Album review: Liam Gallagher
Music Reviews Thu, Sep 19, 2019
IT IS impossible to read the title of Gallagher jr's second solo album and not hear it as he would say it, delivered, undoubtedly with all the Mancunian cock-sure swagger you would expect.
Read more ...Album review: Pixies
Music Reviews Thu, Sep 12, 2019
WHEN YOU have created the albums Surfer Rosa (1987) and Doolittle (1989), seen them achieve classic status, and their songs continue to find new generations of fans via TV, film, and indie clubnights, there can only be one thought: follow that.
Read more ...Album review: the strange, the brilliant, and the awful from the 60s counterculture
Music Reviews Thu, Sep 05, 2019
THIS VAST and varied 18 track compilation, spanning 1959 to 1973, and running from the innovative to the period piece curiosity to the 'What were they on?', unearths some overlooked gems worth re-exploring and reconsidering.
Read more ...Album review: Ezra Furman
Music Reviews Thu, Aug 29, 2019
THERE WILL not be a better live music gig in Galway in 2019 than the one Ezra Furman delivered in the Róisín Dubh in July as part of the Galway International Arts Festival.
Read more ...Album review: Ada Lea
Music Reviews Thu, Jul 25, 2019
THE BREAK-UP album - Blood On The Tracks, The Bride Stripped Bare, Rumours, Songs For Only The Lonely, Blue, Currents... - rarely do catharsis and creativity go so well and productively together.
Read more ...Album review: Kyle Craft
Music Reviews Thu, Jul 11, 2019
IN SOME corner of a foreign field - Portland, Oregon, to be precise - it is forever 1972. David Bowie is always Ziggy Stardust and T.Rex's glitterburst boogie is the soundtrack to everyone's teenage years.
Read more ...Album review: Jesca Hoop
Music Reviews Thu, Jul 04, 2019
IT WAS often said of The Cure's 1982 album Pornography, that after beginning with the words, "It doesn't matter if we all die", it proceeded to get bleaker from there.
Read more ...Album review: Morrissey
Music Reviews Thu, Jun 13, 2019
SUPPORTING BREXIT and UKIP, and making sympathetic comments about far-right figures have left Morrissey fans disgusted, in despair, and in denial - often, with long term fans like myself, feeling all three at once.
Read more ...Album review: Joan As Police Woman
Music Reviews Thu, May 23, 2019
A MAMMOTH 43 tracks, spanning 13 years, including two new recordings, as well as 10 tracks recorded for a BBC6 Music session, this is as expansive and exhaustive a Joan As Policewoman anthology as is possible.
Read more ...Album review: The National
Music Reviews Thu, May 16, 2019
THERE IS something familiar, and yet altogether different, about The National's eighth studio album. This is due partly to it being a film soundtrack, but mostly it is the presence of numerous female voices within this normally masculine environment.
Read more ...Album review: Jobcentre Rejects
Music Reviews Thu, May 09, 2019
WHEN IRON Maiden released their self-titled debut album in 1980, it did something no one thought possible - it fused the still evolving metal genre with styles the previous three years declared sworn enemies - punk/post-punk with prog-rock.
Read more ...EP review: Body Type
Music Reviews Thu, May 02, 2019
THEY CALL themselves the "trash can girl band", giving the impression of a raw and raucous garage rock, but Body Type are a far more considered prospect than their self-description indicates.
Read more ...Album review: Fontaines D.C.
Music Reviews Thu, Apr 11, 2019
IMAGINE A song which sounds as though it were written by Shane McGowan, but performed by The Velvet Underground. That song is 'Dublin City Sky', the closing track on Fontaines D.C.'s debut album.
Read more ...Album review: White Denim
Music Reviews Thu, Mar 28, 2019
IN SOME corner of a foreign field - Austin, Texas, to be precise - it will forever be the 1970s, but what kind of seventies depends on what White Denim album you are listening to.
Read more ...Album review: Ye Vagabonds
Music Reviews Thu, Mar 21, 2019
THROUGHOUT THESE last couple of years, Ye Vagabonds have steadily built a following and a fair measure of respect, culminating in their nomination for a 2018 BBC Folk Award on the strength of their self-released debut album.
Read more ...Album review: Stella Donnelly
Music Reviews Thu, Mar 14, 2019
THE SOUND, the look, is deceptive, disarming. The singer is all smiles and kookiness, the songs seemingly frothy, jubilant, catchy, 1980s style indie-pop. It's the sweetness that attracts.
Read more ...Album review: Maria Somerville
Music Reviews Thu, Mar 07, 2019
MARIA SOMERVILLE'S earliest songs were melancholy, atmospheric, meditations, based around the guitar. In the years since, her music has metamorphosed into electronica, but those qualities of mood and emotionally drenched sonics remain.
Read more ...Album review: Julia Jacklin
Music Reviews Thu, Feb 21, 2019
LOOKS CAN be deceiving. Or can they? The cover of Jacklin's second solo album finds her surrounded by bric-a-brac, almost drowning in it, but with an ecstatic expression on her face.
Read more ...Album review: Porkstore
Music Reviews Thu, Feb 14, 2019
PORKSTORE IS Barry Richardson - Galwegian, all around top bloke, and inspiration behind one of the greatest songs So Cow (aka Brian Kelly) has ever written. And Barry is not just the subject of a song, but a songwriter himself.
Read more ...Album review: Calva Louise
Music Reviews Thu, Feb 07, 2019
IT MAY be housed inside one of the most terrible album sleeves in living memory, but past the ghastly graphics lies a 30 minute treat of 10 fast and furious indie-pop/garage-rock songs.
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