• Album Premiere: Jogging – Whole Heart

    October 31, 2019 - By 

    We’ve premiered our fair share of albums here on The Thin Air, but – if truth be told – we’re struggling to recall one that we’ve loved so much, and so quickly, as Whole Heart by Dublin three-piece Jogging. The long-awaited follow-up to 2012’s Take Courage, it’s an emphatic (and rather heavier) ten-track return from Darren Craig, Gerard Mangan and Ronan Jackson. Out today via one of the country’s finest imprints, Out On a Limb, the album was engineered and produced by John “Spud” Murphy and Ian Chestnutt at Guerrilla Sound Studios in Dublin at the start of the year. To mark…

  • Watch: Shrug Life – You’re Such a Good Looking Woman

    October 29, 2019 - By 

    It’s true. Indeed, it’s positively ironclad: there is no show like a Joe show, but Shrug Life, we reckon, give him a run for his money. Yes, Dublin’s most incisive and impossibly earworming indie-leaning trio are back with a cover of ‘You’re Such a Good Looking Woman’, the Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood-penned song that the one, the only Joseph Francis Robert “Joe” Dolan made his own back in 1970. Now, I know what you’re thinking: on paper, this probably shouldn’t work. But we’re not talking about paper here, are we? No – we are referring, in fact, to the medium of song.…

  • Premiere: Laurie Shaw – Had To Swerve

    October 29, 2019 - By 

    This Thursday, endlessly prolific, Cork-based songwriter Laurie Shaw will release his latest album, Helvetica. The follow-up to the exquisite Weird Weekends (which we premiered last January) the redord, we’re told, “delves deep into the British psyche, taking a poignant and timely look at its history and current society, moving between both fond and satirical tones.” New single ‘Had To Swerve’ edges into more darkly territory. Conjuring a midpoint between Sparklehorse, Department of Eagles and Amnesiac-era Radiohead, it makes for a brilliantly oppressive four-minute burst of scorched vocals and layered, spectral sounds. Have a first look at the Laurie Shaw-directed video for the single, as…

  • Premiere: Eoin Dolan – Sheena

    October 25, 2019 - By 

    Last August, Galway alt-pop maestro Eoin Dolan released easily one of the Irish releases of the year in the form of the sublime Superior Fiction. Over a year on from hailing it a four-track distillation of his yearning, sci-fi-tinged surf pop craft”, we’re very pleased to present a first listen to Dolan’s latest single, ‘Sheena’. Taking from his forthcoming third album, Commander of Sapiens, it’s a trademark carefully-crafted gem from Dolan, woozily blurring the contours of romance, reality and full-blown, spaced-out reverie. Commander of Sapiens is released in association with Citóg Records on Friday, November 22nd and will, we’re told, covers themes such as environmental destruction, mass consumerism and…

  • Watch: Aoife Nessa Frances – Blow Up

    October 22, 2019 - By 

    Co-produced by Cian Nugent, ‘Blow Up’ by Dublin-based artist Aoife Nessa Frances stems from a sonic netherworld inhabited, at different points, by the likes of Nico, Broadcast and Pentangle. Blurring the lines between folk, psychedelia and otherworldly pop, it’s a wonderfully-crafted paean, redolent of bygone times, all while occupying its very own woozy, yet supremely lucid territory. Marrying mellotron, strings and more, the song – which is accompanied by some sublime visuals courtesy of her sister, Anna McCarthy – is taken from Frances’ forthcoming debut album, Land of No Junction. It’s released via Basin Rock on January 17th. Borrowing its title from the…

  • Stream: DANI – The Mother Within (Acoustic)

    October 18, 2019 - By 

    Hailing from the Armagh Monaghan border, the wonderfully-woven folk craft of DANI is inspired by the Irish traditional melodies she was raised with. Delving into the celtic mythic imagination, it’s music that saw the artist selected as the Artist in Residence at Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival earlier this year, supporting the likes of Rufus Wainwright, The Eskies and Joshua Burnside. Today, the Belfast-based musician releases an acoustic version of her most emphatic single to date, ‘The Mother Within’. While the original is a first-rate collaboration with Indonesian percussionists KunoKini, this new, stripped-back version reveals new layers of melodic and emotive flair. DANI…

  • Video Premiere: Rory Nellis – When I Sleep

    October 17, 2019 - By 

    Over the last few years, Belfast artist Rory Nellis has steadily emerged as one of the country’s most respected songwriting voices. On albums Ready For You Now and 2017’s There’s Enough Songs In The World, his thoughtful, earworming craft has garnered comparisons to everyone from Conor O’Brien Villagers to Grandaddy at their most gossamer and contemplative. Nellis’ forthcoming new single, ‘When I Sleep’ is a meditative and delicately-crafted case in point. Released ahead of a new album in the works for release next year – and mixed by and featuring backing vocals from long-time friend collaborator Philip Watts d’Alton (Master…

  • Video Premiere: Joey Gavin – Home Sweet Home

    October 17, 2019 - By 

    Berlin-based Irish tunesmith Joey Gavin is back, albeit briefly, for a run of Irish dates to celebrate the release of ‘Home Sweet Home‘, the first single taken from his forthcoming debut album, due in 2020. Where early solo releases had more in common with the slacker or psych work of his old flame, Thumper, he appears now to have found his own voice without losing those hallmarks; rather, they’ve been reined-in, and kneaded – Wilco style – into pastoral, Americana-tinged songcraft. Written in mid-2016 in Greece, Joey told us more about his headspace at the time of writing: “There was a coalescence of ideas about patriotism, homelessness…

  • Video Premiere: Arthuritis – Condo

    October 18, 2019 - By 

    The latest thing to emerge from the mind of idiosyncratic polymath Arthuritis is an avant-pop fever dream. The glitchy ‘Condo’ – the sound of a brain puttering out before completing a factory reset – is as decidedly nausea-inducing as its uncanny accompanying video, masterfully shot & edited in three hours by CLAP Media’s Colm Walsh; recalling Twin Peaks: The Return, three selves are dragged down a cold, dark back-path adorned only by barriers and wet grass. It’s a perfect example of Arty’s latest approach, which explores the relationship between rhythm & time. He tells us: “One of the main things that influenced it was I looked at a…

  • Stream: His Father’s Voice – In The Shade

    October 14, 2019 - By 

    Staking their claim as one of the brightest prospects in Irish post-punk & shoegaze with their Context & Perspective EP earlier this year, Limerick’s His Father’s Voice are back with a new single. Written around the same time as their debut EP, the quartet’s A-side goes further down the path trodden down fellow ‘gaze revivalists like DIIV & Cheatahs, without letting the wall of sound envelope what it is – a great pop song that plays on the idea of “how resentment finds room to feed and grow through hiding behind the appearance of a bright and happy exterior”. Meanwhile, B-side ‘Close’ is the kind of miasmic sea of…