• Brigid Mae Power – The Two Worlds

    February 13, 2018 - By 

      We’re all guilty of living between two worlds. Personal and private, work and leisure, pre “this” and post “that” comprise just a few. God forbid should they ever crossover; most of us fight losing battles to keep them apart, whether the consequences are trivial or something much darker. Brigid Mae Power does not seem to be such a person though. The Galway based singer-songwriter runs at her demons head-on throughout her third full length album The Two Worlds, and the fallout of such a collision is a staggering beauty to behold. Under the support of the #MeToo movement, Power recently…

  • MGMT – Little Dark Age

    February 10, 2018 - By 

    MGMT are back, a decade after their acclaimed debut Oracular Spectacular was released, and five years after their convoluted self-titled made its way onto the airwaves. After their initial success, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser barrel rolled into a neo-psychedelic space that alienated the majority of their followers. This, of course, would have been a respectable, admirable decision from the duo had they produced something half-decent in that case. No one expected 2010’s Congratulations, an album that left the fans who revelled in the hooks and fist-pumps of ‘Kids’ and ‘Time To Pretend’ abandoned in a pit of half-baked, self-indulgence that aspired…

  • Franz Ferdinand  – Always Ascending

    February 9, 2018 - By 

    After the Glasgow School of Art was severely damaged by fire in 2014, it was argued that the extensive coverage afforded to this incident was greater than the actual public interest in the Mackintosh-designed institution itself. Some bands, burdened by instant debut success, similarly linger long in the memory of music critics long after the record-buying public has moved on. Enter one-time art school alumni Franz Ferdinand, who have managed to side-step the indie landfill of the mid-noughties by releasing five solid albums (six if we’re including the 2015 collaboration with Sparks) of arch art-pop. And still, they command considerable…

  • Efrim Menuck – Pissing Stars

    February 8, 2018 - By 

    Montreal’s Efrim Menuck casts a long, deep shadow over contemporary experimental rock music. If you need a demonstration of that fact, listen to the first three Godspeed You! Black Emperor albums and get good and lost in them for a while. Separate to this, his work with Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra is a notable cut above many of his peers. Every album he’s touched is coated in his fingerprints. It’s surprising then, given his longevity and influence, that he has only two solo efforts. The second of which he has just released after a seven-year gap. Pissing Stars…

  • Hookworms – Microshift

    February 6, 2018 - By 

    Earlier in the decade, it felt like Hookworms were among the leading lights of the modern psych scene, but the gap since the one-two-punch of their first two LPs Pearl Mystic and The Hum in 2013 and 2014 respectively has been uncharacteristic. Having remained on the live circuit – including a storming pair of Irish gigs in 2016 – their studio output has been held up by both the flooding of frontman MJ’s studio in late 2015 and a more general desire to slow down and take their sound somewhere new, rather than continue repeating the formulas of their earlier…

  • Justin Timberlake – Man of the Woods

    February 6, 2018 - By 

      There’s nothing wrong with wanting to get in touch with your roots. There comes a point in everyone’s life when they feel the need to look back; to examine the past in order to know how to deal with the future. Justin Timberlake is in such a mood. And, unfortunately for us, he’s not afraid to shout about it. It’s not surprising that, after recently becoming a father, JT would be feeling rather “homely”. In the teaser trailer for Man of the Woods, Timberlake states “This album is really inspired by my son, my wife, my family, but more…

  • Various Artists – Quare Groove Vol. 1

    February 2, 2018 - By 

    In the late 70s and early 80s the Irish charts were rife with blokes brandishing electric guitars, the likes of Queen, Dire Straits and The Police all consistently taking the top spot in singles charts. It was clear that rock music ruled the roost. Meanwhile over in the states, Americans were by and large still enjoying funk and R&B laced pop from the likes of The Bee Gees and Stevie Wonder.  Although this groove based music didn’t make half as much of a dent in the Irish charts, a new collection of underground Irish groove tracks from the Dublin based record label All City shows that Irish music in the late 70s and early 80s…

  • Django Django – Marble Skies

    January 26, 2018 - By 

    Anyone who has ever been in a band knows the importance that power dynamics play. The internal struggle is one fought by most members and often glamorised by talking heads in music documentaries. Were they the ‘quiet one’ or the ‘egotist’? The “fight-starter” or “facilitator”? Such stereotypes don’t seem to apply to Django Django. The four-piece formed at the Edinburgh College of Arts feel closer to the proper meaning of a “band” – they feel like a collective. Vincent Jeff provides those quintessential reverb-soaked vocals; Jimmy Dixon the harmonies that give the band “their” sound; Tommy Grave the synths that offer…

  • Belle & Sebastian – How to Solve Our Human Problems Pt. 2

    January 25, 2018 - By 

    In 1996, Belle & Sebastian recorded, mixed and released two albums; Tigermilk in June and If You’re Feeling Sinister in November. Both highly acclaimed releases from the band which remain as firm favourites amongst their fans, they were both made within the confines of a week long period. On each occasion, Stuart Murdoch came to the studio with a notebook full of lyrics inspired by the lives of ordinary people and introduced us to an array of characters in different scenarios. Along the way, we acquire intimate details about their circumstances, reflecting the dreary backdrop of the time and town…

  • 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…