Album review: Saint Etienne

Music Reviews Thu, Jun 01, 2017

THESE last few weeks I've reviewed new albums by Slowdive, The Charlatans, and The Jesus and Mary Chain, while RIDE's comeback, Weather Diaries, awaits a listen. It all leads me to ask: What year is this?

Album review: Sea Pinks

Music Reviews Thu, May 25, 2017

SEA PINKS' last album, Soft Days, was solid, but lacked a true stand-out song. Watercourse has no such trouble though, as this new album from the Belfast trio boasts several great moments.

Album review: The Charlatans

Music Reviews Thu, May 18, 2017

IT SAYS much for The Charlatans that, while other Manchester bands of their vintage who may have been bigger went and imploded long ago, Tim Burgess and friends have quietly been able to keep going.

Album review: Slowdive

Music Reviews Thu, May 11, 2017

FOR ANYONE wishing to go back to 1992, and those just curious to see what that year felt and sounded like, the best means - in the absence of a TARDIS - is to play the second track from Slowdive's new album.

Album review: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Music Reviews Thu, May 04, 2017

“THIS RELEASE is designed to be a way into three decades of music making...the songs we have chosen are the ones that have stuck around, for whatever reason. Some songs are those that demand to be played live. Others are lesser songs that are personal favourites of ours."

Album review: Ásgeir

Music Reviews Thu, Apr 27, 2017

WITH HIS debut album, In The Silence (aka Dýrð í dauðaþögn) having come out of nowhere to be a phenomenon in his native Iceland, and winning critical acclaim and audiences across Europe, expectations are very high for the follow-up.

EP review: Daithí

Music Reviews Thu, Apr 20, 2017

'GAELIC HEART, Modern Mind' could - should - be the very definition of Daithí's approach to music, a deep respect and love for traditional music and culture, with a forward looking embrace of the modern.

Album review: Me and the Bees

Music Reviews Thu, Apr 13, 2017

POSITION YOURSELF between The Breeders' Last Splash - on the 'Divine Hammer', 'Invisible Man', rather than 'Cannonball' side of the spectrum - and The Beatles and 1960s psych-pop, and you have Spain's Me and The Bees.

Album review: The Jesus and Mary Chain

Music Reviews Thu, Apr 06, 2017

COULD THERE be a more quintessential Jesus and Mary Chain lyric than, "To old to crucify, but too young for suicide", the opening line of 'Song For A Secret', from their first new album in almost 20 years.

EP review: Field Trip

Music Reviews Thu, Mar 30, 2017

NEVER JUDGE a book by its cover, or an EP for that matter. The sleeve of Field Trip's Evening's Over gives the impression this will be five tracks of slacker-rock and odes to student burn-out after one Buckfast too many.

Album review: Laura Marling

Music Reviews Thu, Mar 09, 2017

THE OPENING track 'Soothing' lives up to its name, but its languid, bass-led, rhythms, and Marling's sultry croon are something of a red herring. Unlike this song, wonderful though it is, the album will not be an indie-pop/jazz hybrid.

Album review: WHY?

Music Reviews Thu, Feb 23, 2017

THERE ARE few more individual, yet conversely definitive, voices in American indie than WHY? founder/leader/singer Yoni Wolf, and his brilliance and ambition as a songwriter, indeed composer, is writ large on Moh Lhean.

Album review: Sleater-Kinney

Music Reviews Thu, Feb 02, 2017

LIVE ALBUMS are very much a seventies phenomenon, the closest many fans could get to being at a show from a time when most bands would not darken the door of venues outside (a few) capital cities.

Album review: Rose Elinor Dougall

Music Reviews Thu, Jan 26, 2017

IT DOESN'T matter if you remember the Pipettes or not, as there is no trace of their doo-wop revival style in former member Rose Elinor Dougall's second album, which instead brims with high end pop and sumptuous indie.

Album review: The Flaming Lips

Music Reviews Thu, Jan 12, 2017

NEVER DID I think I would see the day that the show stealing track on a Flaming Lips album would be the one chiefly sung by Miley Cirus, but then Miley long stopped being predictable.

THE BEST MUSIC OF 2016

Music Reviews Thu, Dec 15, 2016

Irish Album of The Year
Jealous Of The Birds - Parma Violets (Rough Trade) - JOTB is 19-year-old Armagh singer-songwriter Naomi Hamilton. A considerable gift for melody, her knack for a catchy chorus, a poetic lyrical ability, and ease in ranging from Steven Malkmus-like slacker rock to delicate indie folk-pop, without ever sounding unfocused, makes this startling debut Irish album of the year.

Album review: The Wedding Present

Music Reviews Thu, Dec 08, 2016

A SLOW, atmospheric, post-rock instrumental is not what a seasoned Wedding Present listener expects to hear, nor a stately and majestic track built around a worldless choir of male and female vocals, nor a sublime movement for string quartet and piano.

Album review: Body/Head

Music Reviews Thu, Nov 17, 2016

IN HIS despair MacBeth chastised humans, and thereby life, as "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing". Kim Gordon's music has long been driven by "sound and fury" but is certainly not meaningless.

Album review: Oh Boland

Music Reviews Thu, Nov 03, 2016

ASK NIALL Murphy, or rather, get into an engrossing discussion with him on music, and eventually he will come straight out and say it: "I'm a punk". Give him another few minutes and he'll cough up: "But I really like Yes...but no I'm a punk!"

Oasis - Be Here Now reissue

Music Reviews Mon, Oct 10, 2016

BE HERE Now was the album which put the cocaine infused nail in the coffin of the hubris filled, jingoistic, corpse of Britpop. The phenomenon which, in the words of Suede's Brett Anderson began "with the charm and intelligence of a Mike Leigh film" had indeed "become a Carry On movie".

E-paper

Read this weeks E-paper. Past editions also available from within this weeks digital copy.