EP Review: Jealous Of The Birds

Music Reviews Thu, Jan 31, 2019

When JOTB - aka County Armagh's Naomi Hamilton - emerged with her 2016 debut album Parma Violets, it was clear that an exciting and hugely talented indie singer-songwriter had arrived.

EP Review: Dodie

Music Reviews Thu, Jan 17, 2019

SINCE SHE began uploading music from her bedroom at the age of 16, singer-songwriter Dodie - aka Essex native Dorothy Clark - has gone on to enjoy some level of success.

Album review: You Tell Me

Music Reviews Thu, Jan 10, 2019

YOU TELL Me is Field Music’s Peter Brewis and Admiral Fallow's Sarah Hayes, and despite drawing on a diverse set of influences, the duo has created a cohesive, often beguiling debut as a duo.

Album review: Neil Young

Music Reviews Thu, Dec 20, 2018

WHILE NEIL Young has long been one of the great champions of heavy and distorted guitar, often his finest performances have resulted from playing the acoustic form of that instrument.

Album review: boygenius

Music Reviews Thu, Nov 22, 2018

BOYGENIUS ARE made up of three of the most exciting indie-rock singer-songwriters to have emerged in the last five years - Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus.

Recovery – live staging of a concept album at Mick Lally Theatre

Music Reviews Thu, Nov 08, 2018

On Tuesday November 13, at 8pm, at the Mick Lally Theatre, One Two One Two present their award-winning fusion of pop music and theatre, Recovery, starring Peter Coonan from Love/Hate.

Album review: Stereolab

Music Reviews Thu, Nov 01, 2018

HOUSED IN one of the most memorable sleeves of the 1990s - an image drawn from a 1970s Swiss underground magazine - Stereolab's 1992 debut was a homage to their roots, and a signpost to their future.

Album review: Value Void

Music Reviews Thu, Oct 25, 2018

THERE HAVE been many terms coined over the ages to describe falling in, and being in, love, so it is some achievement for London based trio Value Void to have come up with a new one.

Album review: The Fall's Kurious Oranj re-release

Music Reviews Thu, Oct 11, 2018

IT BEGINS with two of the greatest songs in The Fall's vast catalogue - one definitive, the other highly uncharacteristic - and the genesis of the album itself is possibly the oddest in the band's career.

Album review: Lala Lala

Music Reviews Thu, Oct 04, 2018

THE ALBUM shudders into abrupt life with a low growling of 'wall of sound' guitars, then everything quietens, and over a steady beat, a voice intones: "Following a lead of all my debt/I sense violence and know you're still a threat."

Album review - Villagers

Music Reviews Thu, Sep 27, 2018

GIVEN WE live in a post-Christian, increasingly secular, Ireland, the opening line of Villagers' new album comes as a surprise: "I've found again, the space in my heart again, for God again, in the form of art again."

David Bowie - the alien has landed in the 1980s

Music Reviews Mon, Sep 17, 2018

THE WARNING signs were there, though it is only in retrospect we see and recognise them. Having dominated the 1970s as the decade's key artistic innovator and trendsetter, Bowie was prepared to admit that the following decade may not be quite so productive.

Album review - The Goon Sax

Music Reviews Thu, Sep 13, 2018

DISTANCE IS usually required to process and understand an experience, but The Goon Sax - 17 when they released their marvellous debut, 19 now for their second album - are still teens writing about the adolescent experience.

Album review: Basement Revolver

Music Reviews Thu, Aug 30, 2018

THE SHOEGAZE revival has been continuing apace for most of this decade, but there is a key difference between its original late 80s/90s incarnation and its modern manifestation, namely the place of emotion.

Album review: The Fall

Music Reviews Thu, Aug 23, 2018

IF YOU told the late John Peel you were keen to get into The Fall - his favourite band - and asked him what was the best album to start with, he might have replied: "Their entire discography".

EP Review: The Clockworks

Music Reviews Thu, Aug 16, 2018

ADDICTION, DEBT, apathy, helplessness - life depicted by The Clockworks is grim, but they are one of the few indie bands to deal directly with the realites for those who do not fall comfortably within the Leo Varadkar's 'people who get up early in the morning' definition.

The sound of British 60s pop - and Bowie before he really became Bowie

Music Reviews Thu, Aug 02, 2018

YOU MAY not know the name Ivor Raymonde, but if you know Dusty Springfield's 'I Only Want To Be With You' or The Walker Brothers' 'Make It Easy On Yourself', you have heard his work.

Album review: Phantastic Ferniture

Music Reviews Thu, Jul 26, 2018

RIFF FUELLED indie-rock is not what you expect from a band led by Australian singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin, who describes her folk influenced solo work as "playing sad music with a guitar in my hand".

Album review: Body/Head

Music Reviews Thu, Jul 19, 2018

THE SECOND studio album from Body/Head - Sonic Youth co-founder Kim Gordon and guitarist Bill Nace - is less a savage beast than their 2013 debut Coming Apart, but is no less confrontational, no less challenging.

Album review: The National

Music Reviews Thu, Jul 12, 2018

LIVE ALBUMS are very much a 1970s phenomenon, a chance to vicariously attend a concert by a band who would never play your town. They have also been among the classic 'contractual obligation' releases.

E-paper

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