• Watch: Lilac – Remember, No Regrets

    March 25, 2021 - By 

    Scuzzy, unpretentious power-pop with a panache for irresistible jangle, fuzz & hooks is something that’s trickled into the water in Ireland, forming a fine cultural lineage – look no further than Good Vibrations Records and Thin Lizzy, and more recently, Pillow Queens. Trim-based sibling duo Oisín & Cian Walsh form the creative hub of Lilac, and today released their earworm of a new single ‘Remember, No Regrets’, which filters Ty Segall-esque saturated fuzz with 90s indie & psych-pop – completely self-produced in the band’s home studio. Initially set to be released pre-pandemic, they’ve pressed the record to 7″ vinyl, and it’s available…

  • Album Stream: Postcard Versions – Remote Viewing

    August 10, 2020 - By 

    In case you missed it, Friday saw the surprise, name-your-price release of Postcard Versions‘ new LP, following up on their debut –  one of Ireland’s finest indie rock albums of last year. Messrs Paddy Ormond and Ross Hamer – of The Claque, Music City, Oh Boland and more – are back with another ten warming, bite-size gems, adding to the city’s not-insubstantial bedroom-pop canon – born not out of aesthetic, but economic necessity. Stream below: Remote Viewing by Postcard Versions

  • Video Premiere: Shrug Life – Last Gasp Of Summer

    July 24, 2020 - By 

    A timely arrival to cushion the blow of a festival-free summer, perennial TTA favourites Shrug Life are back with the video for new single ‘Last Gasp of Summer’. The track is taken from Shrug Life’s excellent, Daniel Fox-produced second LP Maybe You’re The Punchline which came out in April, available on 12″ vinyl through Bandcamp. Typical of their vision of a DEVO-meets-Thin Lizzy world, it’s a razor-sharp incision into minutia of the make some noise Irish experience, and festival fatigue that starts to set in as one’s twenties edges closer to the finishing line, without ever straying into ‘yells at cloud’ territory. Filmed partly at Arcadian Field Festival 2019, and featuring…

  • Video Premiere: Dott – Extra Introvert

    June 11, 2020 - By 

    If there’s any band in Ireland who can lay claim to an Earworm Guarantee™, it may well be Galway’s harmony-laced dream-pop quartet Dott, and new single ‘Extra Introvert’ proves that once more in spades. As interactions return to relative normality in time for summer, the gradual reacquaintance with our old friend social anxiety proves much easier when masked in a seasonally-appropriate bop. Dott were in the midst of recording their third album when the Covid-19 pandemic put a stop to things, but mercifully they’ve delivered us a homespun, all-too-relatable video, made for phone. Featuring lead singer Anna and her many attempts to overcome Lockdown Anxiety, it records the day-to-day of using…

  • Premiere: Angular Hank – On Your Shoulder

    March 17, 2020 - By 

    Thankfully, the other main immunity we don’t have is to sweet jams, and ahead of their hotly-anticipated forthcoming debut album, Brand New Angle – out this Friday – Angular Hank have shared new single ‘On Your Shoulder’. As ever, they’re as taut with subtly-induced discordant tension as they are free-flowing with slack-pop hooks, springing to mind the likes of masterful craft of Irish peers like Postcard Versions & Careerist. As it stands, Angular Hank are set to hold their album launch at the Workman’s Club on April 3 with support from Skinner – keep posted here.

  • EP Stream: Aul Boy – Making Strange

    February 28, 2020 - By 

    Everyone’s favourite rural slack power-pop escapists, Ramelton’s Aul Boy are back with new EP Making Strange. As ever, the wry quartet, led by Fionn Robinson, runs the gamut from jangle-pop ditties to experimental pocket orchestras [the masterful ‘Buttercup’]. Recorded at Donegal’s Attica Studios by Orri McBrearty, with some wonderful artwork from Daniel McGarrigle, it’s available on digitally & on CD. Aul Boy launch Making Strange tonight at Bennigan’s, Derry, and tomorrow night at Letterkenny’s Swilly Inn. Making Strange by Aul Boy

  • Video Premiere: Aul Boy – Because

    December 18, 2019 - By 

    Slack Ramelton indie rock outfit Aul Boy are back with another intricately crafted lounge-pop gem in new single ‘Because’. We’re delighted to unveil its very much on-brand video, which captures the dressing-gown-clad Aul Boy himself roaming in glorious Super 8. Channelling the interminable wilderness period of the twenty-something in the ‘forgotten county’, it gladly shuts its eyes in the face of reality, escaping into a sea of wonderful Grandaddy-recalling synth arpeggios, melancholy & chord mastery. ‘Because’ is the first single to be taken from their forthcoming Making Strange EP, recorded at Attica Studios [SOAK/Villagers]. Download it on a name-your-price basis here.

  • Video Premiere: Jake Regan – Unfair

    September 25, 2019 - By 

    When Jake Regan‘s debut single ‘Over It’ came out, we said he’d “instantly staked his claim as one of the country’s most promising and distinctive songwriting voices”, and new double A-side ‘Unfair / Stay’ compounds that fact – with the former’s video out today. It’s a perfect 3 minute, scuzzed-out power-pop song about the would-be artist’s reality crash-landing that deftly navigates the tightrope between sincere & pointedly self-aware. Based on the oh-so-relatable D.I.Y. artist’s perspective, Regan tells us more: “The song came from frustration at the stratospheric recent success of the Fontaines, and the weird flurry of identical bands that followed them. There are so many angry young men…

  • Malojian announces Let Your Weirdness Carry You Home Deluxe Edition

    October 3, 2018 - By 

    The latest NI Music Prize-nominated album from Stephen Scullion, aka Malojian is getting a much-deserved deluxe edition. Released through Quiet Arch Records on November 30, it’s his fourth solo album, and his strongest collection of songs to date, injecting the golden era of 60s pop melodicism he’s known for with the perfect power-pop of Teenage Fanclub & Grandaddy, as well as a more experimental, psychedelic edge than we’d seen from him until this point. Recorded in a lighthouse on NI’s Rathlin Island – in contrast to its Steve Albini-recorded predecessor, it features guest performances from a pedigreed cast of collaborators – Teenage Fanclub’s Gerard Love, Beck/R.E.M./Atoms For…

  • The Number Ones – Another Side of The Number Ones

    January 15, 2018 - By 

    Back with another celebration of retro power-pop songwriting, following their 2014 debut LP, The Number Ones have just released their Another Side of The Number Ones EP. The Buzzcocks and, to a lesser degree of global dominance, Good Vibrations Records – think Protex, Rudi & the likes – injected the British invasion sound with lightning-in-a-bottle youthful insurgency in the late ’70s. Half a decade later, The Number Ones’ latest takes great pride in doing much the same across its twelve hasty minutes. Infectious, immediate, and essential for any fans of modern purveyors of garage pop – Oh Boland, Sheer Mag, and the aforementioned – or the band’s ‘sideline’ projects, Cryboys and internationally-renowned…