• Premiere: Zizou – After It’s Done

    March 17, 2021 - By 

    You might have come across Mathieu Doogan’s Zizou project last year when we waxed lyrical about debut single ‘Living On A Plateau‘. The Dublin-based artist is back with the contemplative ‘After It’s Done’. Charmingly homespun and low-key unpredictable, it recalls the indie folktronica of Chad VanGaalen or something from the early noughties years of Merge & Matador Records. Resplendent with Doogan’s signature baritone, freewheeling indie-jazz guitar noodling, organic keys and a range of acoustic textures, it begs for repeat listening. He told us more: “The song came about when I was experimenting with acoustic and electronic instruments, trying to make banjos, violins and synths complement each other. Lyrically, the…

  • EP Premiere: Naoise Roo – Sick Girlfriend

    April 23, 2020 - By 

    With singles drip-fed over the course of the last year, we’ve been patiently anticipating the extended follow-up to Naoise Roo‘s masterful debut album Lilith for some time now. Finally, with the cosmos’ on-brand sense of blackly comic timing very much in tact, the Sick Girlfriend EP is out tomorrow. A fully-formed statement that, across just four snapshots, embraces life in all its ugliness and challenges the accountable norms within the industry. Alongside producer Liam Mulvaney, bassist Daniel Fox & Rian Trench on drums & synth, she ably treads the line between emotionally-driven textural experimentation without forgoing her ability to create gargantuan introvert’s pop banger. Much like the subversive, zeitgeist-capturing album of 2020 in Fiona Apple’s Fetch…

  • EP Stream: Aul Boy – Making Strange

    February 28, 2020 - By 

    Everyone’s favourite rural slack power-pop escapists, Ramelton’s Aul Boy are back with new EP Making Strange. As ever, the wry quartet, led by Fionn Robinson, runs the gamut from jangle-pop ditties to experimental pocket orchestras [the masterful ‘Buttercup’]. Recorded at Donegal’s Attica Studios by Orri McBrearty, with some wonderful artwork from Daniel McGarrigle, it’s available on digitally & on CD. Aul Boy launch Making Strange tonight at Bennigan’s, Derry, and tomorrow night at Letterkenny’s Swilly Inn. Making Strange by Aul Boy

  • A Litany of Failures Announce Volume III and Fundraising Gig

    October 21, 2019 - By 

    After triumphant failures in 2018 and 2016, A Litany Of Failures – an independent, cross-border compilation series featuring the best in alternative Irish music – is back.  Ahead of another double-vinyl release in July 2020, A Litany Of Failures is curating a series of fundraiser gigs around Ireland. These will feature the curdled cream of the indie scene, with the first gig taking place on Friday 25th October in JaJa Studios in Stoneybatter, Dublin 7.  A BYOB show, music on the night comes from Belfast indie psych quartet Junk Drawer – check out their NI Music Prize-nominated single ‘Year of the Sofa‘ – the Paddy Hanna fronted…

  • Video Premiere: Van Panther – The Cutters

    August 14, 2019 - By 

    With each act imprinting its own singular identity with the backing of a supportive community operating completely in tandem, we’ve already waxed lyrical on how the fecund Limerick music scene is Ireland’s musical petri dish. Van Panther are one such act, marrying technicolour pop immediacy with jagged post-punk revivalism. New single ‘The Cutters’ is as tight-knit and pristinely crafted without losing the warm, lo-fi charm of its predecessors, and is taken from forthcoming EP Overcast, following up on 2016’s Café van Hemel and 2017’s Hark! The EP was played by, recorded & produced by band founder Kieran Ralph. “Musically, the song is basically a look at the meld between guitar-based music and…

  • Album Stream: Regret Will Come – Regret Will Come

    February 13, 2019 - By 

    We didn’t know about this until yesterday, but thanks to a rare bit of social algorithmic fortune, we’re sharing with you the new, self-titled album from lo-fi bedroom indie project Regret Will Come. At times a catch-all Bandcamp postcard of a solitary bedroom life unlived in the vein of early (Sandy) Alex G – see: ‘Tainaka’ – and at times vulnerably discordant and slowcore – there’s Duster all over ‘Akari’ – it was seemingly made to fit on the dynamic shelves of Exploding In Sound Records or some other unheard-of indie label out in the American midwest. Regret Will Come is comprised solely of Co. Monaghan auteur Fintan Gallagher, who writes, plays and…

  • Malojian announces Let Your Weirdness Carry You Home Deluxe Edition

    October 3, 2018 - By 

    The latest NI Music Prize-nominated album from Stephen Scullion, aka Malojian is getting a much-deserved deluxe edition. Released through Quiet Arch Records on November 30, it’s his fourth solo album, and his strongest collection of songs to date, injecting the golden era of 60s pop melodicism he’s known for with the perfect power-pop of Teenage Fanclub & Grandaddy, as well as a more experimental, psychedelic edge than we’d seen from him until this point. Recorded in a lighthouse on NI’s Rathlin Island – in contrast to its Steve Albini-recorded predecessor, it features guest performances from a pedigreed cast of collaborators – Teenage Fanclub’s Gerard Love, Beck/R.E.M./Atoms For…

  • The Wood Burning Savages – Stability

    April 23, 2018 - By 

    This Friday, April 27, a debut album that’s long been one of NI’s most anticipated, The Wood Burning Savages finally sees its release. Between its effervescent indie rock and vitriol-turned-punk-anthem, the quartet are seemingly set to posit themselves as spiritual and sonic successors to the proudly socialist, alternative punk torch long-carried by the Manic Street Preachers. Debut LP Stability was produced by Start Together’s Rocky O’Reilly and mastered by Robin Schmidt. Derry-born frontman Paul Connolly has the following to say on the release of the album: “A collection of songs about a working class furious at years of empty promises from billionaire Tory MPs who have no…

  • Video Premiere: The Wood Burning Savages – I Don’t Know Why I Do It To Myself

    April 19, 2018 - By 

    Just over a week from the release of a debut album that’s long been one of NI’s most anticipated, The Wood Burning Savages have just dropped a surprise video for single ‘I Don’t Know Why I Do It To Myself’. The video accompanies another rock anthem from an act seemingly set to posit themselves as spiritual and sonic successors to the proudly socialist, alternative punk torch long-carried by the Manic Street Preachers. Minimal, but effective, we see frontman Paul Connolly stroll from inauspicious, disenfranchised beginnings through to the coke-fuelled neoliberal dream – think Ken Loach taking a shortcut through Jordan Belfort. Debut LP Stability was produced by Start Together’s Rocky O’Reilly and…

  • David Kitt – Still Don’t Know EP

    January 18, 2018 - By 

    Preceding the March release of his eighth studio album, Dublin indie craftsman David Kitt has just released four-track EP, Still Don’t Know. An extension of the lead single from new album, Yous – out in March – the EP is out via All City Records on 10″, available to buy here in a limited run. Described by Kitt as “a travelogue within a dream, a jump-cut journey that crosses the globe. It’s one of those dreams you don’t want to wake from, where you want to go back under to piece the finer details together” it’s a soothing, typically stellar effort from the chameleonic Dubliner, who, since…