REVIEWS
Album reviews
Two Door Cinema Club are three young men from Bangor and Donaghadee in Northern Ireland. With a neat line in twitchy indie-pop, and at least one eye on the dancefloor, they share common ground...
Hype can be a terrible thing. Personally, the stir whipped up around Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion and Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest made them partially unlistenable in...
Despite their band-like moniker, Broadcast 2000 is largely one-man show. Rising from the ashes of the rather excellent Artisan, North London resident Joe Steer built-up Broadcast 2000 with his...
These New Puritans are not your average folk band. In fact despite the numerous bassoons, horn arrangements and melodious vocals they aren’t a folk band at all. Far from it. But listening to...
Imagine if the only films you ever saw consisted of romantic slush. Sure, it’s pleasant enough to watch the odd feel-good rom-com, and the latest slew of indie flicks that employ some...
Tony Simon is best known, at least in Hip Hop aficionado circles, as the producer of much of Aesop Rock’s revered back catalogue. To some, he is the East Coasts answer to DJ Shadow. However...
Like Roy Orbison, one can imagine Mark E Everett standing or sitting motionless, hardly moving his mouth whilst singing. It just spills great waves of emotion and love and death, spinning tales of...
Ever since the charming audacity of The Magnetic Fields’ 2000 release, 69 Love Songs, frontman Stephin Merritt has struggled to recapture his muse to quite the same effect. Live, they still...
What's most refreshing about Dublin's Sounds Of System Breakdown is that they're not out to impress anyone in particular. Their makeup - three lads whose guitars, percussion and electronic bleeps...
Caught live
The rain seemingly hasn’t stopped for a moment as the Electric Ballroom spills out another bellyful of indie lovelies onto the ever-depressing streets of Camden Town. But the weather, despite...
The Low Anthem are one of those types of bands that seem to just float around for a while, managing bit by bit to earn themselves a nice little following. They last played Dublin in September...
January isn’t typically a month that welcomes sunshine sounds and cheery vibes, yet somehow and somewhat out of nowhere, Surfer Blood managed to roll those summer months in way ahead of sched...
Tonight’s support act Hulk consists of Dublin-based producer Thomas Haugh and guest Adrian Crowley; Crowley provides guitar atmospherics, while Haugh fiddles with all manner of intr...
Three years have passed since Ragged Words last caught Dawn Landes live. During this time she has released two exquisite albums of lilting country and blues infu...
The Lexington is so packed, Ragged Words has to apologise for breathing. We're so squashed in that to do so would feel like invading the space of the rather large guy we're stood next to. For a sma...
Three hours! Americana super group Monsters of Folk are clearly not a band for those lacking in stamina. On a night that soared to astonishing dizzy heights - propelled primarily by Jim James...
There are a few things you never expect to happen to you in your life. Winning the lottery, that’s a pretty common one. Being struck by lightning, yep, that’d be pretty high up on the l...
