking back at the sheer breath and wealth of EPs that were released from artists across the country this year made us giddy with joy and excitement. The boundless evolution of style, diversity, experimentation and confidence on display in 2017 was as momentous as we had ever seen or heard and, as such, narrowing this list down to 15 was no easy task. The following is a list of artists who we felt pushed themselves to new, ambitious heights and creative territories this year, who delivered both on record and in live settings and who proudly represented the fecund growth…

  • Mango & MathMan – Wheel Up

    December 13, 2017 - By 

    There’s a storm brewing on this island. For a nation of people who pride ourselves on our artists’ ability to twist and contort the English language masterfully, it’s surprising that our hip-hop scene has taken so long to come to fruition. Where in the past we would have had the likes of Messiah J and The Expert to represent us on the international stage, we’ve slowly but surely been building up a roster of top-tier artists. In recent years, Rejjie Snow, Kojaque, Hare Squead and Limerick’s Rusangano Family – to name but a handful –have proven without much doubt that we…

  • METZ Set For Whelan’s Return

    December 5, 2017 - By 

    Two years on from their barnstorming show in the same venue, Canadian noise rock trio METZ have announced that they’ll return to Dublin’s Whelan’s on May 1. The Toronto-based band released their third, Steve Albini-produced album, Strange Peace, via Sub Pop back in September. In his review of the album, TTA’s Cathal McBride said, “What it all adds up to is the band’s most complete and rewarding work to date.” Tickets for the Whelan’s go on sale this Thursday at 10am, priced €17.50.

  • Hüsker Dü – Savage Young Dü

    November 23, 2017 - By 

    We should all be eternally grateful to the Numero Group. Their tireless efforts to ensure that some of the great quasi-lost nuggets of our popular culture get rediscovered and granted a level of respect that they were deprived of upon their initial release. Their reissues and remasters are rich and varied, encompassing the likes of hardcore luminaries Unwound as well as forgotten soul star and transgender icon Jackie Shane. While the label has been working at an awe-inspiring level, they’ve recently outdone themselves. Savage Young Dü is a 69 track tome tracking the early years of the seminal Hüsker Dü, one…

  • Watch: The Elephant Room – Naive Green

    November 26, 2017 - By 

    Dublin trio The Elephant Room have shared a new track ‘Naive Green’. Having formed in January of this year, the band comprised of singer and guitarist Frank Shortle, bassist Shane Martin and drummer Ian Hand have already a string of singles under their belt and have been honing a sound that will resonate with anyone with a penchant for 90s indie rock and the lo-fi charm of slacker styles. Earlier singles ‘Brisco’ and ‘Ashes’ showed us a band with a precocious knack for a hook early in their nascence as a group. We previously drew comparisons between them and the likes of Sparklehorse and Wilco and…

  • Static Vision – What is and Now

    October 31, 2017 - By 

    We have to say – per capita, there’s no other town or city in Ireland producing DIY indie rock at the rate of Limerick. We’ve got Hot Cops in Belfast, Slouch in Dublin, but we can now happily add Static Vision‘s self-released 10-track debut to the likes of Eraser TV,  Cruiser, Anna’s Anchor, oh, and The Rubberbandits, to the city’s list of self-made accolades. Equal parts effervescent and slack, What is and Now is a stab of garage post-punk in the ’80s SST, Wipers-esque vein that could pass for an undiscovered proto-grunge gem from the midwest in 1989 fronted by a time-travelling Will Toledo, and having been…