• Watch: PANIKATAX – Rejection

    January 25, 2024 - By 

    Dublin quartet PANIKTAX are back with their vital new single, ‘Rejection’. It’s a masterfully trouncing effort from the band, who comprise Rob Walsh, Rian Trench, Trevor Keogh, and Robert ‘Scan’ Watson. In sub-four minutes, the band excavate new, groove-heavy territory from the more searing and supremely fucked-off energy captured on 2020’s ‘White Water Rafting’ Largely developed during the lockdown of 2020-2021 when live music had subsided, it’s taken from the band’s highly-anticipated EP, A Sudden and Unpleasant Change, which they said “can be experienced as a compulsive response to an almost Jungian introversion.” Unmistakably at the peak of his powers…

  • Video Premiere: girlfriend. – Trust

    August 4, 2023 - By 

    Back in the mists of time (2016) we introduced the first iteration of North Dublin alternative band girlfriend, tipping them for Big Things in the future. Judging by the cost of living yadda yadda help, it’s now the future and it seems that, for all our high praise back then, we might have actually, inadvertently lowballed the band in question. In their final Super Saiyan form as a five-piece, girlfriend. are taking their rightful place as one of Ireland’s most vital bands. “Vital how?” you ask? We hear you, and we see your concerns, but there’s a fair chance you slept on ‘Trust’. Released in March, off the…

  • Watch: Gilla Band – Sports Day

    February 7, 2023 - By 

    Gilla Band have dropped a new single, ‘Sports Day’. The b-side to Eight Fivers – which was accompanied by the announcement of their third album Most Normal last July – it’s a slowly unfurling and suitably stifling effort from the Dublin quartet. Today, the band have also announced four more UK/EU dates in what’s shaping up to be a busy schedule in 2023.  Check those and Michael Speed’s visuals for ‘Sports Day’ below.

  • Watch: Lisa O’Neill – Old Note

    November 15, 2022 - By 

    If there’s an active Irish songwriter more singular and naturally gifted than Lisa O’Neill we legitimately have not heard them. An artist we’ve covered many times in the past, she has carved out a remarkably distinctive path via masterfully considered folk song. Today, the County Cavan artist announces a whole new chapter. On February 10th 2023, she will release her fifth studio album, All Of This Is Chance, via none other than Rough Trade Records. It marks her debut on the iconic label, following the release of the sublime Heard a Long Gone Song via their River Lea imprint in 2018. Accompanying…

  • Watch: Poor Creature at Féile na Gréine 2022

    August 20, 2022 - By 

    Where on earth would we be without Féile Na Gréine? Currently underway in venues throughout Limerick city, the not-for-profit festival is, without question, one of the purest embodiments of DIY, forward-pushing art & music to be found anywhere on this island. Kicking this year’s festival off in style, organisers nabbed the sublime Poor Creature – the new collaborative project from Ruth Clinton of Landless and Lankum’s Cormac MacDiarmada – for a set as part of their Bring Your Own Lunch (BYOL) series. On perfect par with an unforgettable BYOL set by Naive Ted last year, the pair deliver a wonderfully enthralling set of…

  • Watch: Pillow Queens – Hearts & Minds

    February 10, 2022 - By 

    On 1st April, Dublin quartet Pillow Queens will release Leave The Light On, the highly-anticipated, ten-track follow-up to the band’s 2020 debut LP In Waiting. Capturing what lead singer Pamela Connolly describes as “the reoccurrence of teenage insecurities occasioned by the band’s rise to prominence and the imposter syndrome she experienced as a result,” it’s another sublimely crafted effort from the indie-rock foursome. Underpinned by the subtle exploratory textures of a band in rapid evolution, across four minutes, the song soars and earworms in equal measure. “Hearts & Minds’ is about experiencing the feeling of being a teenager again,” says Connolly. “The insecurities…

  • Watch: Junior Brother – No Country For Young Men

    February 9, 2022 - By 

    Ronan Kealy’s evolution as an artist has been a rare delight to behold. The Co. Kerry singer-songwriter known as Junior Brother has all but single-handedly upended the (granted, somewhat kneejerk) conception of experimental folk on these shores. It’s a trajectory, the power of which shines searingly through new single ‘No Country For Young Men’. The follow-up to last October’s inspired ‘Life’s New Haircut’, it’s a masterfully mesmeric effort that explores the culture shock – and straight-up experiential doom – of Kealy’s relocation to the capital. “I wrote this song in response to the tangible feeling of dread and anxiety I…

  • Watch: Hatchet Field – Leave The Bodies Where They Lay (live)

    December 14, 2021 - By 

    Over the years, Belfast musician Hornby has melted fizzogs and blown a fair few minds as the guitarist in bands such as We Are Knives and The Continuous Battle of Order. Earlier this year, his five-track debut offering in the guise of Hatchet Field, Survival Is Triumph Enough, proved a ruminative detour and a masterfully skeletal affair. Released via Belfast imprint Black Tragick – whose roster boasts the likes of Peng Weng and head hellion/hallion Robyn G Shiels – its foreboding death folk struck a sparse, altogether special chord, laying bare the subtleties of an artist who can be full-blown,…

  • Watch: M(h)aol – No One Ever Talks To Us

    October 27, 2021 - By 

    Year in, year out, the imminence of Samhain tends to bring about some … varying seasonal content. Thankfully, there are always exceptions to that rule. Taken from their forthcoming debut EP, Gender Studies, the video for ‘No One Ever Talks To Us’ by M(h)aol depicts women in scenes of horror, from Barbara Creed’s The Monstrous Feminine and Megan Fox’s Jennifer’s Body, to Julia Kristeva’s Powers of Horror. But it’s far from a kneejerk tie-in to mark the time of the year from the band, who are based between Dublin, Cork, London and Bristol. A fraught meld of buzz-saw textures, bobbing rhythms and Róisín Nic…

  • Watch: The Altered Hours – Thistle

    October 19, 2021 - By 

    Over the last couple of weeks, Cork’s finest the Altered Hours have been conjuring up their singular magic, night after night, in support of Fontaines D.C. at shows the UK. As an act that has commanded our attention since 2013, it’s been second-hand thrilling hearing high praise for the five-piece in their element. Ahead of a few more weeks zig-zagging across the UK and Ireland (including a Thin Air show at the Black Box with Documenta on November 27th, don’t you know?) the band have unveiled the video for their stellar new single, ‘Thistle’. Taken from their forthcoming second studio album,…