• Album Premiere: Perlee – Speaking From Other Rooms

    April 21, 2023 - By 

    Four years this October, occasional TTA writer – and acclaimed Irish in her own right – Maija Sofia introduced the sublime dream-pop of Perlee. Comprising Saramai Leech and Cormac O’Keefe, the Navan-bred, Berlin-based duo have since carved out their space via Half Seen Figure and Slow Creature, two EPs distilling their finely-woven dream-pop craft to four each tracks each. Today, the pair underscore the status as one of the country’s most singular talents. Exploring “unconditional love, the banality of a capitalist society, destiny and self-realisation,” Speaking from Other Rooms is a debut LP that feels widescreen and prismatic in equal measure. Featuring highlights including lead single ‘Lampshade’, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs-inspired ‘Reckoning’…

  • LP Premiere + Q+A: Kilian O’Kelly – Luzhny’s Layer

    November 6, 2020 - By 

    It’s been a busy couple of years for Dublin-based guitarist, Kilian O’Kelly. In between joining Girl Band for a few dates on their 2019 tour, releasing a critically acclaimed debut record Fad with his band Silverbacks this past summer and setting up an independent label, Central Tones, he somehow managed to find time to write and record an exceptionally dynamic solo album entitled Luzhny’s Layer. The instrumentally-led body of work contains multitudes across nineteen immersive arrangements. Within, O’Kelly conveys a myriad of moods via floating guitar riffs, unnerving string accompaniments and utterly magical piano lines all masterfully performed. It ventures…

  • Album Premiere: Our Krypton Son – Modern Ruins

    July 10, 2020 - By 

    Three years on from the release of his NI Music Prize-nominated second album Fleas & Diamonds, Derry singer-songwriter Chris McConaghy aka Our Krypton Son has unveiled highly-anticipated follow-up, Modern Ruins. Underscoring his status as one of the country’s most compelling songwriting voices — a singular breed of artist wielding subtlety and heart-stung harmonic sensibility as a second nature — Modern Ruins is a rare feat of the soul, marrying pure-cut candour and elegy with finely-woven song. Headed with lead single ‘White Sun’, the album unfurls across nine tracks, each as exploratory and lambent as the next. But it’s the sheer scope of…

  • Album Stream: Bleeding Heart Pigeons – Stir

    May 22, 2020 - By 

    While it’s early days yet, Limerick’s Bleeding Heart Pigeons have just made their claim to one of the Irish albums of the year. Arriving four years on from their debut album Is, Stir was written and recorded in a small converted farm-shed in rural West Limerick and finds the threesome in alchemical form. From opener, the sorcerous ‘Bubble Boy’ to closer ‘Good Dogs Never Die’ – a track that doubles up as one of many peaks on display here – it emphatically consolidates the Michael Keating-fronted band’s forward-pushing alt/indie craft down to twelve tracks. Stir by Bleeding Heart Pigeons

  • Album Premiere: Eoin Dolan – Commander of Sapiens

    November 22, 2019 - By 

    On his third full-length LP, Commander of Sapiens, Galway musician Eoin Dolan underscores his status as one of the country’s finest songwriters. Conjuring everyone from Animal Collective to the Beach Boys, songs like ‘Microship Visions’ and ‘Sheena’ meld starry-eyed harmonies and cosmic wanderlust with masterfully woozy refrains and sublime melancholia to deliver nine tracks of first-rate, surf-influenced sci-fi pop. Released in proud association with Galway-based collective Citóg and featuring long term collaborators Conor Deasy (guitar), James Casserly (drums) and Adam Sheeran (bass), the album wonderfully veers between themes including environmental destruction, mass consumerism and human cybernetics. Surely you’re sold by now? Stream it…

  • Album Premiere: Jogging – Whole Heart

    October 31, 2019 - By 

    We’ve premiered our fair share of albums here on The Thin Air, but – if truth be told – we’re struggling to recall one that we’ve loved so much, and so quickly, as Whole Heart by Dublin three-piece Jogging. The long-awaited follow-up to 2012’s Take Courage, it’s an emphatic (and rather heavier) ten-track return from Darren Craig, Gerard Mangan and Ronan Jackson. Out today via one of the country’s finest imprints, Out On a Limb, the album was engineered and produced by John “Spud” Murphy and Ian Chestnutt at Guerrilla Sound Studios in Dublin at the start of the year. To mark…

  • Album Premiere: Barry Wilson – Portrait

    September 18, 2019 - By 

    Never more than in the past few years has our national affinity for groove-laden jazz, funk & soul become something whose re-evaluation was overdue, what with Vulfpeck becoming one of Ireland’s adopted sons, and traditional offshoot, The Ollam. Over that same timeframe, multi-instrumentalist and composer Barry Wilson has been steadfastly crafting debut album, Portrait. Recorded across a multitude of studios in Ireland and Portugal, and featuring over 20 collaborators, it’s a focused, but eclectic collection of funk & neo-soul which feels emblematic of the spiritual ties between modern Ireland and soulful, intricately composed fusion. Portrait‘s initial recordings took place in Grawa Sound Studio in Porto, with…

  • Album Premiere: Larry – Larry

    April 26, 2019 - By 

    Of the myriad Irish debuts that we’ve been itching to wrap our ears around in 2019, the self-titled first album from Dundalk’s Larry must surely rank up with the most eagerly-anticipated Comprising guitarist and vocalist Joey Edwards, bassist Aoife Ward and drummer David Noonan, also of Just Mustard, the band opted record with none other than Steve Albini at Chicago’s Electrical Audio last September. The result is a nine-track release that not only bears the imprint of indie rock trailblazers Sparklehorse, Wilco, Courtney Barnett and Pixies: it’s a record that finds Larry, assured and inspired, carving out special territory within the…

  • Album Premiere: Fixity – No Man Can Tell

    April 4, 2019 - By 

    Of the myriad forward-pushing acts we’ve featured over the years, Cork polymath Dan Walsh’s Fixity remains a singular and uniquely exploratory proposition. Backed by a revolving cast of sonic conspirators, the bandleader and multi-instrumentalist has carved out a uniquely collaborative niche driven by fierce extemporization. Released via the ever-reliable Penske Recordings on April 12, Walsh and an extended cast of Irish and international musicians weave new mastery on Fixity’s second album, No Man Can Tell. Produced by the Altered Hours’ Patrick Cullen, it’s a six-track featuring a veritable dream-team: Emil Nerstrand on flute and tenor sax, Kevin Terry on guitar and…

  • Album Premiere: Empire Circus – Tí

    January 31, 2019 - By 

    Dublin quartet Empire Circus are a band whose accessible, yet eclectic indie-pop craft bears the imprint of influences including Wilco, Beck, The War on Drugs, R.E.M. and even early Peter Gabriel (always a plus in our eyes Founded in 2012, their self-titled debut album – which was released in September of 2013 – confined within its twelve tracks real promise, and an FM-leaning, carefully-crafted sound that hinted at something more substantial with the passing of time and the creative maturation that accompanies that. Tomorrow (February 1) the band release its long-awaited follow-up, Tí. And sure enough, it’s a cohesive and accomplished release that trims Empire…