• Video Premiere: The Elephant Room – Juniper and Pine

    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.…

  • Stream New Irish Grassroots Compilation: Live @ Fennor Lane

    Tucked away amongst castle ruins and relics of history on the outskirts of Slane town, Mark Carolan runs the intimate Fennor Lane Studios. Like the encouraging number of grassroots Irish compilations and splits that have graced our Bandcamp accounts in recent times to act as connective tissue between previously-disparate scenes, Live at Fennor Lane was made with the same philosophy of shared elevation in mind, as Mark tells us: “The idea behind this album was simply to create a record worth listening to, and the live method of recording gives a characterful and natural feel to it. I hope we can bring new music to all the followers of each band involved in this project and help everyone to expand their audience. Aaaand it was great craic making it!” Featuring several of our favourite bands in the land, each more idiosyncratic than the last, contributions range from Slouch‘s submerged psychogroove, to the…

  • Watch: The Elephant Room – Naive Green

    Dublin trio The Elephant Room have shared a new track ‘Naive Green’. Having formed in January of this year, the band comprised of singer and guitarist Frank Shortle, bassist Shane Martin and drummer Ian Hand have already a string of singles under their belt and have been honing a sound that will resonate with anyone with a penchant for 90s indie rock and the lo-fi charm of slacker styles. Earlier singles ‘Brisco’ and ‘Ashes’ showed us a band with a precocious knack for a hook early in their nascence as a group. We previously drew comparisons between them and the likes of Sparklehorse and Wilco and…

  • Album stream: The Elephant Room – Body

    Currently simmering under the radar, Dublin three-piece The Elephant Room have released their rather idiosyncratic new ten-track album, Body. With hints of everyone from Wilco, Sebadoh (namely ‘Valley’) Soul Coughing and Sparklehorse, the distinctly lo-fi quality that pervades the record works very much in its favour, primitive keyboards, fuzzy chord progressions and knowingly elemental experimentation all lending to the charms of this somewhat unpredictable release. Sound like your kind of thing? Stream the album via Bandcamp below. Body by The Elephant Room