• Premiere: Malojian – Crease of Your Smile

    December 16, 2015 - By 

    Having released one of our favourite Irish albums of the year in Southlands back in May, it’d be something of an understatement to say Lurgan singer-songwriter Stevie Scullion AKA Malojian has had a busy and quite brilliant year. As well as being nominated for the 2015 NI Music Prize, Scullion has keep us on eager toes with the steady release of three singles, the equally sublime ‘Bathtub Blues’, ‘No Alibis’ and ‘Communion Girls’, over the last nine months. The fourth and final of the year, the masterfully meditative lullaby folk of ‘Crease of Your Smile’ might well be our favourite of the lot, a…

  • Inbound: Apartments

    December 15, 2015 - By 

    Belfast’s very own two-piece emo/punk band Apartments are a rare breed in the music scene around Northern Ireland. Hosting influences from many underground bands in the punk scene, there a few bands across Ireland that mix the apathetic lyricism, the emotive vocal delivery and the fast paced, aggressive tones of the two piece. The duo have two releases behind them, the latter being a 6-track EP entitled Rush and have been slowly winning people over with their honest, almost self-depreciating music. We caught up with the pair recently to find out about their background, their plans and the music scene…

  • Album stream: New Pope – Youth

    December 10, 2015 - By 

    Tapping into the profound and altogether ineffable world of the most powerful of Eternal returns: home, tracing the years back to their source and what it means to belong, Youth by Galway dream-folk artist David Boland AKA New Pope is a seven-track, debut full-length chronicle of youthful reminiscence perfectly balanced between the tender and more pining realms of nostalgia. Released at a perfect time of year, when many of us return home, gradually taking stock of another year just gone, the album – evoking the likes of Red House Painters and American Music Club – offers up a wonderfully re-assuring, immaculately crafted summation of the inner, intersubjective workings of…

  • Watch: Daithí – Mary Keane’s Introduction

    December 9, 2015 - By 

    Shot and directed by Conal Thomson, the video for ‘Mary Keane’s Introduction’ by Daithí is a wonderfully evocative accompaniment to a track featuring the Galway experimental electronic maestro’s 90 year old grandmother reminiscing about romance in her youth in the West coast of Ireland. Back in October, we said the said the single track “fused distinct worlds – that of the old and that of the new – to spawn something so innately joyous that you would struggle to find it anything but wonderfully accomplished.” With Thomson’s video it takes on an even greater sense of resonant context. In a Facebook post today, Daithí said: “Dotted along…

  • Watch: No Monster Club – Lemonade

    December 8, 2015 - By 

    Set to play Popical Island’s jam-packed All-Dayer on Saturday, December 19, Bobby Aherne’s No Monster Club have unveiled the video for their new single ‘ Lemonade’. Lifted from his forthcoming eleventh (yes, eleventh) album I Feel Magic, the track – helped along very nicely by Aherne’s accompanying video – is an equal parts bobbing and burrowing slice of art-pop worthy of many repeated listens. The PR say it “bask[s] in a strange, newfound intersection of Future Islands, Talking Heads and early Flaming Lips” and we’re not even remotely inclined to disagree. I Feel Magic is released via Popical Island on February 5.…

  • Watch: A.S. Fanning – Carmelita

    December 8, 2015 - By 

    Currently residing in Berlin and with a debut album in the works, the debut single from Dublin singer-songwriter A.S. Fanning retains a wonderfully wry and decidedly literary tone and import that could only stem from the streets of the Irish capital. Having gigged in pubs around Ireland from the age of 12 – “playing mostly Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley covers among some original songs” – Fanning’s carefully constructed, almost Cohen-esque craft harks back whilst preserving a very present-day resonance. Combined with Candice Gordon’s superb video, below, this is a very memorable opening gambit from an artist certain to keep us on…

  • Watch: The Shaker Hymn – Sucking It Out

    December 8, 2015 - By 

    Having supported Gaz Coombes at Cyprus Avenue on Saturday night – an apt local/international pairing if there ever was one – Cork four-piece The Shaker Hymn look back on a two month U.S. road trip as the spur for their de facto formation in 2012 having made “rudimentary teenage noises” since 2005. To say the least, the imprint of this rather curious, drawn-out gestation period shines through on the band’s new single, ‘Sucking It Out’. Revealing a band who seem to know each other’s musical anatomy inside out, it’s a perfectly discriminating release, tipping its hat to the likes of QOTSA’s more undemanding, subtly swaggering…

  • Stream: The Altered Hours – Silver Leather

    December 8, 2015 - By 

    Unveiled with a string of European dates for Spring – including a Belfast show hosted by yours truly on Friday, February 26 – Cork five-piece The Altered Hours will release their hugely anticipated debut album, In Heat Not Sorry, via Art For Blind and Penske Recording on January 29. The second single to be taken from that, five-minute cut ‘Silver Leather’ reveals the more rapt and ruminative side to the band, evincing a woozy netherworld full of brilliant restraint and shoegaze-leaning dark psych wonder. Stream the track and check out the band’s forthcoming tour dates below. Sat 19th Dec – Connolly’s of Leap, Co. Cork (IE)…

  • Watch: i am niamh – Creep

    December 7, 2015 - By 

    Evoking the likes of Julia Holter and Kate Bush, Dublin singer-songwriter Niamh Parkinson AKA i am niamh has unveiled the video for her sublime new single, ‘Creep’. Showing how far a simple set-up can be stretched to great effect, the video – directed by Aidan Duffy – features the fast-rising, classically-trained Parkinson in positively phantasmal form. Check out the video and i am niamh’s debut album Wonderland below.

  • TUSKS – Embers

    December 4, 2015 - By 

    2015 has almost reached its midnight, and filthy, down-tuned rock n’ roll bands are sold in packs of six.  The last five years have been particularly fertile for all things loud, heavy, and based firmly in the blues, and the excitement that would once volleyball around a new act has started to wane and sag. The summer of sludge is over. It is heartening, then, when a group self-identifying as heavy fuzz rock come around to remind you that earth-shuddering grooves are not seasonal, but all-year round. TUSKS from Belfast are one such group. Robbing the swampy casket of the late…