• My Tribe Your Tribe – Loyalties

    May 25, 2016 - By 

    Hailing from Kildare, My Tribe Your Tribe – not to be confused with I Have a Tribe – are expanding their fan base after an impressively productive 2015. The self-professed alt-rock trio, comprised of George Mercer, Tod Doyle and Colm Daffy, have continued to build the foundations of a promising trajectory, their songs steadily finding their way as the unique blueprint of My Tribe Your Tribe’s sound. Earlier this month they released their debut EP, Loyalties, a darkly melodic collection of compositions that are not entirely expected to co-exist, yet simultaneously work together. It is hard to comprehensively retrace the…

  • Ciaran Lavery – Let Bad In

    May 19, 2016 - By 

    With his rumpled suit, rural back-story, and battered guitar, not to mention the genre-hopping back catalogue and considerable streaming success it appears to be so far, so peak-beard for Ciaran Lavery. On his second full-length album Let Bad In, the Aghagallon singer-songwriter seamlessly welds together hip-hop beats, chamber balladry and soulful pop across ten addictively melodic tracks that demand repeated plays. This genre-hopping could sound calculating and impersonal but the album is more than held together by that glorious voice. Lavery’s enunciated delivery on album highlight ‘Return to Form’ transforms into a soulful rasp by the time the chorus comes round. This…

  • 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…

  • Mark Pritchard – Under the Sun

    May 19, 2016 - By 

    Over the course of two decades and with a myriad of monikers under the bridge, Mark Pritchard’s albums, short releases and collaborations have ventured from genre to genre with consistent zeal and originality. From his early ambient work with Tom Middleton as Global Communications to his equally dizzying veers into footwork, hip-hop, house, and grime, Pritchard’s music has been defined by its subtle complexity and shifts in identity and artistic base. Since 2013 however, Pritchard has settled for his releases being put out under his own name; something which, despite seeming like but a small change, has led to a…

  • Islands – Taste

    May 18, 2016 - By 

    From the ashes of The Unicorns came Islands, one sonically eccentric band’s demise giving rise to a new vehicle for mainstay Nick Thorburn’s endless imagination for quirky melodies and wry lyricism. Taste marks the sixth album for the band, but what is most remarkable about this release is that it’s being released simultaneously with their seventh album, Should I Remain Here At Sea? – our review of which you can read here. So, two records, one release date; the former an exploration of synth-based electro pop, the latter an indie pop record more in keeping with Islands’ invigorating debut album from 2006. Drum machines, programming and…

  • Islands – Should I Remain Here at Sea?

    May 18, 2016 - By 

    It was a bittersweet thing when The Unicorns disbanded in 2004 after releasing one of the most fun records by anyone, ever. The trio’s paths diverged. Alden Penner trucked on as a solo artist before forming Clues a few years later, while Nicholas Thorburn and Jamie Thompson kept ‘er lit, forming two groups at once – the short-lived hip-hop outfit Th’ Corn Gangg, and Islands. One thing that was clear from Islands’ debut Return To The Sea and their subsequent run of records was that The Unicorns’ eccentricities, about-turns, and canny knack for an earworm were as much down to his colleagues – and Thorburn in…

  • White Lung – Paradise

    May 17, 2016 - By 

    In recent years, there is a marked shift in the ideal of pop-punk. What was once a, pretty justifiably, derided sub-genre, now has an odd cult-like following surrounding it. Swing over to Tumblr and see a devotion that seems so alien for a musical classification who shining stars are Blink 182, Sum 41 and Green Day. Fun bands in their own right but they’re not the kind who’d inspire Rush levels of dedication. Within that too there is an idea that this category is under some kind of threat that it needs to be “defended”. But what’s so odd is…

  • Twin Peaks – Down in Heaven

    May 16, 2016 - By 

    If the stage-diving garage rockers The Orwells seem determined to re-live the late 60s anarchy of the MC5 and The Sonics, their fellow Chicagoans Twin Peaks seem happy to champion the more genteel sounds of that era. Guitarist Clay Frankel has spoken of the how a trilogy of 1968 records, The Beatles’ White Album, The Stones’ Beggar’s Banquet and The Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society were key influences in the recording of new album Down In Heaven, and the folkier pastures of the British bands’ work has seemed to guide Twin Peaks to deliver a fine set of bittersweet, summery guitar pop just in time for…

  • ANOHNI – Hopelessness

    May 12, 2016 - By 

    For her first release since disbanding Antony and the Johnsons, Anohni has changed not just her name, but her sound as well. Gone are the doleful torch ballads of Antony and the Johnsons (1998) and I am a Bird Now (2005), and the intricate chamber arrangements of The Crying Light (2009) and Swanlights (2010). In their place are electronic soundscapes rooted in the sensibilities of the record’s two producers – the harder edges of Hudson Mohawke marrying surprisingly easily with the more amorphous textures of Oneohtrix Point Never. The change of sound is drastic, but arguably necessary, Antony and the Johnsons having proceeded to a logical…

  • Radiohead – A Moon Shaped Pool

    May 11, 2016 - By 

    There is a certain degree of futility in reviewing a new Radiohead album. Although the term is thrown around quite loosely, it could be convincingly argued that Radiohead are legitimately a ‘critic-proof’ band and nothing that a bespectacled, pseudo-musical aficionado can say will affect anyone’s views. There is a good possibility that everyone reading this has already secured, listened to and devised their own opinion of the disc and its relative merits and is simply reading this as a form of validation. So since the majority of you have already digested it, let’s get the obvious question out of the…