• Time Flies: Buggles, Punk Rock and the Rebirth of Yes

    June 29, 2015 - By 

    It’s tricky to put a band like Yes in historical context. In their pomp, they were one of the biggest rock bands on the planet, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and The Who. They filled arenas with people, and they filled slabs of vinyl with complex, multi-layered progressive rock. Along the way, they filled plenty of rock critics with a sense of anger mixed with despair, and they filled a generation of kids with the desire to grab guitars and do the exact opposite of what’d made them so successful over the course of the 1970s.…

  • Playlist: YES. We Can Overcome.

    May 22, 2015 - By 

    With the moratorium in place ahead of today’s marriage referenduiem, it seems as good a time as any to take a look back over the colossal amount of songs released in support of the YES vote down south. While the majority of today’s popular songs tend to deal with boy-girl relationships, adolescence and having a good time, over the last month several acts have stepped up to the plate in support of the LGBT community in Ireland. Socio-political messages have certainly fallen by the wayside within popular music over the last number of years but the independent scene in Ireland…

  • Stream: A Yes Playlist

    September 18, 2014 - By 

    Very obviously completely unrelated to anything that is happening, anywhere in the world, pertaining to politics, nationalism and all things in between, we’ve decided to compile a ten-track Yes playlist, featuring affirmatively-inclined tracks by the likes of Tune-Yards, Mogwai, Elliott Smith, Beck and Surfer Blood. Stream that below once you’ve finished admiring the strawberry above.

  • The Love That Dare Not Speaks Its Name – Why It’s Still Not Cool To Like Progressive Rock

    November 7, 2013 - By 

    There’s a certain school of thought that declares punk rock as the saviour of music, wiping away an era of awful, bloated sounds. It was essentially the ‘Second Coming’ of good music, without needing a ‘First Coming’ to justify that title. “NO FUTURE!” screamed the punks, but what they really meant was “NO PAST”, and over the years, as the music press has become populated by the disciples of punk, this has become accepted as fact. And of all the victims of this cull, none fell further than progressive rock. With the way people listen to music having irreparably changed,…