Four months on from releasing easily one of the Irish EPs of the year – the superb, sci-fi-tinged four-tracker Superior Fiction – Galway singer-songwriter Eoin Dolan is back with one of modern music’s big aberrations: a legitimately great Christmas single. Marrying sleigh bells and heady surf melodies with killer indie-pop lo-fidelity, it’s almost certainly the only festive single from an Irish artist that you should bother checking out this year.
Gnarkats’ knack for blending burrowing, star-shaped melodies with low-end riffs saw them emerge as one of Ireland’s best alt-indie bands this year. Citing the likes of Fidlar, St. Vincent and fellow Belfast-based band, And So I Watch You From Afar, as key influences, Jordan Evans, Stuart Robinson and Louis Nelson are back with their final song of the year, ‘Take Me Away’. A re-recording of an old fan favourite, the single – which comes accompanied with a wonderfully DIY video, which you can watch below – was recorded and mixed by Stuart Robinson from the band.
Back in January, we featured Kerry experimental folk artist Ronan Kealy AKA Junior Brother as one of our ones to watch in 2018. From making his mark at Electric Picnic, Metropolis, Other Voices and elsewhere, to being lined up for a spin on Cillian Murphy’s BBC 6Music show on December 23, he has made good on the promise and then some Sealing the deal on a very busy year – one that was spun into motion via last year’s ‘Hungover at Mass‘ – is the serene and singular ‘The Back of Her’. It’s a wistful and unravelling heart-stung paean that distils the essence of Kealy’s craft to…
The country’s largest annual music conference, Output Belfast will return to the city for its fifth outing on Thursday, February 21st 2019. Organised by Belfast City Council, as ever, the conference will include various panel discussions, music sessions, workshops and speed networkinge events from various artists, managers and industry figures. In the evening, there will once more be various free, collaboratively-curated showcases in venues right across the heart of the city. The line-ups for each – including a bill co-promoted by yours truly – will be revealed in the coming weeks. Go here to sign up and be the first to hear about…
Strange, desperate times call for great, defiant music. Fighting their corner, and sounding the best they have ever sounded, is the re-emergent Squarehead. Comprising Roy Duffy, Ruan Van Vliet and Ian McFarlane, the Dublin indie-rock heroes are back after a lengthy, self-proclaimed “mental-health break” (always a good shout, busy artists) with a brand new album in the can. Featuring sometime fourth member, Ruadhan O’Meara (No Spill Blood/Magic Pockets) on keyboards and synth duties, lead single, the sublime ‘Always On’ sees “the boys now men with crippling responsibilities and a feeling of bewilderment at the world around them.” It’s quintessential Squarehead and a latecomer for one of the Irish singles…
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Belfast’s A Bad Cavalier. The side-project of the Niall Kennedy – who has been busy once again this year zig-zagging across the world in And So I Watch You From Afar – went off the radar in mid 2016. Now, Kennedy is back with one beast of a new single – the irresistible, pop-leaning, Weezer-conjuring alt-indie anthem, ‘On My Side’. Have an exclusive first listen to the single, and keep up to speed with ABC’s second wind via a quick Q+A with Kennedy, below. Tell us more about the writing of ‘On…
Cork indie-psych outfit Any Joy have just unveiled the new video for new single ‘The Fall’. Soaked in reverb, it’s another out-of-focus opiate drip to distract from more pointed undertones. Following the band’s aesthetic & musical thread of reccurent patterns, the video was created by frontman Oisin Dineen. Of the track, the band says “It’s a soundtrack to a potential self-sabotage and ultimate demise. It could be an appropriate theme tune for the current state of affairs across the Irish sea.” ‘The Fall’ comes from Any Joy’s new EP – due out next year – following up on their excellent & hugely underappreciated 2017 debut LP Cycles and this summer’s ‘Sucker‘ from A Litany of Failures…
We might’ve just shared the mobile video for ‘Scofflaw // Sisyphus‘, but Dublin quartet That Snaake have upped their satire game with an merry offering of paranoia & nihilism, barely concealed by the Incesticide-era Nirvana & Wipers-recalling sludge-punk it calls a gift wrap. Dripping with references to history & pop culture – high and low-brow – it paraphrases Cabaret’s ‘Mein Herr’, about collective myopia blinding us to the rise of fascism in inter-war Germany, before the narrator takes us through questions of what’s missing in their life, and the Darth Maul costume they wore at Christmas. As the band – some of the most underappreciated burrowers Ireland has of the neuroses of the human…
By all accounts one of the highlights at Other Voices in Dingle at the weekend, Belfast-based singer-songwriter Rory Nellis is riding a real wave of momentum at the moment. It’s something that’s just been underscored with his new single, ‘The Fear’ – a track that doubles up as arguably the songsmith’s most assured – and inspired – single effort to date. Now, the song comes pair with a sublime and wonderfully stripped-back video, courtesy of Belfast photographer and videographer Joe Laverty. Also featuring songwriter and Nellis’ fellow sonic conspirator Philip Watts d’Alton, you can watch it below. On Thursday night, Rory…
Just when we couldn’t conceive of Cork-based musician Laurie Shaw being any more prolific, he’s only went and started a new side-project, Foolish Mortal. And boy are we glad. Though it’s rare that we copy and paste big, wordy press releases, it gives us no shortage of pleasure to share the following wonderful spiel, along with a very first listen to the new project’s equal parts fuzzed-out and earhole-burrowing lead single, ‘Girl Talk’. The self-titled Foolish Mortal debut is out via Sunshine Cult records on December 12. “This album goes a little deeper than the white hot fuzz you can hear. The…