• Plaid – The Digging Remedy

    June 15, 2016 - By 

    Since 1991, Plaid, the duo of of Andy Turner and Ed Handley, haven’t so much straddled the line between experimental and straightforward electronica as used it as their skipping rope. At times, they’ve been wholly unrecognisable in their wildly experimental sonic threshes (‘Cold’), they’ve made dark and demented electro anthems (‘Itsu’), and created some of the most accessible, yet weirdly unsettling music out there (‘Eyen’ ). It would be an understatement to profess that over their 25 years, Plaid have made some of the most exquisitely composed, highly-listenable electronica ever committed to wax, but in latest full-length The Digging Remedy, the former Black Dog founding fathers seem…

  • PAWS – No Grace

    June 15, 2016 - By 

    It’s the summer months and you all know what that means: it’s time for the latest slew of pop-punk records to stretch out their heavily tattooed arms and release their latest diatribe on the pains of being misunderstood just in time for the Summer festival season. Bring on the Warped Tour, yo! So amongst this crop which includes the likes of Modern Baseball, The Hotelier and White Lung, where does Scotland’s PAWS’ latest LP, No Grace, fit into this new crop of punkers? Well, it’s a record that seems to believe that the best way to go forward is to…

  • Watch: August Wells – She Was a Question

    June 14, 2016 - By 

    “One day you wake up, as the man that you are, And not as the one you thought you’d become. You stop making promises, you stop telling lies. You look right into your own eyes and start saying your goodbyes.” Few Irish singer-songwriters command with the same immediacy, pathos and poignance as August Wells‘ Ken Griffin. Of all their single releases to date – including the particularly excellent ‘Here In The Wild‘ – the band’s new single ‘She Was a Question’ aims straight from the psychic jugular, distilling Sisyphean acceptance to three minutes of sublimely woven, Bacharachian alt-pop where cold, hard reality simply has…

  • Album Premiere: Glimmermen – Breakin’ Out

    June 14, 2016 - By 

    Just last month we shared ‘Bang’, the lead single from Breakin’ Out, the new album by Dublin’s Glimmermen. Calling it a “markedly more linear yet no less distinct and ear-grabbing effort from the four-piece”, it reinforced our belief that the band – whose debut EP Satellite People caught our attention back in 2012 – had something different and potentially quite vital to their collective bow. As it so happens, Breakin’ Out confirms that fact in assured fashion, each of the release’s nine tracks threading together to form an effort where the major key and quietly emphatic cogitations on the everyday meld to…

  • Video Premiere: Alana Henderson – Song About a Song

    June 14, 2016 - By 

    Before setting off on the very long road as cellist/backing vocalist for Hozier, Dungannon singer-songwriter Alana Henderson (one of our ones to watch last year) had staked her very own captivating claim with her debut EP, Wax & Wane. Released in early 2013, it was veritable pandora’s box of burrowing folk noir, each of the release’s four traditional-tinged chamber tales bounding forth with gallant imagination and delicate, melodic finesse. With brand new material in the pipeline, ‘Song About a Song’ – a perfectly ruminating peak from Wax & Wane that’s had an incredible 5,000,000 plays on Spotify – has been resurrected with a homespun video by David Moody that wonderfully captures the song’s essence.

  • Lisa Hannigan announces new album ‘At Swim’. Debuts ‘Prayer for the Dying’

    June 8, 2016 - By 

    Today saw the unveiling of the first track to be heard from Lisa Hannigan’s forthcoming third LP At Swim. The new record, produced by Aaron Dessner of The National, follows on from Hannigan’s 2011 triumph Passenger. Struggling to write material for a new album while living sporadically divided between London and Dublin and being involved in myriad other projects, At Swim began to come to life once Dessner contacted her suggesting they collaborate. The album approaches ideas of homesickness and of being adrift in a sea of isolation but just as elegantly handles themes of love in ways that only Lisa Hannigan can. ‘Prayer for the Dying’…

  • Stream: Arborist – A Man of My Age

    June 7, 2016 - By 

    Fronted by Mark McCambridge, Belfast’s Arborist are masters of the subtly-wielded phrase and burrowing melody. A year on from having the one and only Kim Deal feature on their single ‘Twisted Arrow’, the band have returned with ‘A Man of My Age’, a pleasantly reflective six-minute effort brilliantly bolstered by shivering strings and a layered Americana folk ambience that rewards with repeated listens. With fading youth, familial change and growing perspective at the heart of the McCambridge’s words here, we’re treated to something rather special; a carefully considered meditation imbued with a calm sense of acceptance that seals the deal in fine fashion. Stream the single…

  • Overhead, The Albatross – Learning to Growl

    June 1, 2016 - By 

    A lot of people will tell you that Post-Rock had its day about five years ago, that those who have kept the torch burning the brightest are the just the ones who held it aloft in the first place, and that all the rest have merely fallen by the wayside or been left dragging their heels through the faux-sentimental, desperately “cinematic” mud. In a lot of ways they would be right I suppose. More bands than you can count dabbled in that realm of tremolo picked, delayed guitars and the“quiet bit/heavy bit” structure, to the point where a listener could…

  • I Have a Tribe – Beneath a Yellow Moon

    May 31, 2016 - By 

    Dubliner Patrick O’Laoghaire, better known as I Have A Tribe, last week released his long awaited debut album, Beneath A Yellow Moon, a stunningly imperfect indie-folk record, brimming with eleven brilliantly honest tracks. This intimate album comes as a follow up to 2015’s No Countries EP and upon a single listen it becomes clear that, even within such a brief timespan, O’Laoghaire’s songwriting has undoubtedly become so much more complex. The range of emotion he is now capable of evoking has grown extensively, now fully projecting the vibrant colours in his mind into the outside world, overshadowing his past two EPs and demonstrating his growth and brilliance as…

  • Inbound: Feather

    May 31, 2016 - By 

    Emma Garnett AKA Feather has morphed again. While many may know her from the punchy, artistic collaborations with Ben Bix this itineration is something of a departure. Now fully backed by an eight-piece band, she and the group are emerging as a blooded, blended new horizon in Irish music so it’s no surprise that they’re signed up with emerging world conscious independent label Hipdrop Records whose slant towards global sounds, funk, soul and jazz distinguish them from the pack. Take their new single ‘Like No Other’ which works its way through three distinct movements without sounding piecemeal. The comparisons to…