• Stream: Rory Nellis – Gas & Air

    August 14, 2017 - By 

    Two years on from the release of his well-received 2015 debut solo album, Ready For You Now, Belfast singer-songwriter Rory Nellis will release its follow-up, There Are Enough Songs In The World, at the MAC on November 11. Having already released a string of singles from the release, new track ‘Gas & Air’ is a resounding alt-pop effort reflecting on the private thoughts and moments that accompany big life changes. Bolstered by Nellis’ all-star band of Phil d’Alton on keys, Herb Magee on bass and Peter J. McCauley on drums, it’s a wonderfully-crafted single whose harmonic tangents and wholehearted lyrical turns…

  • Stream: Pat Dam Smyth – Goodbye Berlin

    August 11, 2017 - By 

    The follow-up to the masterfully mournful ‘Juliette’ – a single relaying the tale of a woman attempting to escape an abusive relationship released back in April – ‘Goodbye Berlin’ by Belfast’s Pat Dam Smyth is a song that tackles “being a kid and disappearing down the rock and roll rabbit hole”. Bounding with the raconteur’s inimitable words of wanderlust and genre-bending brand of incisive indie-folk, it’s a sweet tale that “recalls a time where music had pushed him to the brink, defining his relationship with both his past and his future, and the dominant force that songs have always played in…

  • Album Stream: Frankenstein Bolts – Aglow & Spark

    August 11, 2017 - By 

    Wexford duo Frankenstein Bolts are a rare breed indeed. Released off the back of a successful crowdfunding campaign, their new – second full-length studio – album Aglow & Spark finds the pair invoking subtly enraptured brilliance across nine tracks of slickly-produced, wonderfully-realised dream-pop that evokes everyone from Cocteau Twins, Slowdive and The Radio Dept. to fellow Irish acts exmagician, Documenta and SlowPlaceLikeHome. From the streamlined Motorik groove and intoxicated reminiscence of opener ‘Land & Water’ to the balmy electro-pop of closer ‘Short Term Memory’, the album is a confident and bewitching release that will surely rank up there with the best Irish releases…

  • So Much For The Sun – So Much For The Sun

    August 14, 2017 - By 

    Lisburn doom-laden stoner rock/sludge trio So Much For The Sun have just released their debut album. Mastered by doom stalwart Brad Boatright, the album was recorded and mixed by Niall Doran at Start Together Studios – who has recently become the go-to guy for any production of noteworthy heft in NI. The band’s eponymous debut is a lengthy and dynamic affair, its samples and lyrics delving into sociopolitical commentary with a careful blend of clean and guttural vocals that’d see them sit well on any Desertfest billing. With the crushing low-end of post-metal & doom, its heaviness is framed within the midrange-bogarting fuzz of early…

  • Owlcrusher – Owlcrusher

    August 10, 2017 - By 

    One of the finest metal releases Ireland will see this year comes in the form of the long-awaited debut from Banbridge blackened sludge/doom trio Owlcrusher. Its three long songs – including the obligatory eponymous track – were recorded by Niall Doran at Start Together Studios in Belfast. The album came out on Seeing Red Records, and is available to order in a limited CD run, with vinyls in the works. A sprawling, funereal affair, it has harsh, distant, blackened vocals from guitarist Andrew Speir and evokes the crushing sorrow of the likes of Warning and low end devastation of Yob. Live, the band are a must-see. Owlcrusher…

  • Watch: Montauk Hotel – Sense of Place

    August 10, 2017 - By 

    Five months on from the release of the debut EP – a release we said contained a “real earworming charm” – Dublin quartet Montauk Hotel have unveiled the video to their new sense ‘Sense of Place’. Nicely straddling the line between indie jangle and straight-up pop, the song – their foursome’s strongest and most confident effort to date – is accompanied by a video courtesy the band’s vocalist Claudia Verdecchia. Montauk Hotel launch the single upstairs in Whelan’s on Saturday, with support coming from Beauty Sleep and Exiles. Have yourself a Facebook event page.

  • Watch: Wyvern Lingo – I Love You Sadie

    August 10, 2017 - By 

    Back in June we shared ‘I Love You Sadie’, the latest – and quite possibly finest – single from Bray alt-pop threesome Wyvern Lingo. Having called it “another instant gem bursting at the seams with the threesome’s slick marriage of exquisite, RnB-inflected harmonies, groove-laden patterns and their collective ear for a killer hook” we’re pleased to share the track’s slick new video courtesy of Louise Gaffney (who, as you might well know, is also a member of Come On Live Long). One of the Irish songs of the summer? Easily.

  • EP Stream: Music For Dead Birds – Nail & Tooth

    August 9, 2017 - By 

    Long favourites of ours here at The Thin Air, Galway experimental folk twosome Jimmy Monaghan and Dónal Walsh AKA Music For Dead Birds are a band whose lo-fi craft would not have been out of place on the roster of Sam Berger’s Homestead Records in the early 90s. Having first appeared on our radar back in 2011 via The Pope’s Sister – an album we said conjured the likes of Sebadoh and Polvo – the pair have drip-fed a series of releases in the interim, most recently 2015’s Your Brand New Life. New EP Nail & Tooth both marks the band’s 10th year in…

  • Watch: Elephant – Mirrors

    August 8, 2017 - By 

    Just last week we featured ‘Mirrors’ by Dundalk-based artist and multi-instrumentalist Shane Clarke AKA Elephant, an effort we called a “Bowie-coloured route with distorted, effect laden guitars, sparkling keys and prominent drums propping up Clarke’s vocals”. The third single to be taken from his forthcoming second album, the song – which is “a pining for youth, mourning its mistakes and trying to recall just when it was that you became so cynical” – has been granted another, wonderfully crafted resonance courtesy of visuals from the videographers over at Farney House. Roll on album number two.