• Stream: Slow Place Like Home – Shadowcat

    January 26, 2018 - By 

    Late last year, Donegal’s Keith Mannion AKA Slow Place Like Home gifted the world with one of the strongest and most uniquely inspired Irish albums of the year. Released via Galway’s Strange Brew Rekkids, When I See You… Ice Cream! offered many peaks, not least in the form of its fourth single, ‘Shadowcat’. Reworked for today’s standalone release, the track’s submerged electro weaves a spell out of Mannion’s vocals, slithering synth patterns and some sublime, flittering beats. Accompanying the single release is a remix of SPLH track ‘Falesia’ by Andrew Morrison AKA The Cyclist. Do yourself a favour and delve into both below. Slow Place Like…

  • Premiere: Alana Henderson – Let This Remain (Live at the Telegraph Building)

    January 25, 2018 - By 

    Released in November last year, ‘Let This Remain’ by Alana Henderson perfectly distils the Belfast-based cellist and singer-songwriter’s carefully-composed, wonderfully idiosyncratic craft. Revealing the nuance and intimate nature of the song is a new video courtesy of Belfast photographer and filmmaker Joe Laverty. Directed and edited by Laverty – with additional camera work from Jude McCaffrey and Sharon Whittaker, and colour grading from Malachy Campbell – the video features Henderson performing the song with accompaniment from Pleasure Beach’s Alan Haslam at the Belfast Telegraph building, a stark, towering space that has since been reawakened as a venue. Unsurprisingly, the performance is nothing short of utterly…

  • 18 for ’18: Pillow Queens

    January 22, 2018 - By 

    We continue 18 for ’18, our feature of showcasing eighteen Irish acts we’re convinced are going places in 2018. Throughout January we’re going to be previewing each of those acts, accompanied by words from our writers and an original photograph from one of our photographers. Next up is Pillow Queens. Photo by Ciara Brennan, taken at plantlife.ie Queer, feminist, socialist. How does one encapsulate the pulsating movements of culture and ideals that are currently sweeping across the world, and furthermore, how does one do so colloquially and naturally? Dublin based Pillow Queens have the answer, using more than just their…

  • 18 for ’18: Molly Sterling

    January 18, 2018 - By 

    We continue 18 for ’18, our feature of showcasing eighteen Irish acts we’re convinced are going places in 2018. Throughout January we’re going to be previewing each of those acts, accompanied by words from our writers and an original photograph from one of our photographers. Next up is Tipperary’s Molly Sterling. Photo by Ciara Brennan Try as one might, it’s usually nigh on impossible to clearly pinpoint what demarcates a great artist from a good one. Often, the real difference can only be traced in the smallest moments – music that has a way with itself, the space between the…

  • 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…

  • Album Premiere: Laurie Shaw – Weird Weekends

    January 18, 2018 - By 

    Based in Cork, 23-year-old Wirral artist Laurie Shaw has self-released approximately 75 albums – as well as one record each on UK imprint Sunstone Records and Dublin’s Little L – over the last few years, steadily establishing himself as a prodigious artist with a strong DIY ethic. Tomorrow he releases his latest full-length, Weird Weekends. A self-proclaimed “nostalgic trip back to teenage-hood, a love letter to the small town of Kenmare where all these narratives originate from”, it’s a brilliantly-realised effort that veers between Bill Ryder Jones-conjuring indie (‘Shatterproof’), inward-looking ballads and laments (‘Skipped Period Blues’, ‘Pink Lightbulb’), as well as straight-up riff-slinging guitar rock. Conjuring…

  • Stream: Paddy Hanna – Toulouse The Kisser

    January 18, 2018 - By 

    Though we’re not short of a first-rate alt-pop troubadour on these shores, Paddy Hanna has tread his very own increasingly compelling path in that realm for some time now. The Dublin songwriter – who is also a member of Autre Monde – will release his new album, Frankly, I Mutate, on March 2. Lifted from that that, new single ‘Toulouse The Kisser’ is a real gem that Hanna has called “a travelogue of drunken misadventure, watching your future waste away and accepting you will become the person to whom people say, “at least I’m not that poor fool”. But what a poor fool. Produced…

  • Stream: Elephant – Waiting Game Part II

    January 18, 2018 - By 

    Dundalk artist and multi-instrumentalist Shane Clarke AKA Elephant has been a TTA favourite for some time now.  Bounding with harmonic finesse and a masterfully earnest touch, his shapeshifting alt-pop craft will get the full-length treatment later this year. Ahead of that, ‘Waiting Game Part II’ is a subtle yet slick homespun effort, marrying balmy synths with the song’s stripped-back slow rock surge. At the forefront, once again, is Clarke’s neatly harmonised vocals, quietly bursting with massive heart. Elephant’s strongest single to date? We reckon so. Delve in.

  • Brigid Mae Power – The Two Worlds

    January 22, 2018 - By 

    Firmly established as Ireland’s foremost purveyors of elemental folk, Brigid Mae Power releases her second album, The Two Worlds on February 9 through US label Tompkins Square. Her eponymous 2016 debut garnered unanimous acclaim from the likes of Uncut, Mojo, The Guardian and featured on NPR & BBC programming. The Two Worlds, recorded in Co. Down’s Analogue Catalogue Studio, looks set to consolidate Power’s standing amidst a resurgence of Irish music that has redefined the role of traditional music once more in today’s conversation. Here’s what Brigid had to say about the album: “Most of these songs were written in the last year in Ireland and they’re all about the different feelings I had…

  • 18 for ’18: Silverbacks

    January 17, 2018 - By 

    We continue 18 for ’18, our feature of showcasing eighteen Irish acts we’re convinced are going places in 2018. Throughout January we’re going to be previewing each of those acts, accompanied by words from our writers and an original photograph from one of our photographers. Next up is Silverbacks. Photo by Colum O’Dwyer Dublin five-piece Silverbacks may have already released a debut album back in 2015, but it’s what they release next that we’re most excited about. That debut, Hot Bath, was a strong starting effort from brothers and primary songwriters Daniel and Kilian O’Kelly – a fairly loose affair that…