His Father’s Voice live at DeBarras in Clonakilty, Cork. Photos by John Sheehy.
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The Staves live at Cyprus Avenue in Cork. Photos by Celeste Burdon
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Molly O’Mahony live at Levis Cornerhouse in Ballydehob, Cork. Photos by John Sheehy.
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Ireland has a strange, almost Lynchian relationship with country music. There are the Daniel O’Donnell/Nathan Carter/Garth Brooks die-hards, of course. This cohort is usually composed of people who grew up on westerns of the ’60s and ’70s, and came of age to the bizarre strings of the “Country and Irish” genre of music proliferated by the showband era. But interestingly there’s also a large chunk of millennials who were impacted (quite tragically) by Garth Brooks’ sold-out Croke Park concerts in the ’90s, and subsequently found themselves in some strange time-warp where youth clubs were teaching line dancing and the price…
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The word ‘shapeshifter’ loiters never too far from Cork experimentalist Arthur Itis, aka Arthur Pawsey, having cultivated a prismatic pop alter ego via a singular blend of electronics, psychedelia, looping & glitched-out Sun Araw-esque rhythms, and the avant-garde. Having released a truly accomplished LP in 2021 with Occam’s Razor (Art For Blind), he returns today with ‘I Wish I Was Here’ the first track from his forthcoming, altogether more minimalist, home-recorded new mini-album Longhand. Coloured with tape warbles, hiss, inbuilt reverb and a more traditional kind of homespun aesthetic, the tape method’s limited parameters enable Pawsey to strip back layers of the usual…
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Wild Youth live at Cyprus Avenue in Cork. Photos by Philip Corkery.
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A new music and comedy festival is coming to Cork. Courtesy of Coughlan’s Live Promotions – the good people behind the gem that is the Cork bar and venue of the same name – The Great Beyond will take place at the sublime 18th-century county mansion Ballinacurra House in Kinsale across Saturday, September 11 to Sunday, September 12. And the line-up is nothing to be sniffed, either. Across the two days, BellX1, Lisa Hannigan, The Frank & Walters, Wallis Bird, The Scratch, Marc O’Reilly, Bernard Casey, Laura O’Mahony, Naked Animals, Paddy Dennehy, Rowan, Ultan Conlon, Cry Monster Cry, Robert John Ardiff, Míde…
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Cork-based being Arthur Itis is back with more of his singular brand of esoteric, experimental bedroom-pop. Deconstructing any number of genres and effortlessly reanimating them in his own image in a lineage that traces lines through Beefheart, Devo, Ween and R Stevie Moore, he never fails to lean into the weirdness, even at his most accessible. Taken from his fifth LP, Occam’s Razor, earworming new single ‘Ahead of the Curve’ is no different, as Arthur’s character-inhabiting post-new wave gem marks his finest pop song yet. Set to feature appearances and contributions from Sam Clague, Altered Hours’ Cathal MacGabhann, Pretty Happy’s Abbey Blake, These Are Atoms’ Sara Leslie &…
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Just a couple of months on from their hugely successful ‘Salami’, Cork art-punk trio Pretty Happy are back with the video for new single ‘Sea Sea Sea’. While the dischordant rattles of NYC no-wave-inspired guitar drive things song along, tension is cranked between shrieked vocals of bassist Arann Blake – recalling Black Francis and David Byrne at their most effervescent – and a spoken word passage from guitarist/vocalist Abbey Blake. Positively owning its Irishness, ‘Sea Sea Sea’ is an at-times dadaist exploration of the nation’s chronic self-loathing and perpetual issues of queer identity and gender stereotyping. Its video – debuted in November’s Spilt Milk Festival – was…
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Much-loved Cork venue The Kino has permanently closed. The news was revealed today by Cork promoters and venue operators The Good Room, who took the lease of the performance and event venue in September 2019. Speaking about the closure of the space, located on Washington Street, The Good Room said, “Unfortunately we’ve made the difficult decision to close the Kino for good. We had come to a new agreement with the landlord recently to stay until the end of the summer. But due to the latest government extension of level 5 restrictions, we feel that it will likely be June or July…