• Watch: Villagers – Everything I Am Yours

    April 13, 2015 - By 

    Showing one man’s sad spiral of rejection on city streets, Villagers’ video for ‘Everything I Am Yours’ is a harrowing yet remarkably touching supplement to one of the highlights from their new album, Darling Arithmetic. Directed by Jeremy Thraves – responsible for videos for the likes of Radiohead’s Just, Blur’s Charmless Man and Sam Smith’s Stay With Me – the video cuts between the aforementioned struggle – one man’s desire for love and to be loved – and footage of Conor O’Brien performing the song on guitar, drums and piano. Make sure to check out our main interview feature with O’Brien in the current issue of…

  • Watch: The Wood Burning Savages – Lather, Rinse, Repeat

    April 7, 2015 - By 

    Derry alt-rock quartet The Wood Burning Savages aren’t exactly ones to slack with their music videos. Take the engaging, narrative-driven visual accompaniments to previous singles ‘Boom’ and ‘America’ – two strong, wonderfully considered videos that really manage to drive Paul Connolly’s words home. Directed by Cillian Farrell and Sonni Ross , the band have just went one better with the video for new single ‘Lather, Rinse, Repeat’, an instantly captivating accompaniment to a track bursting with upbeat gusto and eager flair. Check that out below.

  • Watch: White Sage – Parnell Street June 1955

    April 7, 2015 - By 

    When he’s not busy running Dublin’s newest record shop, Little Gem Records or performing as part of both I Heart The Monster Hero and GODHATESDISCO, Andy Walsh has been concocting his own inimitable, solo sonic wizardry as White Sage. The first manifestation of that is the perfectly phantasmal Way Beyond our Means, a Kraut-echoing, decidedly experimental quartet of tracks, including lead single ‘Parnell Street June 1955’. Evoking the likes of Neu! and Fujiya and Miyagi, the track swaggers forth with its chugging groove, broad synth shapes and twinkling notes marrying in a swirl of blissed-out haze. Watch the simple yet very…

  • Watch: Swimmers – Lose Myself

    April 7, 2015 - By 

    Dublin’s Niall Jackson is as chameleonic and active a musician that you’re ever liable to meet. A member of the likes of Bouts – not to mention the man behind recent homeless charity supergroup Christmas Hearts – Jackson also fronts three-piece Swimmers, who launch their new EP, The Burning Circus, upstairs in Whelan’s on Saturday, April 25. The lead single from that is ‘Lose Myself’, a drifting, nostalgia-laced ode to personal freedom and wanderlust of the soul, recorded by Justin Commins of Kill Krinkle Club. Go here for the EP launch’s Facebook event page and stream the single below.

  • Watch: Imploded View – Subliminal Summer

    March 30, 2015 - By 

    Taken from his forthcoming album, Longford producer Jerome McCormick AKA Imploded View has released a wonderfully woozy slice of throwback electro-pop, ‘Subliminal Summer’. With his vocals taken centre-stage, it’s a pretty linear and cunningly straightforward effort, hinting at some promising stuff for the album.

  • Album premiere: Túcan – Towers

    March 31, 2015 - By 

    With its launch set for Dublin’s Button Factory on Saturday night, we’re pleased to present a first listen to Towers, an album that confirms the hugely impressive metamorphosis of Sligo’s Túcan. A masterclass in perfectly-honed, brilliantly realised instrumentalism, the album straddles the fine line between decidedly soundtrack-like Cinematic Orchestra-esque post-rock and trad-inflected mini-symphonies. Having been steadily developing and spearheading progression in their guitar-led sound over the last twelve months, the eight-piece have delivered a record brimming with integrity, imagination and daring, capturing the thrill of their scintillating live show in the process. Stream Towers below.

  • Stream: Girls Names – Zero Triptych

    March 26, 2015 - By 

    Having released a teaser a couple of weeks back, Girls Names have re-emerged with eleven-minute post-punk odyssey in three parts, ‘Zero Triptych’. Set for 12″ release via Tough Love, the track – bearing an expansive, evolving sound a million miles from the surf-pop of their 2011 debut album, Dead To Me – is inspired by the band’s discovery of the Group Zero art movement, a group of artists founded by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene. Speaking to the Fader, the Cathal Cully-fronted band said: “[This] is our ode to the masters of light and shade – Mack, Piene and Uecker aka…

  • Stream: Paddy Hanna – Austria

    March 25, 2015 - By 

    Just over a year on from released the exquisite Leafy Stiletto – one of our Irish albums of 2014 no less – Dublin’s Paddy Hanna has returned in something of a new guise with ‘Austria’, a jangle-pop mini-masterstroke evoking the likes of Morrissey, The Divine Comedy and Elvis Costello. There’s also a vague hint of Joe Dolan in there too but we’ll pretend we didn’t hear that. Or will we? Anyway, we’re very fond of ‘Austria’ and wouldn’t even remotely kick up a fuss if Hanna deciding to dander down this sonic path for an eon and an age. Paired with a b-side,…

  • EP Premiere: R51 – Pillow Talk

    March 23, 2015 - By 

    Belfast-based quintet R51 have come on leaps and bounds over the last couple of years. Having cultivated a perfectly pulverizing live show and an effects-laden, shoegaze-tinged noise-pop craft that continues to surprise and intrigue, the Melyssa Shannon-fronted quartet will launch their debut EP, Pillow Talk, at Belfast’s Bar Sub on Wednesday night (April 25). In his review of the EP for the Thin Air, Will Murphy said, “Each one of the songs has something to recommend, be it the Sigur Ros vibe permeating throughout the EP closer, ‘Seaweed’, the spaced out verses on ‘I Hate That Too’ or the monstrously huge chorus on ‘Pillow…