• Album Premiere: Glimmermen – Breakin’ Out

    June 14, 2016 - By 

    Just last month we shared ‘Bang’, the lead single from Breakin’ Out, the new album by Dublin’s Glimmermen. Calling it a “markedly more linear yet no less distinct and ear-grabbing effort from the four-piece”, it reinforced our belief that the band – whose debut EP Satellite People caught our attention back in 2012 – had something different and potentially quite vital to their collective bow. As it so happens, Breakin’ Out confirms that fact in assured fashion, each of the release’s nine tracks threading together to form an effort where the major key and quietly emphatic cogitations on the everyday meld to…

  • Lisa Hannigan w/ Ye Vagabonds @ St Luke’s, Cork

    June 13, 2016 - By 

    “Scooch!” It’s getting towards the end of her powerful set at St. Luke’s in Cork and Lisa Hannigan is encouraging support band Ye Vagabonds to squeeze in a little bit closer to the microphone so they can all be heard on a beautifully harmonised take on the title track from her second album Passenger. A chuckle ripples through the reverent audience in the ornate and acoustically masterful old church before they quickly return to attentive silence. It’s a moment that tells you all you need to know about a Lisa Hannigan live performance as it exudes her endearing comfort, and…

  • Watch: Dublin Boiler Room

    June 9, 2016 - By 

    Headlined by one of the country’s most respected proponents of techno, Sunil Sharpe, the mighty Boiler Room made it’s highly-anticipated return to Dublin on Monday night with another stellar line-up of all-Irish electronic talent. As well as featuring TTA Cork favourite Elll, the night also featured live sets from hardware wizard DeFeKT, Daire Carolan & Sonel Ali. Miss out first time around? Watch all 4 hours and 38 minutes of it below.

  • Lisa Hannigan @ Black Box, Belfast

    June 9, 2016 - By 

    Despite initially making her name singing with Damien Rice throughout the height of his fame, it wasn’t until the end of that creative partnership that Lisa Hannigan really came into her own, beginning a solo career that saw her notch up impressively high profile TV appearances – none more impressive than an appearance on The Colbert Report – during a time when Rice had faded into the shadows. Although no new studio albums have been forthcoming since assured debut Sea Sew in 2008 and more mature follow up Passenger in 2011, she’s continued to expand an already impressive CV by…

  • Goat – I Sing in Silence

    June 1, 2016 - By 

    Swedish masked-psychedelic collective Goat last Friday dropped their latest 7″ on Sub Pop. I Sing In Silence, a concise release featuring two brilliantly experimental tracks, demonstrates just how far the eccentric group have grown since their formation back in 2012. The offbeat group’s distinctive sound fuses together elements of afrobeat, rock and folk, incorporating tribal drums and chants to create an inventive fusion of world music. The visionary project embraces music and culture from all corners of the globe, bringing aspects of them all together to create an intoxicating, otherworldly sound. The experimental group claim that the project stems from a long-running collective of townspeople from their hometown…

  • Stream: Majestic Bears – Does She Know?

    May 27, 2016 - By 

    Galway based folk trio Majestic Bears have been making audiences ‘ooo’ and ‘aaaa’ with modest consistency for the past while. While still in the early stages of their recording career, the group have displayed a knack for charming motifs and deft sincerity to keep the summery folk fan in all of us whistling all the way to the shops. Ahead of the release of their forthcoming EP on Citóg Records Julia in June, the group are premiering their track ‘Does She Know’ along with B-Side ‘The Devil’s in the Details’. Following from their 2014 release Poems Addressed to the Sea, their latest offering…

  • Watch: Glimmermen – Bang

    May 24, 2016 - By 

    “With refreshingly intelligent guitar work evoking both Television and Maps and Atlases, the four tracks on Satellite People are perhaps best surmised in the title track, a tidy hybrid of Mission of Burma circa Signals, Calls and Marches EP, Pop Group and early Captain Beefheart.” So read our time-confirmed verdict (in our previous guise of AU Magazine) of Satellite People, the debut EP by Dublin’s Glimmermen way back in 2012. Four years on – and three years since the release of their impressive debut album I’m Dead – the band have re-emerged with a new single, ‘Bang’. Taken from their forthcoming second album,…

  • Car Seat Headrest – Teens of Denial

    May 19, 2016 - By 

    Will Toledo sings “I’m so sick of: fill in the blank” on album opener ‘Fill in the Blank’ and that line sums up much of the content on Car Seat Headrest’s first full-band studio release. That line also could sum up the last week for Toledo too as he’s been encumbered by a copyright issue involving a sample of The Cars’ single ‘Just What I Needed’. In what could easily have encumbered a songwriter used to complete creative control and in his own words “working on an album right up to its drop date”. Toledo maintains his “everything is done…

  • Watch: Saint Sister – Madrid

    May 17, 2016 - By 

    Having formed in 2014, Irish folk-pop duo Gemma Doherty and Mortan MacIntyre AKA Saint Sister have covered considerable ground recently. With their very well-received debut EP Madrid recorded in a short, “intense” session with Alex Ryan of Hozier, the release’s title track has been granted a sublime visual accompaniment courtesy of Bob Gallagher featuring lead Orla MacIntyre and some wonderfully rugged Irish countryside. Saint Sister play the following UK date in May. May 16: Gaslight Club, Leeds May 17: The Louisiana, Bristol May 18: The Islington, London May 20: The Green Door Store, The Great Escape Festival, Brighton (8pm) May 21: The…