• Death From Above 1979 @ Limelight 1, Belfast

    February 23, 2015 - By 

    When Toronto dance punks par excellence Death From Above 1979 announced they were calling it a day back in the good old days of yore (2006), every second twenty-something rued through tear-soaked eyes somehow managing to miss arguably one of the finest duos of a generation live. And so, as has happened innumerable times before, in precisely the same fashion, the seeds of legacy were well and truly sown, reaped, a whole decade on, by an expectedly agog congregation of newcomers and “I was there, man” thirty-somethings at Belfast’s Limelight 1. Will the well-documented tension between Sebastien Grainger (drums/vocals) and Jesse Keeler (bass) – apparently resigned…

  • Echo & The Bunnymen w/ Arborist @ Mandela Hall, Belfast

    February 19, 2015 - By 

    Thirty-seven years in, Echo & The Bunnymen’s repute as one of the most vital and influential British rock bands ever is long beyond contention.  Notwithstanding a couple of reunions and several line-up changes, Ian McCullough and co – founding guitar/songwriter Will Sergeant and a considerably more callow touring band – have battened down the hatches for the long run, summoning their pioneering post-punk “glory days” on stage where recent recorded material has just fallen short of that early vitality. Tonight they offer up the timeless magic once more, an undeniably legendary proposition. With a steady stream of expectant heads herding into the Mandela Hall, singer-songwriter Mark…

  • Decemberists @ Vicar Street, Dublin

    February 14, 2015 - By 

    …in which the good ship Infanta sails into Dublin on a sea of whimsy and English tea, bearing forth a band of bohemian minstrels, sweating absinthe, smoking shisha pipes, brandishing muskets, sextants and satchels overflowing with sonnets scrawled on rolls of teletype paper. Right from the outset, it is clear that the audience, squeezed into a venue fittingly bedecked in wooden friezes, will be treated to something truly rare in modern music: originality. Firstly, there’s frontman and songwriter in chief Colin Meloy’s lyrics, which are uniquely literate, ribald and at times just a tad sinister in the best possible way.…

  • The Afghan Whigs @ The Academy, Dublin

    February 4, 2015 - By 

    Ohio’s Afghan Whigs descend upon The Academy for their first show since November 2014. “Shaking the dust off,” frontman Greg Dulli facetiously states, with a self-confidence that seems his very essence. Aside from a few vocal pitching issues – admittedly rather befitting of the music’s obstreperous character – the set is masterfully delivered by the imposing sextet. From the first, the mix is impeccable. The soul-tinged alt-rock Americans have arrived with full sensory assault in mind. Whigs’ original John Curley leads an unrelenting rhythm section over which the guitar, keys and string parts compose ardently the musical parchment for Dulli’s…

  • Marillion @ The Forum, London

    December 14, 2014 - By 

    A lot can happen in a quarter of a century. 1989 saw the release of the debut releases of The Stone Roses, Nirvana amongst others. That same year also saw the debut release of Marillion with Steve Hogarth fronting them after the band had taken off to Mushroom Farm Studio near Brighton with a selection of music previously recorded in demo form with Fish. However, when Fish left the band in 1988, he took his lyrics with him, a lot of which ended up on his solo debut, Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors, while Steve Hogarth and John Helmer…

  • Manic Street Preachers @ Olympia Theatre, Dublin

    December 14, 2014 - By 

    You sometimes have to wonder if people do these “Let’s play the album everyone likes” shows in order to destroy the album. If you’ve made one truly significant album in your lifetime, fair deuce to you, but after a while it must feel like a noose. If you were to do such a show, how would you do it? Could you do it in such a way that puts this awful beauty that hangs over you to rest, while not screwing over the people who’ve connected themselves to the record and provided the opportunity for you to perform this show?…

  • Elton John @ 3Arena, Dublin

    December 10, 2014 - By 

    Singer, songwriter, straight, gay, father, activist and important enough to a second-tier North London football club to have a stand named after him: Elton John’s certainly led a colourful life. Similar colour in his life show, then, is something of a given. Tonight’s one hundredth show of 2014 and the final date of a tour commemorating 41 year old classic ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ starts with an old school rock n’ roll bent. ‘Funeral For A Friend’ and ‘Bennie and The Jets’ lead the tributes to one of Elton’s finest records, the former preceded by an epic piano lead in which sets the…

  • Duke Special @ Bennigan’s, Derry

    December 2, 2014 - By 

    Bennigan’s Bar in Derry serves as the perfect venue for an intimate gig and that was just what Belfast born balladeer, Duke Special, was set to do on Friday night. Although the crowd was set-up to expect a totally warm and soft intimacy from the very start with a toned down piano and voice rendition of Duke’s ‘Freewheel’, there was a quick shift between atmosphere when his hand slamming on the keys brought the Bertolt Brecht cover of ‘Alabama Song’ forcefully to the ears of the audience. No one seemed to be taken aback as I was. Being one of…

  • Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) @ Vicar Street, Dublin

    November 26, 2014 - By 

    The man on stage would like you to call him Yasiin Bey. “Ali, not Clay,” he says. That doesn’t stop the gig’s posters and tickets from bearing the name Mos Def in larger lettering than that of his name of choice, however. Coming on stage around 10pm in an oversized scarf and baggy tee, he opens with ‘Cream of the Planet’, an unreleased track from 2010. Though billed as a fifteenth anniversary celebration of 1999’s breakthrough release Black On Both Sides, the night sees Bey jump from era to era, appropriately enough as 1982’s seminal hip-hop flick Wild Style plays…

  • Robert Plant w/ The Last Internacionale @ Olympia Theatre, Dublin

    November 25, 2014 - By 

    It’s funny to think that Led Zeppelin spawned practically every rock’n’roll trope that elicits either an eye roll or a “fuck yeah!” (depending one’s state of inebriation). The old clichés have gone from birth through acceptance, weathering punk’s dismissal into irony and meta-referencing, and all the way around again until it’s hard to decipher what point on the rotation things currently fall. New Yorkers The Last Internationale are somewhere on that loop, a band that could comfortably populate the background scenery in Almost Famous, such is the posturing and rock-by-numbers shenanigans that are in progress onstage. The guitarist even gives…