The Smile live at the 3arena in Dublin last night. Photos by Sean McMahon
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It’s been a weird year for the ‘Boutique’ festival market, with ATP coming to an official end following a string of debacles, but in its tenth year, Utrecht’s Le Guess Who? somehow does it. Across four days, it ties together seldom-seen legends, a pocket of essential esoterica, and today’s most boundary-pushing acts, the lineup this year curated by Wilco, Suuns, Julia Holter & Savages. Utrecht is the sophisticated, civilised, more communal sister city of Amsterdam, located just half an hour south of the capital, and in a city with the Rietveld Schröderhuis built in 1924 it houses the kind of forward-thinking…
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Those coming to this album as the newest project by Jonny Greenwood have been misled. He is on this album, and seems to play a vital role, but it is not his album. It has been a subtle but consistent insinuation that Junun is largely the work of the composer and Radiohead member in collaboration with a few other musicians. Clearly Greenwood’s following has been exploited to try and trump some interest into a project that may have otherwise gone unnoticed but the result may be the actual alienation of fans who would have found this album on their own…
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Beck and Jonny Greenwood on the same bill. It’s very seldom that such an absolute gift is given to the city of Dublin. Both of these men are towering artistic figures who managed to nail that subtle balance between commerce and self expression in a way that few others can lay claim to. Yet in spite of this, the crowd at Kilmainham could well be at a weekend session. Most of the crowd is relaxed and calm, drinking, not to excess, and enjoying some hand rolled cigarettes of a certain variety. Greenwood’s set is predominantly an orchestral one with him…