• Stream: Silverbacks – Dunkirk

    June 12, 2018 - By 

    Six months on from featuring them as one of our 18 for ’18 acts, Dublin five-piece Silverbacks are back with their strongest single effort to date, ‘Dunkirk’. Released on Friday (June 15) via their own PK Miami Records, the track – which was produced by Girl Band’s Daniel Fox – is a swiftly sprawling three-minute raid melding art-punk tangentialism with purified indie rock sensibility (the latter of which is something we’ve happily banged on about for some time now.) Speaking about the track, the band said: “It is about a character who is questioning the life they have been dealt. They find…

  • Watch: Villagers – A Trick of the Light

    June 12, 2018 - By 

    Coinciding with the announcement of his forthcoming fourth album, The Art of Pretending To Swim, Conor O’Brien’s Villagers are back with a new single, ‘A Trick of the Light’. Blurring the lines between full-bodied folk-pop splendour and late-1990s R&B groove, it’s a four-minute curveball that hits in all the right places. Sealing the deal for the single is a typically first-rate video from Bob “Midas Touch” Gallagher. Featuring O’Brien in the guise of a rather lovely lady, it’s a wonderfully surrealist accompaniment capturing the pleasures and heart-pangs of love, belonging and loss. The Art of Pretending to Swim is out via Domino…

  • Inbound: Dreaming of Jupiter

    May 29, 2018 - By 

    Ahead of a busy year that will see the release of their debut EP, we talk to hotly-tipped Dublin trio Dreaming of Jupiter about what defines their sound, milestones to date, their summer festival-conjuring new single, their favourite Irish music, and what the rest of 2018 holds. You’ve just released ‘Right Kind of Love’. It’s a real earworming gem evoking straight-up summer festival vibes. Tell us about the writing and recording of this track. We are really happy to have put this track out into the world. We have a writing process which we have developed over time. We pre-produce…

  • Premiere: Gaze Is Ghost – Home

    May 29, 2018 - By 

    Just last week, Northern Irish artist Laura McGarrigle announced that TTA favourite Keith Mannion AKA Slow Place Like Home has officially joined her Gaze Is Ghost project, which also comprises Casey Miller of Zed Penguin. Now, the trio have re-emerged with ‘Home’, the second single to be taken from Gaze Is Ghost’s forthcoming debut album Lapis Cobalt Indigo Blue. A sublimely-crafted four minutes of baroque pop with rich minimalist overtones, it’s a track where McGarrigle’s stunning vocals comes centre-stage. McGarrigle said, “The song is a quiet place on an album that for the most part deals with darker subject matter. When writing…

  • Watch: Our Krypton Son – Falling In Love Is A Suicide Mission

    May 23, 2018 - By 

    Quite possibly the island of Ireland’s finest songwriter, Chris McConaghy AKA Our Krypton Son has returned with new single ‘Falling In Love Is A Suicide Mission’. A carefully-crafted, elegiac peak from his critically-devoured second album Fleas & Diamonds, the single is accompanied with wonderfully minimalist visuals courtesy of Tristian Crowe. Watch the video and have read of an exclusive written accompaniment to the track titled ‘The Old Plymouth’ by McConaghy below. The Old Plymouth Harry Dean Stanton lights a cigarette and stands at the water’s edge. The flickering lights of Dupont tremble in a graveyard of stars. He snorts at…

  • Michael Black – Memoirs

    May 29, 2018 - By 

    Having recently been featured on the official Piano Day 2018 playlist, curated by Nils Frahm, Belfast-based multi-instrumentalist & composer Michael Black is set to release his debut album, Memoirs, on June 13. Across its fifteen tracks of unaccompanied piano, Black weaves the personal with the classical, evoking contemporary classic composers like Arvo Pärt and minimalism’s man-of-the-moment, Nils Frahm. “I understood that by releasing something as intimate as Memoirs, I’d leave myself very exposed and somewhat vulnerable. but I couldn’t expect the listener to dwell and reflect on these thoughts in their own manner unless I provided an honest account in the first place. My wish is that Memoirs…

  • Watch: Brigid Mae Power – I’m Grateful

    May 21, 2018 - By 

    ‘I’m Grateful’ by Galway-based Irish artist Brigid Mae Power is a heart-rending peak from her extraordinary third album, The Two Worlds. Now, the track – which mines a chimera from a well of emotion and intent via minimalist, slowcore-leaning folk – comes accompanied with visuals directed, filmed and edited by Myles O’Reilly of Arbutus Yarns, and features art direction and Super 8 footage by his fellow This Ain’t No Disco collaborator Donal Dineen. Read our review of The Two Worlds here and our recent interview with Brigid Mae Power here.

  • Watch: Glass Wings – For A Little While

    May 17, 2018 - By 

    Glass Wings is the music-making moniker of Belfast-based artist Stephen Jones. Following on from the release of Jana from Barcelona – a carefully-crafted, acclaimed EP released back in May last year – he has recently recorded his forthcoming full-length debut album with Phil D’Alton of Master & Dog. Lead single ‘For A Little While’ set the tone for a body of work exploring personal and societal coming of age in an increasingly uncertain world. Directed, filmed and edited by Josh Brogan, check out the video for the single below.

  • Stream: Oh Joy – Cab Sad

    May 17, 2018 - By 

    We have a lot of time for Dublin indie rock trio Oh Joy here at TTA. They mean it, man. They really mean it. Recorded by Liam Mulvaney at Bow Lane, the brisk, heat-stung ache of new single ‘Cab Sad’ captures that intent, psychic wanderlust and heartbreak across 141 all-too-short seconds. Taken from their forthcoming EP, Good Grief – which is released on June 8 – the song is, as you might gleam from even a cursory listen, “about falling in love and how it can make you feel like a pathetic mess”. Ollie Moyles, Oh Joy lead songwriter wrote the…

  • Watch: Bouts – Face Up

    May 16, 2018 - By 

    It’s been five years since debut LP Nothing Good Gets Away, and four since their last release, Unlearn, but back in style are Dublin indie rock Bouts, with ‘Face Up’. Influenced by the kind of breezy, hook-laden indie rock best placed to soundtrack the main stages of the Irish summer, its DIY video fittingly  papers over the malaise with emphatic optimism. Of the song, frontman Barry Bracken says: “Face Up is a no-filter, punch the air plea for staring things down and pushing on through. Some songs you write, others just materialise. This seemed born ready. Its immediacy excites us as much now as those first moments playing it.…