• 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…

  • A Litany of Failures: Volume III Announced

    July 3, 2020 - By 

    Two years on from its second volume, islandwide independent music compilation series A Litany of Failures has opened pre-orders and announced the tracklisting for Volume III in the series – out Friday, October 2nd. More eclectic, and more export-ready than ever, the compilation features brand new music from 22 acts across Ireland, including the first recorded output from Fifty Years of Hair (Postcard Versions/Girl Band’s Dara Kiely), The Golden Cleric (Shrug Life/Girlfriend/That Snaake) and Grave Goods (Girls Names, Pins, September Girls), as well as many of our favourites – Robocobra Quartet, Silverbacks, Rising Damp, Percolator, Extravision and many more. With cover art by Nathanaël Roman, it will be accompanied by…

  • Shrug Life – Maybe You’re The Punchline

    April 28, 2020 - By 

    It’s strange how an unprecedented large scale pandemic can lend some records a greater level of significance. Obviously when Shrug Life were recording their second album, Maybe You’re The Punchline, they could not have foreseen that the entire global economy would have stopped and we’d all be trapped in our houses facing existential threats in the form of an invisible killer. We’ve left with an ever increasing uncertainty about what the hell happens next. Society is essentially being rebooted and there’s no telling what shape things might come back in. Then there are Danny Carroll’s words, these twitchy anxiety riddled tomes…

  • Win Tickets To Other Voices Dingle

    November 15, 2019 - By 

    Ireland’s foremost musical TV moment is with us again as Dingle is overtaken up by Other Voices over the weekend of November 29-December 1. With tickets for the intimate TV recording available only through competition via Other Voices and partners, we’re delighted to be offering a chance to win two tickets for the Music Trail over the full weekend, as well as the St. James’ Church TV recording on Saturday night. This year’s lineup is yet another veritable who’s who of Irish music, as well as a number of international names. St. James’ Church features Editors, Whitney, Angie McMahon, SOAK, Joy Crookes, Ye Vagabonds, The Murder Capital, Jafaris & Arlo Parks – each performance at…

  • 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.…

  • Beyond Contrived, Bandwagonesque Bullshit: An Interview With Shrug Life

    September 10, 2019 - By 

    It’s long been the contention of this publication that if any songwriter could claim to be the voice of Dublin it’s Danny Carroll, lead singer and guitarist for Shrug Life. Since 2015’s The Grand Stretch EP, the indie trio have consistently floored us with earworm hooks and existential despair with an empathetic smirk. The songs encapsulate so much of what it means to be alive in Ireland at the moment; the ennui, uncertainty and the oddly humourous nature of it all. With their latest single, ‘Strangers’, having dropped, Will Murphy has a little chat with Mr. Carroll to see where…

  • Video Premiere: Shrug Life – 2009

    May 13, 2019 - By 

    One of the finest cuts from last year’s A Litany of Failures Vol. II independent compilation was Shrug Life‘s ‘2009’, a misleadingly uptempo ditty that mined reprieve from the jowls of self-imposed doom. Matter-of-factly delivered, Danny Carroll addresses the effect of the too-often underexamined (by musicians) abuse of bad hash as a crutch in times of mental ill-health: “Days previous I felt like a genius; sleepless, but safe in my cure for cancer, awake for six nights, working on the answer.” Of the track, Carroll said: “‘2009′ is an awkwardly accurate description of where I found myself in my late adolescence – suffering from sleep-deprived psychosis, perpetually…

  • Naoise Roo Set To Return With Night of Music, Art, Theatre & Spoken Word

    April 12, 2019 - By 

    Long one of our favourite songwriters & artists on the island, Naoise Roo has been on an extended hiatus for the last couple of years. Thankfully, she’s just announced her return EP, Sick Girlfriend, and is set to hold her first show in a number of years at Dublin’s Project Arts Centre on May 4. The show will serve as a preview of the EP, with Sick Girlfriend‘s four tracks centred around themes of depression, the negative aspects of the music industry, and the stereotypes that burden women experiencing mental illness. Roo will be joined by producer/bassist Daniel Fox of Girl Band, as well as drummer Rian Trench, guitarist Karl Tobin and…