Album review: Can

Music Reviews Thu, Dec 02, 2021

BY 1975, Can still had gas in the tank, but their best years were already appearing in the rear view mirror. Proof of both can be found in this live set from that year.

Album review: Oasis

Music Reviews Thu, Nov 18, 2021

IN AN era where bands like Foals and Biffy Clyro can play to large audiences, but only after many albums and many years of working their way up the ladder, Oasis in 1996 proves LP Hartley’s dictum, “the past is a foregin country, they do things differently there”.

Album review: Pip Blom

Music Reviews Thu, Nov 11, 2021

THEY LOOK as if they should be the definitive Twee-Indie band, but looks are deceiving. There is grit and heft in the songs of this Dutch quartet.

Album review: Billy Bragg

Music Reviews Thu, Oct 14, 2021

FROM HIS earliest days with ‘The Milkman of Human Kindness’ and ‘Between The Wars’, few artists have possessed Bragg’s ability to write songs possessing intelligent political commentary and a deep, humane, empathy.

Album review: Mick Flannery and Susan O’Neill

Music Reviews Thu, Sep 09, 2021

WHAT DO you get when you combine one of the finest contemporary songwriters in the country with one of Irish music’s best kept secrets?

Album review: Whipping Boy

Music Reviews Thu, Sep 02, 2021

I AM old enough to remember when Whipping Boy were Jesus and Mary Chain wannabes, and their utter transformation a couple of years later as witnessed on a grandstanding performance on The Late Late Show.

Album review: Villagers

Music Reviews Thu, Aug 19, 2021

FEVER DREAMS is expansive, ambitious, and cinematic in scope, fusing the many disparate strands of Conor J O’Brien’s music into one entity. It is also the oddest album of his career.

‘After the Movie’ - Partland releases new single

Music Reviews Wed, Aug 04, 2021

‘AFTER THE Movie’, the new single from Galway singer-songwriter Partland, is released today, Wednesday August 4, and is accompanied by a wonderful animated video.

Album review: LUMP

Music Reviews Thu, Jul 29, 2021

THE SECOND album from LUMP - singer-songwriter Laura Marling, and Mike Lindsay of folktronica band Tunng - is, as Marling says, about “desires running wild”.

Album review: David Kitt

Music Reviews Mon, Jul 12, 2021

NECESSITY IS the mother of invention, as the old saying goes, and it certainly applies to 20, what might be called a ‘new/old’ album from singer-songwriter David Kitt.

Album review: The Goon Sax

Music Reviews Thu, Jul 08, 2021

THE THIRD album from the Aussie indie-pop trio is like the child in the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem: "When she was good, she was very good indeed, but when she was bad she was horrid.”

Album review: Dani Larkin

Music Reviews Tue, Jun 29, 2021

THE LATE, great, Mary McPartlan once noted that Irish folk music must not continually rest on a handful of standards, instead new material must be added to keep the form alive.

Album review: John Grant

Music Reviews Thu, Jun 24, 2021

JOHN GRANT has always been searingly honest, often brutally so, about himself in his songwriting, but Boy From Michigan may be his most personal yet. It is certainly his most political.

Baba Yarga - Galway multicultural band release new single

Music Reviews Thu, Jun 17, 2021

AN EASTERN European folk song, transformed into a modern, soul-pinching, ethno-pop ballad - this is ‘Vershe’, the new single from Galway multicultural band Baba Yarga.

Album review: Saint Sister

Music Reviews Mon, Jun 14, 2021

“MY BRILLIANT friend traces where I should end and where I should begin, and he touches me with all the need and the want that goes on between us.”

Album review: Noel Gallagher

Music Reviews Thu, Jun 03, 2021

NOEL GALLAGHER’S refusal to wear a face mask has hardly been edifying, and his claims of “there's too many liberties being taken away from us”, is verging on tin foil hat territory.

Album review: Arab Strap

Music Reviews Tue, Mar 02, 2021

IT OPENS with a song about trying to connect - even if it is not the wisest course of action - with all the odds stacked against you: “Let’s move now before we’re back below.”

Album review: Django Django

Music Reviews Tue, Feb 16, 2021

IT BEGINS in a swirl, as sounds musical and abstract weave into the sonic equivalent of the build-up to a rocket taking off, the moment of launch signalled by post-punk bass riff whose minimalism only enhances its forward momentum.

Album review: The Fall

Music Reviews Thu, Feb 11, 2021

THE FALL’S recorded output is of such vastness that it is possible, like me, to be someone who has numerous Fall albums in your collection, and yet still have only a tiny fraction of their discography.

Album review: The Staves

Music Reviews Thu, Feb 04, 2021

"THE HUMAN voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, the most moving...even the greatest virtuoso will never be able to give you even a fraction of the emotion a beautiful voice can...That is our share of the divine.”

E-paper

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