Album review: Daithí
Thu, Oct 17, 2019
INTROSPECTIVE, CONFESSIONAL songwriting is not an approach readily associated with electronic music, which tends mostly towards the austere and abstract on one side, or euphoric, Balearic, hedonism on the other.
Read more ...Judy marks major comeback for Renée Zellweger
Thu, Oct 17, 2019
JUDY IS based on the stage play End of the Rainbow. It is a sturdy and competent music biopic, there seems to be one of these every year and this is a one of the good ones.
Read more ...Advertisement
New poetry collection from Mary O'Malley is worth rejoicing over
Thu, Oct 10, 2019
THE POET Dave Lordan has argued that, in an age when poetry is more effectively transmitted over the internet, rather than through traditional book sales, the poetry collection belongs more to the heritage end of the poetry business.
Read more ...Album review: Kim Gordon
Thu, Oct 10, 2019
THE EASIEST way to approach Kim Gordon's debut album is not necessarily at the start, but towards the end, with the furious, rampaging, hurtle of 'Hungry Baby'.
Read more ...Joker - a troubling depiction of Batman's arch enemy
Thu, Oct 10, 2019
JOKER, ALSO known as Arthur Fleck, grew up the victim of abuse, and struggles with a type of Tourettes which results in his erupting in involuntary laugher when he is unhappy or uncomfortable.
Read more ...Album review: Kacy & Clayton
Thu, Oct 03, 2019
THE SASKATCHEWAN cousins 2018 album, The Siren's Song, was steeped in late 1960s British folk-rock, with clear nods to Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, and Anne Briggs.
Read more ...The Goldfinch - big star cast cannot rescue bad adaptation
Thu, Oct 03, 2019
THIS IS the second film released in the last few months named after a painting. The first was The Souvenir, a beautiful low budget movie about a film student in 1980s London. This is the opposite - big budget (which unfortunately looks set to make an epic box office loss), all star cast, and based on a Pulitzer Prize winning novel.
Read more ...Album review: Squarehead
Thu, Sep 26, 2019
HAVING TAKEN some time out for "a much-needed mental health break" after three albums in three years and constant touring, Dublin trio Squarehead pick up, not exactly where they left off.
Read more ...Ad Astra - the most realistic vision of the future yet depicted on screen
Thu, Sep 26, 2019
AD ASTRA is Apocalypse Now meets 2001: A Space Odyssey - I do not claim to be the first to make that comparison - but that is a pretty great combination of stories, and surprising it has not been done already.
Read more ...Album review: Liam Gallagher
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 ...Extra Ordinary - 'Ghostbusters meets The Van'
Thu, Sep 19, 2019
MAEVE HIGGINS plays Rose, a lonely, yet happy, shy, driving instructor in her thirties. Once a well regarded exorcist and paranormal investigator, she gave it all up after an accident involving her father which cost him his life.
Read more ...Patricia Forde and the power of words
Thu, Sep 19, 2019
IT IS most unusual that the sequel to a wonderful book is anywhere near as good as the first one. In 2015 Patricia Forde’s The Wordsmith was published to great acclaim, winning several awards, and introducing readers to Letta the Wordsmith, whose job it is to hand out words to people who need them.
Read more ...Album review: Pixies
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 ...It: Chapter 2 - an uneven adaptation
Thu, Sep 12, 2019
FIRST OF all, do not go see this movie if you have not seen the first one, as it is a direct sequel and you will not have a clue as to what’s going on. In Chapter 2 catch up with the gang from Chapter 1 27 years later.
Read more ...Album review: the strange, the brilliant, and the awful from the 60s counterculture
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 ...The Souvenir - a unsettling depiction of an abusive relationship
Thu, Sep 05, 2019
JULIE IS a film student in London in the late 1980s. She is trying to escape her life of privilege, but lives in her parents' flat in Knightsbridge. Yet, her attempts to make a film in Sunderland about a working class family are honest and admirable.
Read more ...Album review: Ezra Furman
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 ...Good Boys - not a great movie, but a funny movie
Thu, Aug 29, 2019
MAX, THOR, and Lucas, are three best friends about to enter their teenage years. They struggle with hormones and growing up. They know lots of grown up words but not exactly what they mean: “She’s a nymphomaniac, it means she has sex on land AND on water."
Read more ...From Millar to Mars to Susan
Thu, Aug 29, 2019
IN HER new collection Naked - New & Selected Poems, Galway writer Susan Millar DuMars presents a poetic landscape as cosmic as it is intimately personal, satiric, and fascinating.
Read more ...Tarantino's indulgent love letter to Sixties Hollywood
Thu, Aug 22, 2019
ONCE UPON A time in Hollywood is the ninth film from Quentin Tarantino, and if he is to be believed, it is his penultimate movie. He maintains that no director has directed a good film after his tenth. To that I say, what about Claire Denis, Akira Kursowa, or Stephen Spielberg?
Read more ...