Californian garage/psych outfit Oh Sees are set to return to Dublin for a must-see two-night stint at the Button Factory on May 18th & 19th, almost a year to the day since their last shows here. Unanimously accepted as one of the finest rock & roll bands in the universe, the John Dwyer-led band have averaged around one album per year since 2003 under the Oh Sees name or its various aliases. Tickets go on sale this Friday at 10am at Ticketmaster.
The first of ten commandments that Captain Beefheart drilled into guitarist Moris Tepper upon joining the band in 1976 was: “Listen to the birds – That’s where all music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren’t going anywhere.” If you’ve caught The Bonk live, then you’ll know what it is to be hypnotised by exactly that pendulous meditation on a single groove, as each of their seven(ish) members instinctively weave around each other, while time falls away. Today, we’re delighted to premiere ‘May Feign’,…
Since the release of their debut LP and our runaway album of 2017, we’ve been sitting on our hands waiting on fresh cosmische mastery from Percolator for what fees like eons. At long last, we can breathe, as the Dublin-based trio have just followed Sestra with a video for their next single, ‘Freshin’. More than delivering on expectation, the new single leans further into the slaloming, hypnosis-inducing rhythmic interplay that made their debut album such an exciting proposition. The track was written and recorded for An Taobh Tuathail‘s twentieth anniversary back in May, but the band liked it enough to release it as a digital download single with…
The Cork music community is a bricolage of fascinating idiosyncrasy, but if there’s one through-line, it’s a hint of lysergic, and Limerick-born, Cork-based Elaine Malone‘s latest single is no exception. Where Malone has long been followed by the psych-folk tag, the psychedelia on her debut Land EP was implicit, bubbling under the surface in textural and compositional choices, as well as Sam Clague’s airy restraint on production. With Altered Hours’ Cathal MacGabhann engineering this time around, she’s accomplished her first bona fide electric wig-out in ‘My Baby’s Dead’ with spectacular finesse. We had a chat with Elaine about this hard left turn and how it came about.…
Is it towering, climactic psychgaze you’re after? Dublin’s Sun Mahshene has you covered. Out today, ‘This Girl I Know’ is the third single from their forthcoming debut album Contradictions and Tales of Fiction, set for release later this summer through Reckless Records. Its three guitars forging an impenetrable wall of sound, the song oozes Ride-worthy euphoria and the midtempo-swagger of Oasis at their most clamorous – think ‘Columbia’ via Creation Records at the end of a Danny Boyle film – helped in no small part by its production at Darklands Audio, Dublin. You can catch Sun Mahshene play The Thomas House on June 21 with Galants, or at Electric…
Dublin-based indie-noise outfit The Elephant Room are one of a select number of DIY artists in Ireland assimilating a broad range of influences from the 60s through to the present year with complete seamlessness. We’re pleased to be premiering their sprawling new single ‘Juniper & Pine’, complete with the band’s self-made video. The song itself is an almost ten minute marriage of experimental noisecraft and lo-fi pop that somehow never outstays its welcome as ekes out new levels of its conceptual framework. Easing in with a Laurel Canyon-indebted neo-psych groove, its lysergic-soaked corners quickly darken into a clamorous sonic ego-death parallel, before returning to consensus reality as something familiar, yet altered.…
One of the great hidden gems in Irish independent music today are Cork’s Any Joy. Sublimating varied strains of psych, post-punk & indie rock, they manage to recall the quintessential Deerhunter-esque pop-conscious, experimentally-natured sound of internalised dreams. Their 2017 debut album, Cycles, was a minor triumph, and was followed up last year with ‘Sucker’, a track that was included on last year’s Irish compilation A Litany of Failures: Volume II. Their new single, ‘The Sea’, bears all the Any Joy hallmarks: alpine guitar lines, tension, an impenetrable, masked vocal, and a wall of sound, all imbued with tape adulation. It’s their finest work to date. Another self-recorded effort in…
Cork indie-psych outfit Any Joy have just unveiled the new video for new single ‘The Fall’. Soaked in reverb, it’s another out-of-focus opiate drip to distract from more pointed undertones. Following the band’s aesthetic & musical thread of reccurent patterns, the video was created by frontman Oisin Dineen. Of the track, the band says “It’s a soundtrack to a potential self-sabotage and ultimate demise. It could be an appropriate theme tune for the current state of affairs across the Irish sea.” ‘The Fall’ comes from Any Joy’s new EP – due out next year – following up on their excellent & hugely underappreciated 2017 debut LP Cycles and this summer’s ‘Sucker‘ from A Litany of Failures…
Deap Vally are singer-guitarist Lindsey Troy and drummer Julie Edwards. They exploded into the scene with their debut album Sistrionix in 2013, which won favourable comparisons to blues rock contemporaries The White Stripes and The Black Keys as well as scene legends Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin. After leaving Island Records, they self-funded 2016’s follow-up album Femejism, which was produced by Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Nick Zimmer. After the release of single ‘Get Gone’ earlier this year, they’re currently on amall European tour, including The Limelight in Belfast tonight (Thursday, June 28). Caolan Coleman spoke to them ahead of the gigs. Your new…
Following the limited release of cross-Ireland Little L Records compilation, 2016’s A Litany of Failures – featuring Oh Boland, Shrug Life, That Snaake and Junk Drawer – an expanded second edition has been confirmed for release on July 13. Set to be released on 180g gatefold double vinyl, as well as through Bandcamp, Spotify and the usual outlets, it features 18 acts from Belfast, Cork, Derry, Donegal, Dublin, Galway & Limerick. The DIY, co-op endeavour aims to provide an opportunity to perform outside each of their hometowns, shortening the mental distances between bands, and encouraging a cross-pollination of musical communities. Splitting costs between artists and the organisers, a sense of…